-DNA An allocation of Rs 17,700 crore in the 2013-2014 Union Budget but not a single accountable rupee spent for pre-school education or a plate of food for the homeless children in Mumbai. Yoshita Sengupta investigates the absence of homeless children from ICDS registers Mumbai: In 2010, Ms. Rekha, a homeless woman living on the footpath in Mumbai in her last month of pregnancy, slipped while trying to cross a wall. She...

-PTI NEW DELHI: Environment ministry has issued directions to six state governments prohibiting development activities including mining and quarrying in the 60,000 sq km ecologically sensitive area of Western Ghats. The ministry's direction came weeks after it gave approval to a controversial report on Western Ghats prepared by the K Kasturirangan-led panel which recommended prohibition on development activities in 37 per cent of natural landscape that has high biological richness. In its order...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: This party season, you could save yourself some trouble by keeping the music down. For, the cops intend to be party poopers at raucous gatherings. The force is procuring noise meters to book people found violating the permissible sound limit. If Delhi Police sources are to be believed, cops would not stop at that in their drive for a less noisy city. The hand-held meters would...

-The Hindu It is easy to enrol them in school, but difficult to retain them Bangalore: It is around noon and a noisy bunch of boys are playing lagori in a small colony nestling between tall buildings in Papareddy Palya near Nagarabhavi II Stage. Some distance away, 13-year-old Basalingamma, daughter of a migrant labourer from Raichur, is watching the boys, carrying her elder sister's six-month-old son on her hip. The colony has close...

-Outlook Itanagar: Arunachal Pradesh Food and Civil Supplies Minister Kamlung Mosang has sought the help of Centre in overcoming the challenges in implementing the National Food Security Act in the state, official sources said. In a memorandum submitted to Union Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution K V Thomas at Guwahati yesterday, the minister sought funds from the Centre for meeting the expenses of the state food commission,...