-PTI Consumption of honey, cheese rises: study Patna: Prohibition is making people of Bihar spend on good clothes and food with sale of expensive sarees rising by 1,751%, while consumption of honey by 380% and that of cheese by 200% in the first six months of the ban, according to latest studies on the measure. The studies, conducted by think tank Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI) and government-funded Development Management Institute (DMI), also...

-The Hindu ‘Crop damage from pests contained’ Coimbatore: The Cotton Advisory Board (CAB) estimates cotton production for this season (October 2017 to September 2018) to be 370 lakh bales. The board had estimated cotton production to be 345 lakh bales and exports at 59 lakh bales for the season when it had met in December. Bollworm attack Production estimates were lower in the beginning of the season as the board expected damage to the crop...

-The Hindu Business Line Most suicides among landless and marginal farmers Hyderabad: Tenant farmers and cotton growers in Telangana are under severe distress according to a survey of farm families whose bread winner committed suicide. About 75 per cent of the suicide were by tenant farmers and 81 per cent of them were cotton growers. The survey by the Rythu Swarajya Vedika and a group of students from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS)...

-The Hindu Business Line Srikrishna panel seeks to meet Minister New Delhi: The much-awaited data protection policy may soon come out as the recommendations on the draft Data Protection Bill are ready, and can be submitted to the Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, any day within this week. An expert Committee chaired by retired Supreme Court judge BN Srikrishna has prepared the recommendations. The Committee was set up in December to study...

-The Hindu Activist sought copy of proposed amendments An activist has accused the government of “illegally” withholding information about amendments proposed to the Right to Information Act, 2005, after her plea seeking details about the procedure followed was turned down. RTI activist Anjali Bharadwaj wrote to the DepARTment of Personnel and Training (DoPT) last month demanding to know when were the amendments to the Act proposed and forwarded to the Union Cabinet. She...