Nearly 11 children go missing in India every hour and at least four of them are never found, according to a study by a child rights organisation. The report by Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) covers 392 of India's 640 districts and is the first such comprehensive study on the subject. The data was compiled over two years from January 2008 to January 2010. The report says most of the missing children end up...

-The Economic Times   US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday said at the Ministerial Conference on Internet Freedom at The Hague in Netherlands that a regulation on internet in some countries has made an environment where ideas are being blocked and conversations are being stifled.  Clinton cited the examples of Syria, Iran and recently Russia where bloggers and internet activists are being targeted. Without naming India, she said that some governments...

-The Times of India   Some Union ministers have expressed concern that the Right to Information (RTI) Act is affecting government's functioning, according to the government.  Minister of personnel, public grievances and pensions V Narayanasamy replied in the affirmative on a query in the Rajya Sabha regarding concerns raised by ministers on theRTI Act affecting the government's functioning.  When asked about bureaucrats expressing apprehension about putting their views on controversial issues because of the...

Bombay HC had said he enjoyed no such immunity   The Supreme Court on Thursday stayed the orders of the Goa Bench of Bombay High Court which held that the Governor of Goa was a public authority and would come within the ambit of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The High Court had held that the Governor enjoyed no immunity from the RTI Act and that the Public Information Officer at the...

-The Hindu   Kapil Sibal, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, has set off a firestorm of protest by demanding that ‘internet intermediaries' — specifically in this round, four social networking giants, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Microsoft, which enable hundreds of millions of individual users to publish and share on the worldwide web — remove inflammatory content as well as other text and images that might “offend Indian sensibilities.” As in...