-The Hindustan Times If there is one defining collage of the ongoing monsoon mayhem in Uttarakhand, it's this: multi-storied concrete houses collapsing like a pack of cards into an angry, wild river and cars and lorries being tossed around in the swirling muddy waters, as if they were plastic toys. As I watched the unfolding drama on TV, I remembered what a green campaigner told me some years ago in Uttarkashi:...

-The Business Standard Not so efficiently or transparently but there is progress and hope, besides showcasing likely problems with the Centre's own law Mahasamund (Chhattisgarh): The UPA government at the Centre has been mulling hard on ways to enact its Food Security Bill, even as the Chhattisgarh government has completed six months of enacting a like law, one providing 35 kg of rice a month at Rs 2 a kg to all...

-The Times of India LONDON: India should give political asylum to American whistleblower Edward Snowden for exposing the US cyber snooping programme that targeted India in a big way, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told TOI on Wednesday. Assange, who is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June 19 last year, said in an exclusive interview that India was among the first countries he had approached for asylum. But he...

-The Times of India     LONDON: India should give political asylum to American whistleblower Edward Snowden for exposing the US cyber snooping programme that targeted India in a big way, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told TOI on Wednesday. Assange, who is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June 19 last year, said in an exclusive interview that India was among the first countries he had approached for asylum. But he...

-The Telegraph   Faraspal, Chhattisgarh: The Salwa Judum was a failure, both to its opponents and the man who was its face. "I shall repent the Salwa Judum's failure my entire life," Mahendra Karma had told a Dantewada journalist last year, months before being assassinated by the rebels last week. The 62-year-old tribal Congress leader wasn't referring to the extortion, murder and rape charges against the anti-Maoist militia - he considered them "collateral damage"...