-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A 100-metre area on either side of Ganga between Haridwar and Unnao (Uttar Pradesh) will be a "no-construction, no-development zone", the National Green Tribunal ruled on Thursday while ordering a green compensation of Rs 50,000 on anyone dumping waste in the river. In a 543-page judgment on advocate MC Mehta's petition on Ganga pollution, the NGT also directed that no dumping or landfill could come up...

-The Hindu Business Line Notification issuedin May had put curbs on sale of cattlefor slaughter New Delhi: The Supreme Court’s ruling on Tuesday, staying the Centre’s notification banning sale and purchase of cows and other livestock at animal markets for slaughter, was widely welcomed by farmers, with some seeing it as a ‘victory’. Terming the notification as a “cruel law”, the left-oriented All India Kisan Sabha said the impugned rules effectively choked the...

-The Times of India CHENNAI: Many customers only realise at the time of making a claim that their health insurance policy does not cover certain medical conditions or ailment. Policy holders usually depend on what has been told to them by their insurance agents, who sometimes overstate the coverage. To prevent such cases, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) has asked insurers to group together all policy exclusions...

-The Economic Times Farmers are agitated. Loan waivers have not stemmed protests or farmer suicides. This is a multidimensional problem and also a huge political opportunity for parties that can think constructively. Waiving loans is bad policy. It adds to the fiscal stress of states, straining under the electricity utility debt they have taken over. The states would undo the Centre’s hard-wrought fiscal discipline, scaring rating agencies. Waived loans bring little benefit to...

-Deccan Chronicle The slogan was that there would never again be scarcity of food because we can now make “bread from air”. There are two distinct futures of food and farming. One leads to a dead end. A dead planet: poisons and chemical monocultures spreading; farmers committing suicide due to debt for seeds and chemicals; children dying due to lack of food; people dying because of chronic diseases spreading due to nutritionally empty, toxic...