-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Amid reports of US cyber intelligence units snooping on secret data worldwide, a PIL filed in the Supreme Court on Tuesday sought a direction to the Union government to take urgent steps to protect its official data stored on the internet and privacy of millions of Indians holding accounts on social networking sites. Petitioner Prof S N Singh said many government offices and officials use free...

-The Hindu Kochi: The Kerala Agricultural University has found "dangerous levels" of pesticide residue in key vegetables like cabbage, cauliflower, vegetable cowpea (achinga), amaranthus red, small red onions, tomatoes, green chillies and curry leaves, among others. The residue includes that of the banned Profenofos, which falls into the yellow category (second level of pesticides in the toxicity classification) and which has translaminar action (the toxin entering the plant system primarily by roots,...

-The Hindustan Times The audacious ambush and bloody massacre of more than two dozen political leaders and their security guards in Darbha valley of Sukma district in south Chhattisgarh, raises again profoundly important questions about the legitimacy of violence as an instrument to battle injustice and oppression. Resistance to injustice is widely endorsed as the highest human duty in most cultures, but the debate is about the legitimacy of deploying violence in...

-IANS Kolkata: As the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released figures showing West Bengal recorded the highest number of crimes against women for the second year on the trot, the state government contested the data, claiming its disclaimers were not published. The fresh NCRB statistics said West Bengal recorded 30,942 cases of crime against women in 2012 - of which 2,046 were rape cases, 4,168 kidnapping, 593 related to dowry deaths, and...

-The Economic Times MUMBAI: The United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA), widely considered the world's most stringent regulatory authority, has said India's share in generic exports to the US over the years is an indication of the good manufacturing norms practised by Indian drugmakers. As the Ranbaxy scandal threatens to tarnish India's image as a hub of manufacturing world-class generic drugs, the statement, by USFDA's spokesman Chris Kelly in an...