-The Times of India India will fail to achieve some of the most important Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets like reduction in maternal and child deaths, and increase in child immunization rates by 2015. The World Health Organization (WHO) has for the first time aired its views that India will miss its targets, some by a big margin. Dr Nata Menabde, country representative of the WHO, told TOI, "The MDG targets will expire...

-IANS The spectre of drought is looming large over Bihar, something that state officials have acknowledged. "If the monsoon fails the state in the first two weeks of July, the situation may be near drought," an official here said. Monsoon normally hits the state between June 12 and June 14. But this year, it was delayed by over a week. Soon after the rains began, they have been scanty. The state has received...

-The Telegraph Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh will try to persuade the Centre not to allow any more private mining companies to operate in the mineral-rich Saranda forests, a former Maoist stronghold that is now the focus of a massive rejuvenation plan. If the minister, who toured the West Singhbhum forests yesterday, has his way, at least 20 companies, including steel behemoths like ArcelorMittal, Tata Steel, Jindal Steel & Power Limited...

Security forces will need to retool their strategy to ensure that innocent lives are not lost in anti-Maoist ops, reports Vicky Nanjappa  The killing of 19 persons alleged to be Maoists in Sarkeguda in Chhattisgarh on June 29 in a major operation by the Central Reserve Police Force has sparked off a major controversy, with villagers crying foul and calling the entire operation a fake one in which innocents were killed. According...

Ramesh Singh, an Intelligence Bureau officer and resident of Sonepur under Chhapra, has an MNREGA job card bearing registration number 914. Singh had never applied for it, nor did he know about its issuance Uday Kumar Dwivedi, employed in the Indian Navy, is a resident of Jaitiya village under Jahangirpur panchayat of Sonepur, Chhapra. He was also issued a job card (311). He, too, does not know about it and had...