-The Hindu The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) will examine whether developmental interventions and constitutional safeguards - including Fifth Schedule provisions - have come to the aid of tribal people in Left Wing Extremism (LWE)-affected districts in central India. An NAC Working Group (WG) headed by tribal expert Professor Virginius Xaxa - who also heads the Prime Minister's high level committee that is to produce a report on the...

-The Telegraph Three of the nine experts assigned the job of saving the Ganga resigned from a high-powered central body today, voicing their frustration at being kept out of the loop and the "furious pace" of clearing projects they had repeatedly opposed. In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who chairs the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA), the three said the government had not convened a single meeting of the...

-The Hindu It is the only sector that can create jobs and prevent the economic crisis from deepening In the last two decades, the Indian economy has witnessed a transformational change to emerge as one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Economic reforms unveiled in 1991 have brought about a structural shift enabling the private sector to assume a much larger role in the economy. GDP growth has largely been...

-AP STOCKHOLM: Scientists working on a landmark UN report on climate change are struggling to explain why global warming appears to have slowed down in the past 15 years even though greenhouse gas emissions keep rising. Leaked documents obtained by Associated Press show there are deep concerns among governments over how to address the issue ahead of next week's meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Climate skeptics have used the lull...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: India had 74,000 excess deaths among girls aged below five last year, a new study has estimated providing what public health researchers say is fresh evidence for widespread neglect of girls over boys during their vulnerable childhood years. The study by a team of researchers in India and Canada has also found that 222 of 597 districts are on track to achieve India's target of reducing under-five child...