-The Times of India Milk prices are set to soar yet again. Rising inflation and increase in excise duty on packaging material for milk pouches are likely to make milk dearer by Rs 2 per litre, said R S Sodhi, managing director of Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), which markets Amul milk across the country. While he did not say when the price hike will come into effect, sources said...

-The Hindu Moving towards major reforms, the Centre is in the process of rolling out a universal health coverage package in at least one district in each State on an experimental basis. This would include a clearly defined basket of services to those who come to any public health facility for treatment or free supply of generic drugs, doing away with user charges and upgrading public health infrastructure right from the primary...

-The Times of India Nagaland Police allegedly used fictitious bills to withdraw Rs 4 crore for the Procurement of 1,750 fire extinguishers, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India said in its annual report tabled in the recently-concluded Nagaland budget session. The report said that the government had sanctioned the funds under major heads-arms and ammunitions-on the basis of the proposal submitted by the office of DGP, Kohima. The office of...

-The Telegraph   Farmers in Bengal left around 2.8 lakh hectares uncultivated in the just-concluded boro crop season, a silent expression of no-confidence in the state government’s paddy Procurement process and a fallout of rising fertiliser prices. The area cultivated in the boro season (January to end-February) can be considered a barometer for man-made farming systems because farmers largely depend on irrigation during this phase. The bigger aman crop (June to August) still...

In the first example of his intention to take “difficult decisions” to contain the ballooning subsidy burden to control the fiscal deficit, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday denied permission to food minister KV Thomas for about 26.5 million tonnes of additional food grain allocation to states at subsidised rates over the normal allocation that would have cost the exchequer Rs 32,794 crore of food subsidy.   “It will have to be...