-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The government is tightening the rules to stop any incidence of "paid news" in the election season. Media organizations found guilty of publishing "news'' for a consideration will risk losing their registration according to amendments to the Press and Registration of Books (PRB) act proposed by the information and broadcasting (I&B) ministry. Similar provisions are also likely to be brought in for electronic media. With assembly...

-Frontline The midday meal scheme is a grand idea in a flawed school system. "THEY played here, studied here and got buried here!" (Yahin khela, yahin padha aur yahin ho gaya dafan). With these emphatic words, grieving parents buried the bodies of two children within the compound of the Dharmasati Gandaman Primary School of Masharakh block in Saran district of Bihar. This sentiment was expressed with great dignity even in the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Buoyed by the action taken by young IAS officer Durga Sakthi Nagpal against sand mafia, the union ministry of environment and forest, which has constituted a committee to inquire into the allegations of illegal sand mining in Uttar Pradesh's Gautam Budh Nagar district, has asked for the panel report by Friday. The three-member committee will also look into "adverse environmental impact" of such activities and...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Its image pockmarked by a succession of corruption scandals involving the government, Congress has quietly launched a beauty parade of advertising agencies to pick the ones that will buff it up for the upcoming election season. Its single-point brief to the agencies: to play down corruption and hard sell its welfare credentials. Leaders in the Grand Old Party, which, according to insiders, has readied a war chest...

-Governance Now Magazine turns down red flag raised by a group of experts; says private food manufacturers part of campaign but "harmful" soft drink makers are not Days after a group of independent experts criticised the "commercial exploitation" of malnutrition and said the private sector should be kept out of any crusade against malnutrition, the Lancet, the renowned British medical journal, has advocated just the opposite, saying private players ought to...