-The Economic Times Beginning today, the country's highest court will hear petitions filed by telecom-industry lobbies challenging a recent Rajasthan High Court order that directed telecom companies to remove cellphone towers from schools, hospitals, jails and heritage buildings in the state amid claims that tower radiation was harmful. Officials of two leading industry associations, representing mobile operators and telecom tower companies, feel the Supreme Court's verdict in the case could set...

-IPS News Officials at the World Bank are forcefully rejecting a new internal evaluation that is highly critical of the institution’s decade-long forest policy, expressing their “strong disagreement” with some assertions in the report. The assessment, written by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), the World Bank Group’s auditor, warns that expectations for poverty reduction as envisioned in the bank’s 2002 Forest Strategy “have not yet been met”. The report is particularly critical...

-The Economic Times India looks all set to cede the moniker of the world's second fastest growing major economy for 2012, a fall from glory for a country that was spoken in the same breath as China for much of the previous decade and even nursed ambitions of upstaging its larger neighbour. The latest global economic growth forecasts from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have India growing at 4.5% in 2012 (at...

-The Times of India A fragmented polity and a vitiated public sphere characterise today's India. The question that is making the rounds is whether we have become an intolerant nation. On all the networks, one strident anchor outdoes his or her shrill peer in raising it. Obviously, there can be no simple 'yes' or 'no' to such a question; it all depends on the context in which it is posed. Yes,...

-PTI   Congress President Sonia Gandhi today strongly pitched for utilising MNREGA to increase agricultural production, saying the flagship scheme can play a big role to usher in second green revolution in India. "I am of the belief that MNREGA has tremendous potential to increase agriculture production, which we have not been able to tap fully till date. There are many possibilities not only for creating community assets in villages but also providing...