-The Hindu The CBI, expanding its coalgate probe, has launched investigations against 300-odd companies and begun questioning officials of the Steel, Coal and Power departments, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, the Central Mine Planning and Design Institute Limited and the state-run Coal India Limited on allocation of coal blocks between 1993 and 2008. The CBI has laid hands on nearly 700 files from the Coal Ministry, running into 1,60,000 pages,...

-Kafila.org In a speech delivered at the Reuters memorial lecture in November 2012 at Oxford University discussing the Indian news industry, Prannoy Roy candidly said that ”Indian news is currently in a race to the bottom”. He further added that upon comparing the average TV viewership in India (1 hour) to that in the US (5 hours), one is led to the utterly dismal conclusion that this race is far from...

-The Business Standard Channel to represent people intersted in public issues Anti-corruption activists Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan,  are planning to launch a television channel, which they say, will be non-profit and will focus on public issues. “We are starting a channel which will focus on public issues,” Bhushan told Business Standard. He indicated that the channel would not just be confined to people from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), but would be a...

-The Hindu The architects of the unique identification scheme are yet to provide satisfactory answers to concerns about data security The Aadhaar scheme of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is to provide India’s billion-plus people with a unique identification number. Enrolment is not mandatory, though it was mentioned that it would be difficult for people to access public services if not done. The scheme requires individuals to provide their photograph,...

-The Hindu Barely days after the controversy surrounding Kamal Haasan’s movie Vishwaroopam rocked the world of cinema, a painting exhibition at the Delhi Art Gallery in Hauz Khas village here on Monday was targeted by activists of Durga Vahini, women’s wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, who disrupted the private show for sometime. Although the VHP claimed that it had stopped the show, the police said the exhibition was very much on...