Palwal: Not just train mishaps but the last three years of UPA rule have also witnessed tonnes of foodgrain rotting away across the country while the poor starve. CNN-IBN has been running a sustained campaign to highlight the issue. Now, it reveals how 80,000 sacks of wheat rotting in the open in Haryana are being distributed to villages through the public distribution system. The dry dust is all that remains...
09:30 PM, May 22, 2012
Jalandhar: Buried in recent monthly data for wholesale prices in India, the wild gyrations of a humble vegetable tell the tale of an economy trapped in inflation by its own rigidities. Back in December, after a bumper harvest of potatoes, furious farmers dumped tonnes of their crop on roads in protest over a crash in prices: four months later, the annual wholesale inflation rate of the potato is galloping at...
12:33 PM, May 22, 2012
London: A Chinese restaurant in Britain is offering an all-you-can-eat buffet but fines customers 20 if they leave food on their plates as 'wastage'. Managers at the Kylin Buffet in South Shields, have put up a notice urging diners to eat up all their food or face the penalty charge. The policy has outraged one mother who was told to pay the 20 after she, along with her 10-year-old son...
09:34 AM, May 18, 2012
New Delhi: With summers in full swing and the mercury heading north, doctors advise that apart from drinking lots of water, a special summer diet consisting of light and healthy food would ensure a cool mind and body. Ritika Samadar, chief dietician at Max Hospital, said fluids with electrolytes like coconut water and lemonade should be consumed and oily foods have to be avoided. "In summer, light food should be...
05:27 PM, May 17, 2012
Jehanabad: Eight persons lost their lives and four others were taken ill after consuming contaminated sattu (mixed cereal flour) on Monday at Rajabazar locality in Bihar's Jehanabad district, police said. About a dozen persons, mostly daily wage labourers, purchased sattu from a road-side shop and fell ill soon after eating it, Superintendent of Police, Harpreet Kaur said. Eight persons, identified as Pappu, Krishna Kumar, Sansad Das, Krishna Paswan, Dineshi Paswan,...
01:57 PM, May 15, 2012
The man behind the snack: John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, is said to be the man after whom the sandwich was named, 250 years back. When he ordered beef served between slices of bread about 250 years ago he probably did not think his request would become a global convenience meal. The story goes that the Earl asked for the particular serving so that he could eat while...
03:08 PM, May 14, 2012
BANGALORE: Ever wondered why Chaucer coined the phrase busy as a bee? Do they actually spend all their time storing nectar and pollen, making honey, royal jelly and beebread, producing wax, and caring for the queen and the drones? Nowadays, these social workers are compelled to find better homes due to multiple reasons: be it lack of natural habitat or being unwelcome in urban spaces. These bees are fast disappearing...
08:21 AM, May 14, 2012
Chandigarh: It is not just a shortage of storage space that is the problem. In Punjab, investigations by CNN-IBN reveal that space to store seven lakh tonnes of wheat grain has already been created by private godown owners and another five lakh tonnes space would be created in the next three months. However, the Punjab government is not using the new godowns and has left its grain out in the...
10:07 PM, May 09, 2012
Palwal: CNN-IBN had in June 2011 brought you the shocking story of grain rot, decay and decomposition in the Deoli village of Palwal district in Haryana. Shot during monsoons, the grain procured by HAFED and CONFED was infested with worms and exposed to rain. In May 2012, CNN-IBN revisited the same storage yard only to discover that the condition has worsened. Grain procured to be the country's buffer and feed...
09:25 PM, May 09, 2012
New Delhi: It will be an all-South Indian fare comprising of Rawa Upma with cashew nuts and fresh coriander, Medu Wadai and Podi with ghee which has been planned for on Tuesday's breakfast for US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with External Affairs Minister SM Krishna. Apart from this, there will be Kesari Bhaat, Oothappam - Masala/Plain, Masala/Plain Dosai, steamed idlis and drumstick sambhar. Coconut and tomato chutneys will also...
01:43 AM, May 08, 2012
London: In flood-hit fields in the Philippines, farmers are testing a hardy new variety of rice that can survive completely submerged for more than two weeks. In Kenya's Kibera slum, poor urban families are turning around their diets and incomes just by learning to grow vegetables in sack gardens outside their doors. And in India, a push to help marginalised rural communities gain title to their land is leading to...
02:13 AM, May 06, 2012
London: Two years ago, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) launched a petition to fight hunger with the slogan: "1,000,000,000 people live in chronic hunger and I'm mad as hell." Since then, more than 3.4 million people, including actors, pop stars and footballers, have added their voices to the online campaign calling on governments to make the elimination of hunger their top priority. But outrage over the "horrifying figure"...
10:57 PM, May 05, 2012
Chandigarh: In a shocker from Punjab and Haryana, official indifference has led to more grain troubles. Despite a bumper harvests in both states, tonnes of wheat are rotting in the open. In Chandigarh, the local traders were left with nothing after majority of the wheat was procured by six government procuring agencies. The Food Corporation has already warned the Centre to take corrective measures to check the rotting. Meanwhile, adding...
10:24 AM, May 04, 2012
Mailan: World food prices are expected to ease in April after three months of rises due to falls in some grain prices, but inflation worries are still simmering as soybean and rice prices climb - fanning fears of hunger and social unrest in poor countries. Record high food prices in February 2011 contributed to protests connected to the Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa last year....
05:02 AM, May 03, 2012
Chandigarh: While farmers in Bundelkhand are worried about poor produce, Punjab is experiencing a problem of plenty. The state has recorded a bumper harvest and has once again run out of space to store the grain. Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal has blamed the Centre for the grain storage problem. He says the state godowns are stocked to full capacity. "Grain storage is a huge problem. It is a...
11:20 AM, May 02, 2012
New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is likely to address the issue of crisis in managing the foodgrain stock in a meeting with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, Food Minister KV Thomas, Commerce Minister Anand Sharma and Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Wednesday at 6.30 pm. While the original agenda of the meeting was to resolve what Sharad Pawar termed as UPA's ambivalent'...
07:06 PM, May 01, 2012
New Delhi: The retail inflation for industrial workers stood at 8.65 per cent in March, higher than 7.57 per cent in February due to a spurt in food prices. "The point to point of inflation based on CPI-IW also increased from 7.57 per cent in February to 8.65 per cent in March," a Labour Ministry statement said. The retail inflation measured in terms of All India Consumer Price Index (CPI-IW)...
04:59 AM, May 01, 2012
New Delhi: The packaged food industry in India is likely to double by 2015 to touch $30 billion from the current $15 billion owing to the rise in income, changing urban lifestyle and modern retail trade, says a study. The main categories of packaged food are bakery products, canned processed food, frozen processed food, meal replacement products and condiments. Some emerging new categories in this segment are processed dairy products,...
01:53 PM, Apr 29, 2012
Melbourne: An Australian court on Friday ordered the fast food giant KFC to pay 8 million Australian dollars to the parents of a Sydney girl who was left paralysed and brain damaged after eating its chicken twister. Monika Samaan fell seriously ill with salmonella poisoning after eating at the Villawood KFC in 2005, according to media reports. The then-seven-year-old was in a coma for six months and acquired spastic quadraplegia...
12:11 PM, Apr 27, 2012
New Delhi: India is facing a problem of plenty. The Food Corporation of India (FCI) is anticipating an unprecedented storage problem in light of a record production of 252 lakh of foodgrain. Does this mean that precious grain that could feed millions will rot again this year? Notably, a lot of foodgrain got rotten in 2011 and the story is set to be repeated this year as well. However, Union...
08:26 AM, Apr 24, 2012
