-The Indian Express Satwarwa (Palamau): Nearly two days after 12 alleged Maoists were killed by the CRPF and Jharkhand Police in a joint operation, only seven had been identified. Of them, six had no case against them. The only one with known Maoist connections was Anurag alias RK ‘ji’ alias doctor, said to be a top zonal commander, and wanted in the 2013 Latehar case where explosives were put inside a slain...

-Business Standard Interest subvention, crop insurance on the cards The finance ministry is working on a plan to increase the number of workdays in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) from 100 a year per person per household to 150 in areas receiving low monsoon rain. The government might also provide interest subvention and crop insurance in drought-affected regions through the e-Financial Management System (eFMS). “Since the eFMS contains the data...

-PTI NEW DELHI: In another round of action against erring NGOs, the government has cancelled the licence of 4,470 such entities that surprisingly included a number of top universities, Supreme Court Bar Association and Escorts Heart Institute, which bars them from receiving foreign funds. The decision to cancel the registration of these entities under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act has been taken by the Union home ministry after examination of their activities...

-The Financial Express The Narendra Modi government has pledged to employ all machinery at its disposal to deal with a second straight year of deficient monsoon. The Narendra Modi government has pledged to employ all machinery at its disposal to deal with a second straight year of deficient monsoon and denied an impending distress in the vulnerable pockets of the country, but a dispassionate look at the ground situation would show there...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Successive Indian governments have ignored repeated alerts and done little to introduce laws to curb practices that could explain how lead could slip into noodles and other raw and processed food, analysts say. India introduced unleaded petrol in March 2000 but the governments since then have not moved enough to impose mandatory limits for lead in paints which remain a key source of environmental lead pollution in the...