-PTI NEW DELHI: The European Commission has allocated 96,748 euros to the disaster relief emergency fund of the Red Cross International to "urgently respond" to the needs of almost 15,000 vulnerable families affected by cyclone Phailin. The European Commission's Humanitarian aid and civil protection department (ECHO) allocated the amount after the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) appealed for funds to carry out relief operations. More than 10 million...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Onion prices soared to the year's high of Rs 90 per kg in many parts of the capital on Monday, amid indications that the staple many touch Rs 100 before coming down to more normal levels around Diwali. Market watchers said the quantity of fresh arrivals were not as much as expected and this was likely to further raise prices over the next one week. Onions...

-The Hindustan Times Mumbai: Indian companies have acquired land more than nine times the size of Delhi on foreign shores, as cultivable land at home is lost to urbanisation, industry and infrastructure projects. Land Matrix, a global land monitoring initiative that tracks land dealings worldwide, placed India among the top 10 countries that have acquired large tracts of land abroad, primarily for agriculture, in Africa and Asia. The country ranks eighth,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Nearly three of every four students shortlisted for the Indian Institutes of Technology this year come from two of the country's 29 school boards, an analysis of the results has shown. The results have confirmed a long-standing suspicion: distribution of students who made it to the elite tech schools is not uniform across the two national and 27 state boards. The analysis has shown that of the nearly...

-PTI The World Bank has praised India's evacuation of nearly 10 lakh people in Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, which ensured minimal loss of human lives, before the cyclone Phailin made landfall and attributed it to its years of disaster management preparedness. "Successfully evacuating a million people is not a small task. This cannot be merely achieved by kicking the entire state machinery into top gear for three-four days following a cyclone warning,"...