-The Economic Times In the leaky system of welfare delivery, databases are the newest valve that governments are installing to ensure that benefits reach those-and only those -they are intended for. Since December 2012, for instance, the government of Madhya Pradesh has been appending on to the Centre's Socio Economic and Caste Census a host of household-level data: bank account numbers, NREGA card numbers, welfare entitlements, land ownership, whether their house is...

-The Hindu     Recent studies contradict the view that emissions from cell phone cause irreparable damage to health Chennai: Recent studies in institutions across the world have contradicted Reports of radiation from cell phones and their towers damaging the eggs of sparrows, and thereby contributing to their reducing numbers. In the last two years, universities in Kerala, Assam and several Indian and international conservation agencies have raised concerns about the decreasing number of sparrows...

-The Hindu Allahabad: Even as the Uttar Pradesh government blamed the circulation of a fake video on social media for aggravating communal violence in Muzaffarnagar, inflamattory and communally inciting material continued to be spread widely on social networking sites and applications. Newspapers Reports, morphed with inflammatory headlines, were widely circulated through various groups on Twitter, Facebook and other mediums of social media on Monday. Two widely circulated posts were picture clippings from...

-PTI KOLKATA: 49 children have died in the city's state-run BC Roy Children's Hospital over the last seven days. The largest referral children's hospital in the eastern region had been in the news for a large number of crib deaths in the past few years. "49 child patients have died in our hospital in the last seven days, and almost all of them were brought in a critical condition," hospital sources said. They said...

-The Hindu     Young offenders above a certain age who commit violent crimes should be prosecuted as adults On August 31, 2013, the Juvenile Justice Board (JJB) ordered that the boy who raped Nirbhaya, brutalised her with an iron rod, pulled out her intestines and then cleaned up the bus and made tea would go virtually free by sentencing him to only 28 months in a remand home as eight months of the...