-The Indian Express Only the names of the patients have changed. Acute encephalitis syndrome is back in Bihar, hitting the same districts as every year, its victims once again mostly children of Mahadalit communities living in various degrees of poverty, their resistance levels lowered by malnutrition and exposure to heat. And the government response has been repetitive to the point of being ritualistic. It has asked for Central assistance and set up...

-AP Less than four months ago the world was cheered to learn that India had gone a full year with no new cases of polio, a landmark that left only Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria on the World Health Organization's list of countries where the disease is endemic.  But the battle is far from over, judging by the WHO's latest expressions of alarm. It says that in both Nigeria and Afghanistan the number...

-AFP JOHANNESBURG: Foreign farms are spreading across Africa to grow food and biofuels for global markets, bringing much-needed investments but also new troubles for a continent struggling to feed itself.  China, Malaysia, Singapore and Bangladesh are just some of the countries spending billions of dollars in what critics have dubbed a new "scramble for Africa", a reference to Europe's 19th century colonisation drive.  But Africa holds an estimated 60 percent of the world's...

-The Times of India NAGPUR: In an urgent meeting convened on Saturday, city CBSE schools decided to send admission related details to the state education department by June 18 and reopen admissions for Std I two days after that. TOI had reported on Friday that almost all CBSE schools will start distributing admission forms from June 20 to meet provisions as mandated under the Right To Education (RTE). City principals were briefed...

-The Telegraph Surtama, a 37-year-old woman from the mountains of Uttarkashi, was in the capital yesterday to express anger at having to live with no electricity and demand a revival of stalled hydroelectric projects in her state. “We walk more than 2km to a village in Himachal Pradesh to charge the mobile phone battery,” said Surtama from Pujeli, a village of about 80 households some of which have acquired mobile phones to...