A senior forest official from the Centre is visiting Jharkhand tomorrow to review a state proposal to declare Dalma forests and its adjoining areas in the Singhbum region an eco-sensitive zone, a move that has been opposed by Tata Steel. In March, the state forest department had drafted an exhaustive plan to create a protective zone around 10km perimeter of the Dalma forests to protect the area that is a natural...

-The Times of India   The Madras high court has directed the Tamil Nadu school education department to finalise and publish the rules for the Right to Education Act within six weeks. The first bench comprising Chief Justice M Y Eqbal and Justice T S Sivagnanam delivering its order on a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by advocate S Sathia Chandran, who said that though the act has laudable provisions, it could...

There are signs of resistance from private schools to the clause in the RTE Act stipulating implementation of 25 per cent reservation. EVER since the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE Act), 2009, came into effect a little over a year ago, there has been a perceptible sense of insecurity among sections of managements of private, unaided schools, parents of children going to these institutions and, in...

More than one billion people will not get the basic sanitation and the clean water promised as such projects shrink sharply as a proportion of global aid budgets. A key development goal to halve the number of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015 will be missed because donor countries have diverted aid money away from unglamorous water projects, according to the World Bank and the charity WaterAid. Aid to...

-The Hindustan Times   The Orissa government on Monday again deployed police force near the Gobindpur-Nuagaon village border, the site of a strident anti-Posco agitation, but withdrew it following widespread protests. Declaring the “use of children” in the protests “illegal”, the government moved in to pave the way for resuming land acquisition for the Korean steel major's $12 billion (R54,000 crore) project. However, the protesters stood firm. Since June 8, villagers have been...