-The Indian Express Odisha: A December night two desperate men, held captive by a labour contractor, were asked this, and had to make a choice. DEBABRATA MOHANTY reports on the latest victims of Orissa's vicious migration cycle It had been a fortnight that Dialu Niyal and Nilambar Dhangdamajhi had been held captive and subjected to physical and verbal abuse. Nothing though had prepared them for what happened on December 15 night deep...

-The Times of India CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu, home to several rare flora and fauna, is lagging behind many other states in implementing the National Biological Diversity Act, 2002, according to data released by the National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), an autonomous statutory body. Under the Act, the NBA coordinates the conservation activities across the country, primarily through state biodiversity boards and biodiversity management committees (BMC) constituted at grassroots level. BMCs work towards preserving biological...

-The Hindustan Times Shimla (Himachal Pradesh): At a time when Right to Information Act has become an important tool to seek information, government departments have failed to implement section 4 of act that was aimed at providing suo moto information on websites. Section 4 of the RTI Act was a commitment to ensure that information is put before the public at regular intervals through various means of communications, including internet, so that...

-PTI NEW DELHI: Uttar Pradesh recorded the maximum number of communal incidents in the first ten months of 2013 accounting for one out of three clashes in the country and also the highest number of resultant deaths - 95 out of 143, the Rajya Sabha was told today. The northeastern states of Sikkim, Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland reported no communal incidents this year. According to data provided by Union minister...

-The Indian Express Food inflation owes largely to agricultural markets being regulated by outdated laws. The RBI governor, Raghuram Rajan, has a difficult task this week. He has to decide whether to keep interest rates constant or raise them - bearing in mind the possible taper of the US Fed's bond buying programme, a decline in industrial production and a rise in inflation. The sharp increase in consumer price-based inflation, to more...