-The Economic Times   The government on Tuesday said it would confer constitutional status on the proposed Lokpal , embracing the idea mooted by Rahul Gandhi.  "We are working on a very strong Lokpal bill. A Lokpal Bill that will come with a constitutional amendment . That amendment will give the Lokpal the status of a constitutional authority," law minister Salman Khurshid told PTI on Tuesday.  Khurshid, who gave Rahul the credit for the...

-AP   An estimated 100,000 people in India may have escaped HIV infection over five years thanks to one of the world’s biggest prevention programmes, an encouraging sign that targeting high-risk groups remains vital even as more donors focus on treatment, a new study suggests. While the initial findings regarding the $258 million Avahan project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, come with large uncertainty due to data limitations and methodology,...

-NDTV Profit   Some of India’s biggest and most-respected entrepreneurs have released an open letter to the government. The group which includes Wipro’s Azim Premji, Anu Aga of Thermax and HDFC's Deepak Parekh, refers to the anti-corruption Lokpal Bill that is meant to be introduced soon in Parliament. The industrialists write, “The Lokpal Bill is only one small but critical step in the national task of weeding out the plague of corruption...

Makes case for Attorney General’s argument before SC. With the battle over identifying India’s poor moving to the Supreme Court, the Planning Commission has told Attorney General G Vahanvati that the controversial poverty line will not determine the Centre’s liability on subsidised food, but instead will be based on the eligibility limit in the proposed Food Security Act. “The Central government’s liability will be capped, but the cap will not be the...

-The Hindu Business Line   Labour shortage, wage bill, loss of orders hit industry, says survey Labour shortage, wage increases and loss of confirmed orders are hitting industry hard, says a survey by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce of India (FICCI). If this were not enough, the UPA Government's flagship rural job scheme, MGNREGA, is adding to industry's labour woes by luring away casual workers, it adds. The survey, which found the impact of...