-The Times of India PATNA: Eleven children have died and several others have been taken ill after eating infected midday meal at a government school in Saran district. The incident took place in Dharamsati primary school in Masrakh in Saran. According to reports, over 50 children, all in the age group of 8 to 12 years, were taken ill after consuming khichdi, offered to them in midday meal. The children fell ill soon after...

-The Times of India LUCKNOW: Nearly four months after the SAMajwadi Party government started distributing free laptops to students in line with Akhilesh Yadav's poll promise, over 4.4 lakh devices worth over Rs 830 crore still lie in government godowns exposed to dirt and rain water as the chief minister struggles to get time to distribute them himself. The chief minister has so far been able to distribute only 79000 laptops...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Women's employment has taken an alarming dip in rural areas in the past two years, a government survey has revealed. In jobs that are done for 'the major part of the year', a staggering 9.1 million jobs were lost by rural women. In urban areas, the situation was quite the reverse, with over 3.5 million women added to the workforce. This emerges from comparing employment data...

-The Hindu The current market prices are essentially over and above the actual cost of production - a difference that could run from 100 per cent to 5,600 per cent, depending upon various therapeutic categories In a liberalised market economy, do we need price controls on drugs? Policymakers and the pharmaceutical industry do not think so. They believe that price controls are an inefficient tool that distorts resource allocation, squeezes revenue, reduces...

-The Business Standard   The food security ordinance would empower poor urban migrants to challenge denial of ration cards The new Food Security Ordinance provides virtually nothing and yet quite a lot. What it provides is food as a legal right. And that means a lot for a poor migrant in a city chawl, with no local address proof, having left all identity cards back in their native village and unable to claim anything...