-The Economic Times It's not just India that is baking. Globally, this seems to be one of the worst summers in recorded history. The global average temperature for May was the second hottest ever since 1880 - the year records were first compiled -- US National Climatic Data Centre (NCDC) has said. Only 2010 witnessed a worse May.  The NCDC said such a hot May was never recorded in the northern hemisphere.  No...

-The Hindu In ordering the deletion of certain cartoons and words from a number of social and political science school textbooks, the committee constituted by the National Council for Educational Research and Training appears to have followed the line of least resistance. First the two cartoons that have generated political controversies were promptly sent to the trash tray; and then, many, many more. With a mandate to review the textbooks and...

-Down to Earth As corruption hijacks procurement centres in Bundelkhand, farmers prefer suicide to a debt trap. Richard Mahapatra reports from Uttar Pradesh with photographer Sayantoni Palchoudhuri A fatal paradox strikes Bundelkhand in the face—an overflowing wheat stock yet an overwhelming number of farmer suicides. Farmers here dread the government wheat procurement centre and the post-mortem house. In Orai, a small town in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, the two are...

-Live Mint Shailesh Gandhi, a key campaigner for the Right to Information (RTI) Act, became an information commissioner at the Central Information Commission (CIC) in 2008. After a stint of nearly four years, Gandhi will retire on 6 July. In an interview, Gandhi talked about the implementation of the Act and on the government’s attitude to the transparency law. He said RTI had become a “problem child” for the government and it...

-PTI The Haryana Government has formulated a rural water policy for the state for the year 2012 in order to save precious drinking water by preventing wastage due to unmetered connections and open taps. A spokesman of the Public Health Engineering Department said that this policy has been formulated keeping in view the present scenario of wastage of water through unmetered connections provided to consumers in rural areas, which are being billed...