Union agriculture, food and consumer affairs minister Sharad Pawar said on Thursday that the stock position of food grains in the country is comfortable and there is no chance for "food riots" in the country. He appealed to political parties not to spread false message of food scarcity on this count. Intervening in a short duration discussion on price rise in Rajya Sabha, Mr Pawar said the states like Rajasthan, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar have contributed very less to the Central kitty of food grains and this is one of the reasons for rise in food prices.

The collapse of Australia's rice production is one of several factors contributing to a doubling of rice prices in the last three months - increases that have led the world's largest exporters to restrict exports severely, spurred panicked hoarding in Hong Kong and the Philippines, and set off protests in countries including Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Italy, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, the Philippines, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Yemen, the New York Times reported yesterday.

There was a general expectation that the inflation rate for the week ending April 5 would be a little lower than the previous week's shocker of 7.41 per cent. The wholesale price index (WPI) numbers released yesterday met these expectations, coming in at 7.14 per cent higher than a year ago. That is still well above the danger mark, but provides reassuring signs of a reversal. These are the first numbers reflecting the possible impact of the measures that the government took in the first week of April and therefore provide an early test of their effectiveness.

Postponement of meeting of cabinet committee on prices on account of ministerial row is a pointer towards the laid-back approach of the government towards a critical problem which is potentially calamitous. As the food prices explode across the country setting off a chain of violent mass protests, the ruling clique seems to have started feeling the heat in the election year for the reason too obvious. Surging prices have threatened its political stability and have also the potential to faint its prospects to return to power.

The Chandigarh unit of the Communist Party of India (CPI) held a mass procession to protest against the rising prices of essential commodities. CPI members and union workers participated in the procession that started from the Nehru Park in Sector 22. The procession culminated at the office of the deputy commissioner in Sector 17 with a rally. "The steep hike in the prices of essential commodities like flour, pulses, rice, milk and kerosene has put them beyond the reach of the common man,' Bant Singh Brar, member of the national council of CPI said.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva defended Brazil's production of biofuels on Wednesday, rejecting criticism that they are furthering a surge in global food prices and harming the environment. "Don't tell me, for the love of God, that food is expensive because of biodiesel. Food is expensive because the world wasn't prepared to see millions of Chinese, Indians, Africans, Brazilians and Latin Americans eat," Lula told reporters. "We want to discuss this not with passion but rationality and not from the European point of view".

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has blown the election war bugle on the issue of rising prices with Leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani saying that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government should control the prices or quit.

The Left told the UPA government on Wednesday that its future depended on how it tackled the alarming price rise and demands raised by it, and the Bharatiya Janata Party dared the Left parties to dislodge the government on the price rise issue.

North Korea is about three months away from a crisis in humanitarian terms, as a poor harvest and declining aid from neighbouring countries threaten to create dramatic food shortages, the World Food Programme warned yesterday. Tony Banbury, the WFP's regional director for Asia, told the Financial Times that, while such a crisis could be averted over the coming months, "there are no real actions being taken and no obvious solutions in the immediate horizon".