-The Telegraph A government-appointed panel has warned against schoolchildren being promoted till Class VIII without any sort of testing or special coaching to cover their weaknesses, a trend now found in most state-run schools. The panel headed by National Advisory Council member N.C. Saxena, which reviewed the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, has found that most government elementary schools are not following the system of Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) prescribed by the Right...

-The Hindu The Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood & Regulation of Street Vending) Bill, 2012, was presented in the Lok Sabha by Union Minister of Urban Housing & Poverty Alleviation Kumari Selja on Thursday. The Bill, which seeks to protect the rights of vendors and regulate their activity in public areas, has provisions for setting up vending zones where street vendors can sell their products without fear of being fined and...

-The Times of India State-owned oil marketing companies (OMCs) are all set to increase price of petrol by Rs 5 a litre with effect from Saturday, while the prices of diesel, cooking gas and kerosene will be increased next week once Congress president Sonia Gandhi returns after her medical checkup on September 10. A cabinet note on increasing the prices of sensitive petroleum products like diesel, cooking gas and kerosene has already...

-The Economic Times The monsoon session that ends on Friday will enter the hall of shame as the second least productive session of the 15th Parliament with legislators having worked for only a quarter of the scheduled time. Only four bills were passed in the month-long session leaving a backlog of more than 100 pending legislations, some as old as 25 years old. According to data analysed by PRS Legislative Research, Lok Sabha...

-The Economic Times India's drug price regulator has initiated a process to end the 16-year freedom enjoyed by foreign drug makers to fix the retail price of their imported medicines in the country. The National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has written to the department of pharmaceuticals to amend the Drugs (Prices Control) Order of 1995, its chairman CP Singh told ET. The amendment will allow NPPA to seek details of the methodology adopted...