-NDTV Mumbai: Congress President Sonia Gandhi today sharply attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government in Parliament and outside. In a statement in the Lok Sabha, Mrs Gandhi criticized what she called the "deplorable lapse" in not filling key posts, including that of the Chief Information Commissioner, which has been vacant for eight months. Stating that over 39,000 appeals under the RTI or Right to Information Act, remain pending, she also used...

-The Hindu Gajendra Singh Rajput from Dausa. Hargovind Harane from Vidarbha . Gosai Patra from Bardhaman. Why did these farmers take their own lives? In the light of the burning issue of farmer suicides across the country, A.R. Vasavi looks at the plight of the marginalised cultivator. Basamma and her ailing husband have carried and spread their five sacks of ragi (finger millet) from their half-acre plot to the local tar road...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Scientists are now scrambling to retrieve whatever data they can from a network of 293 ground motion sensors in cities and towns across northern and eastern India that was offline and cut off from the research community during the Nepal earthquakes. The National Centre for Seismology (NCS) under the earth sciences ministry will send a team to retrieve any records of ground acceleration from instruments in Uttarakhand, while...

-The Hindu Weeds are the biggest problem in crop production. Nearly 30 to 50 per cent of yield loss is due to weeds. These unwanted plants remove nearly 25 to 60 per cent of nutrients from the soil making them unavailable for plants and also act as host for several pests and infestations. Weed management is a big problem mainly because of labour shortage. Agricultural activity in India is largely labour based...

-IPS News NAYAGARH (IPS): Kama Pradhan, a 35-year-old tribal woman, her eyes intent on the glowing screen of a hand-held GPS device, moves quickly between the trees. Ahead of her, a group of men hastens to clear away the brambles from stone pillars that stand at scattered intervals throughout this dense forest in the Nayagarh district of India’s eastern Odisha state. The heavy stone markers, laid down by the British 150 years...