-DNA An allocation of Rs 17,700 crore in the 2013-2014 Union Budget but not a single accountable rupee spent for pre-school education or a plate of food for the homeless children in Mumbai. Yoshita Sengupta investigates the absence of homeless children from ICDS registers Mumbai: In 2010, Ms. Rekha, a homeless woman living on the footpath in Mumbai in her last month of pregnancy, slipped while trying to cross a wall. She...

-The Hindu Adilabad (Andhra Pradesh): Neither cinema nor television is a match for good old folk traditions when it comes to providing succour to distressed souls in rural confines. If it is the vigorous Kolatam in the plains, it is the rhythmic Dandari and the Ghussadi folk dances in tribal areas of Adilabad which are acting as escape valves for the emotionally charged farmers in the backdrop of the debilitating onslaught...

-The Hindu     In Uttarakhand, women take the lead role in reviving and maintaining civil forests under Van Panchayats even in the face of several obstacles Munni Adhikari, a resident of Dhaura Gram Sabha in Lamgara block of Uttarakhand's Almora district, lives in an idyllic setting: green slopes covered with tall pine and oak trees, wild flowers in full bloom, neat little terrace farms... While this natural splendour can instantly captivate any...

-The United Nations Treatment has saved the lives of more than 22 million people with tuberculosis (TB), according to a new report by the United Nations health agency that also reveals that the number of deaths from the disease fell to 1.3 million last year. The Global Tuberculosis Report 2013, published today by the World Health Organization (WHO), confirms that the world is on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)...

-The United Nations Efficient, well-managed and sustainable food systems are essential to end hunger and malnutrition as well as protect the environment, United Nations officials stressed today, marking World Food Day. "The key to better nutrition, and ultimately to ensuring each person's right to food, lies in better food systems - smarter approaches, policies and investments encompassing the environment, people, institutions and processes by which agricultural products are produced, processed and brought...