-The Times of India HYDERABAD: Contrary to popular perception, the age-old bride bazaar continues to flourish on the back of a well-oiled network of brokers in the poverty-stricken parts of the Old City, with Muslim women increasingly falling victims to the trade. Activists say that till date, thousands of young women have been married off to cash-rich foreign nationals and the lives of many more are at stake. Activists say that the...

-The Times of India Delhi is not close to any of the tiger belts of the country, yet it figures among the five hotspots in India connected to big cat poaching, says a report by a global wildlife trade monitoring network and WWF. Tiger seizures in the capital are predominantly of skins, although there has been no big catch since 2005. The other four hotspots identified in the global report are: Ramnagar...

-The Hindu New, more fair and transparent norms for iron ore mining are now being put in place in many States Hit by debilitating mining curbs (including an outright ban in some States) and a clampdown on exports through high duties, India’s iron ore industry today is a pale shadow of what it was for much of the last decade, despite some recent forward movement on restarting iron ore mining in Karnataka,...

-The Indian Express Osama Ibrahim arrived in Hyderabad a month ago with very specific requirements: he wanted to marry a girl below 20; he would pay Rs 1 lakh to her family as bride price; the marriage would last a month; and that he would leave the country after a divorce. The 44-year-old Sudanese engineer, who has a wife and two children back home, had no problem finding what he wanted. At...

-The Hindu Bench attributes low female child ratio to lack of implementation of Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act Eliminating female foetus after pre-natal diagnostic tests has pushed the female child ratio down nationwide, the Supreme Court has observed. A Bench of Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and Dipak Misra blamed the practice on lack of implementation of the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition on Sex-Selection) Act. Both judges gave different, but concurring, judgments. Justice Radhakrishnan said:...