-The Hindu Business Line After decades of neglect, Delhi’s government schools are finally turning the page with much-needed improvements to facilities and teaching methods. But problems such as staff shortage and a broken primary education system refuse to go away easily Delhi’s bustling IP Extension has a familiar skyline — a linear arrangement of ageing residential complexes. A gleaming new building in their midst catches the eye. Until recently, the Rajkiya Sarvodaya...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Heat trapped by tarred roads and dense clusters of buildings may have added nearly 2 degrees to temperatures in the world's most populated cities, including Calcutta, Delhi and Mumbai, over and above the effects of global warming, researchers said today. Their study, described as the first to quantify the combined impacts of global warming and the "urban heat island effect", suggests that the overheated cities will face double...

-The Telegraph The world's 197 nations have finalised a landmark pact in Rwanda's Kigali to combat global warming by phasing out industrial gases called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) currently used in air-conditioners and refrigerators. The Kigali agreement gives India 10 years to prepare its industry to shift from HFCs to alternatives that are now expensive and could mean higher prices for consumers. "We were flexible, accommodative and ambitious," Union environment minister Anil Madhav Dave said...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Union environment ministry has reclassified industries depending on their pollution potential, ranging from 60 "red" category units prohibited from ecologically fragile and protected areas to 36 "white" industries that will not require any environmental clearance. The list released today after a year-long internal exercise is intended to appropriately reflect the pollution potential of India's diverse industrial units taking into account their emissions, effluents, hazardous wastes and consumption...

-The Hindu Less than 3 per cent of Indians pay income tax and a significant proportion under-reports taxable income. On December 28, 2015, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas announced the exclusion of high-income households from the LPG subsidy cover. As per the official press release, subsidy would not be available for domestic LPG consumers, if the consumer or his/her spouse had taxable income of more than Rs. 10 lakh for...