-The Times of India First the good news: Indians are living much longer than they did 40 years ago. The life expectancy (LE) at birth of an average Indian male has gone up by 15 years between 1970 and 2010, while that of an Indian woman by 18 years. An average Indian man can expect to live for as long as 63 years, while an Indian woman can live 4.5 years longer than...

-Outlook "It is a sorry state of affairs," the Supreme Court remarked today over failure of the project to clean Yamuna despite over Rs.12,000 crore being spent on it and suggested that the routing drainages of NCR region to a place outside Delhi be explored to stop release of waste in the river. Observing that Yamuna in Delhi carries not water but drains, a bench of justices Swatanter Kumar and Madan B...

-The Times of India Within hours of raising cooking gas prices, the government late on Thursday asked oil marketing companies to put on hold the Rs 26.50 hike, calling into question the seriousness of the deregulation plan and casting a doubt over the UPA's commitment to fiscal reforms. The U-turn came after a volley of protests by the opposition and days before Himachal Pradesh goes to polls, with Gujarat elections to follow....

-The Times of India LUCKNOW: In a development that further establishes the poor state of the Ganga, an inter-ministerial group (IMG) at the Centre is all set to classify the holy river in the 'C' (poor) category. The categorization is likely to be done in view of a report submitted by IIT-Roorkee which found that in the coming days 84% of the water flow in the river will either be diverted...

-Mainstream Weekly Intense and motivated propaganda, powerful national and international diplomatic pressure, verging on pure and simple arms-twisting of the kind the Third World has been facing for decades by means of the active role of the econo-mic hit-men in the policy establishments, huge cash-back lobbying, both in India and abroad, blunt attempts to bamboozle the persons holding key positions in India’s policy establishment through a combination of hissing and kissing...