-Live Mint   As United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi prepares to intervene next week in the great national debate about who is poor, she might want to visit north-eastern Mumbai to see how the poorest are not even classified as such and how a giant government scheme to save their children from malnutrition is failing. The nauseating stench from a mountain of garbage greets a visitor to Rafi Nagar at the base...

As a national debate rages over the Indian poverty line, in the heart of Bandra, one of Mumbai’s richest suburbs, in a shanty with barely enough standing space for two adults, three-year-old Priya Doiphode, clad in a red tee shirt, lies listless on a string bed. Priya is one of the 83,243 children in Mumbai who are malnourished, according to government data, a statistic that makes Mumbai the most malnourished...

The Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) invested more than Rs 3,600 crore last year in the tobacco industry, anti-tobacco activists and cancer specialists said today, describing the investments as ironical and unethical. Figures obtained through the right to information route by a consortium of activists and doctors show that in 2010-11, LIC had invested in shares of ITC and VST Industries and in debentures of Dharampal Satyapal Ltd, which makes chewable tobacco...

-IANS   Soni Sori, the tribal teacher who was held in Delhi last week on charges of being a Maoist conduit and is hospitalised here with head and back injuries, Wednesday said Chhattisgarh Police were treating her like a criminal. "They (police) are treating me like a hardcore criminal. They had put a chain on my legs... I oppose such moves by police," Sori told some mediamen at a government hospital here...

A barber and his father allegedly severed the nose of a dalit when he went to them for a shave in Kirugavalu of Malavalli taluk on Sunday. Police said Chikkamanchaiah , 51, requested Mahadev and his father Mariyayya to shave his beard. The duo not only refused to do it, but also asked him to leave the shop. A quarrel ensued, and Mariyayya grabbed Chikkamanchaiah's hands and Mahadev chopped off...