-The Hindu   Respondents given four weeks to respond to mother's plea Guwahati: The Gauhati High Court on Tuesday issued notices to the Assam government, the Board of Secondary Education, Assam (SEBA), and the managing committee and Principal of Kristo Jyoti School in Bokakhat, upper Assam, asking them to show cause in four weeks as to why a petition, which challenged an order of the school authorities - debarring a four-year-old nursery student,...

-PTI NEW DELHI: The government on Friday said 228 farmers committed suicide in Vidarbha region of Maharashtra because of Agrarian distress during the April-January period of 2012-13 fiscal. "The number of farmers in the six identified suicide prone districts of Vidarbha region who committed suicide due to Agrarian distress is 228 during the last 10 months till January 31, 2013," Minister of State for Agriculture Tariq Anwar said in a written reply...

-The United Nations The Asia-Pacific region, which has overtaken the rest of the world in consumption of raw materials as affluence and manufacturing increase, must boost its resource efficiency or risk losing ground in lifestyle, economic growth and environmental sustainability, according to a UN report released today. From 1970-2008, consumption of construction minerals increased 13.4 times, metal ores and industrial minerals consumption 8.6, fossil fuels 5.4, and biomass 2.7 times, according to...

-The Times of India Rains could bring some relief to the UPA in the pre-election year with the meteorological department on Friday projecting a countrywide normal monsoon for 2013. The forecast should allay government's fears of food inflation jumping again over the 10% mark after being only partially tamed in the last quarter of the financial year. The weather office said that rainfall would be within the normal range - 98% of...

-PTI Finance Ministry should appoint a nodal officer to distribute RTI applications to the concerned central public information officer for processing, the Delhi High Court has directed while upholding the order of Central Information Commission in this regard. The Finance Ministry has five departments-- Economic Affairs, Revenue, Expenditure, Financial Services and Disinvestment. Each one of them have different sets of Central Public Information Officers for processing RTI applications but there is none to...