-The Indian Express After tasting success with its free bicycle scheme for school-going girls, the Bihar government is planning a freebie in tune with the times - a tablet PC - ahead of the 2014 elections. While other state governments have so far targeted the student community with free laptops and tablets, the Nitish Kumar government is working on an ambitious Rs 8,000 crore scheme to provide tablets to digitally illiterate...

-Down to Earth Report of health experts deputed by civil society group says infants did not receive timely medical care when they developed serious reaction A team of public health experts who probed the deaths of eight children in Jammu and Kashmir who were administered pentavalent vaccine has said the deaths were related to administrative negligence and inadequate medical facilities. Seven children in GB Pant hospital and one in SKIMS Medical College...

-The Times of India PUNE: After a failed effort to register attendance of school students online, the state education department will now attempt to conduct it via SMS. Only 10% of the one lakh schools in the state responded to the online attendance system which prompted the education department to initiate the attendance through cellphones used widely by school officials and teachers. The department conducted a survey to find out how many schools...

-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...

-The Indian Express Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has more than one reason to cheer the Raghuram Rajan committee report's ranking of states on composite development. Apart from being put close to the bottom of the ladder in the new index of underdevelopment, Bihar also scores near the top in "performance", that is, the reduction of underdevelopment - a most sensible parameter introduced in the report - far ahead of Narendra...