-The Economic Times My target for fulfilling Rajiv's vision has always been 2018. We can get there in less than 5 years if govt acts on our recommendations, says diplomat-turned-politician Mani Shankar Aiyar. You have been passionately talking about Panchayati Raj. But your party doesn't seem to share the same passion lately... Mani Shankar Aiyar: I don't agree with you here. The commitment of the party to Panchayati Raj and devolution of...

-The Hindu The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the amendments to the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill, 2012, PILoted by the Union Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry. The Bill is intended to eradicate manual scavenging. The amendments incorporate provisions like identifying manual scavengers through a nation-wide survey and the mandatory inclusion of women in vigilance committees at all levels. The Bill was introduced on September 3, 2012,...

-The Telegraph Guwahati: The CBI is sending a team to Guwahati on Tuesday to "screen" the cases registered against fraud deposit collecting companies in the state. Press adviser to the Assam chief minister, Bharat Chandra Narah, told The Telegraph, "A CBI team will reach here on Tuesday to examine the cases and after that, we will start the formalities of handing over the cases to them." "This shows the seriousness with which the...

-The Hindu "Freedom without limits is just a word" -Terry Pratchett Kamlesh Vaswani's PIL seeking to ban the viewing of pornography and make it a non-bailable offence has raised eyebrows. Columnists and social media commentators have greeted the idea with shock, raising issues such as social liberty, sexual freedom, and the fact that the mere banning of pornography might not bring down the incidence of rape. On the surface of it, this sounds...

-The Times of India Overuse of antibiotics has led to a situation in which even simple infections acquired outside the hospital are turning drug-resistant. This has been revealed in a recent study conducted by a city private hospital on ICU patients. It showed that nearly one-fourth of all admissions due to infection of the urinary tract, pneumonia or blood stream infection were community-acquired which means that these people contracted the drug-resistant...