-The Hindustan Times Under the cover of endorsing a proposal for the National Food Security Bill framed by an independent group of development economists, the government is all set to empty the Bill of any substance. Provisions relating to the Public Distribution System (PDS) will be reduced to a pointless reshuffling of existing foodgrain allocations to state governments, that too in favour of the richer states. And other entitlements, relating for...

-PTI Environment Ministry has constituted a high-level Working Group headed by eminent space scientist and Planning Commission member K Kasturirangan to examine the Western Ghats ecology expert panel report "in a holistic and multidisciplinary fashion". The nine-member Group will examine the Madhav Gadgil committee report released recently "in a holistic and multidisciplinary fashion keeping in view the comments received from the concerned state governments, central ministries, stakeholders", the Ministry said. The panel will...

-PTI Employees of public sector banks have gone on two-day nationwide strike today opposing banking sector reforms and outsourcing of non-core activities, affecting operations. Several private sector banks, foreign banks and ATMs, however, continued to operate normally. The strike call was given by the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), an umbrella organisation of nine unions of employees and officers of PSU banks. They are protesting against banking sector reforms and unilateral implementation of...

-The Times of India The estimate of Rs 1.86 lakh crore mentioned in the CAG report on Coalgate as "windfall gains" to private players who bagged coal mines allocated by the government without bidding is not sacrosanct, according to senior sources in the auditing agency. "We have never claimed that our estimate is not open to debate," sources said, adding that even the expression "windfall gains" was not that of the auditor....

-The Times of India Almost one in three drugs (36%) found "not of standard quality" from across India last year were from Maharashtra (23%) and Tamil Nadu (13%) alone. Around 9.2% of the rest of the sub-standard quality drugs were from Kerala, Gujarat (8.5%), Karnataka (7.2%), Uttar Pradesh (6.9%), Jammu & Kashmir (6.08%) and Rajasthan (5.8%). Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said on Tuesday that of the 48, 082 drug samples tested...