-Hindustan Times Delhi air pollution hit severe levels on Tuesday, prompting officials to shut down junior sections in schools and recommend a four-fold hike in parking fees as well as a cut in Metro fares. New Delhi gasped for oxygen on Tuesday as a toxic haze reduced visibility, affected flights and trains, and prompted chief minister Arvind Kejriwal to describe the national capital as a “gas chamber”. (Highlights) Delhi education minister Manish Sisodia...

-Firstpost.com Development economist Jean Dreze has been vociferous critic of the Narendra Modi government's demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes a year back. He had famously warned that "demonetisation in a booming economy is like shooting at the tyres of a racing car". A year on, it seems his caution has come true. In the first quarter of the current financial year, the GDP growth slowed to a three-year...

-PTI Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court directed the West Bengal government on Friday to file an action taken report on the dengue menace that has affected a large number of people in the state. A division bench comprising acting Chief Justice Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya and Justice Arijit Banerjee directed the state government to submit the report by coming Friday when a set of PILs seeking steps to control the vector-borne disease and compensation...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The law commission has recommended to the Centre compensation to victims of custodial torture and deterrent punishment that may include life imprisonment of the perpetrators. The recommendations assume significance against the backdrop of frequent allegations that police resort to third-degree torture to extract confessions and statements from the accused. The commission's report, authored by its chairperson Justice (retd) B.S. Chauhan, was submitted to Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad...

-The Telegraph Lucknow: For 18 months since April last year, Phulwasi Devi and 34 other elderly residents of Pipariya village couldn't figure out why they hadn't been receiving their subsidised food grain or old-age pension. It took them an 18km bus ride last Monday to find out, from the district social welfare department office, that they had all been marked "dead" in official records.. The 35 victims, who include 20 women and 30...