-The Hindu Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal have stolen a march over India in quality of school education. Data from new research on female literacy show that India’s school education system is under-performing in terms of quality when compared to its neighbours, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. The research studies changes in female literacy over a number of schooling years. The proportion of women who completed five years of primary schooling in India and were...

-The Hindu The avian flu virus was first detected in migratory birds in New Delhi Jaipur: After deaths of migratory birds due to avian flu were reported in Delhi, an alert was sounded in Rajasthan over the weekend, asking authorities and the public at large to keep a watch on the Health of birds and take precautionary measures to check the likely outbreak of bird flu in the State. A communiqué received by...

-The Indian Express The fires are so many and so widespread that satellites flying hundreds of kilometres above the Earth record their presence. New Delhi: North India faces an annual trauma as winter approaches — the air in the region having more than 200 million people becomes toxic. Fingers are pointed at the hand that feeds India, farmers in the granary of the country are rebuked asking them not to burn agriculture...

-The Telegraph The death of more than 50 dengue patients in eight city hospitals this year offers a peek into the severity of the menace but the extent of the crisis remains unknown in the absence of figures from the government. To put things in perspective, the disease caused by the Aedes aegypti mosquito had claimed less than 20 lives across the state last year. The Mamata Banerjee government's decision to prefer secrecy...

-The Telegraph Algiers (Algeria): At a time when a debate over triple talaq and the need for a uniform civil code rages in India, a Sunni Muslim-dominated country that Vice-President Hamid Ansari just visited offers some interesting insight. Algeria, the north African country that figures in the Modi regime's Africa outreach, last year adopted a law criminalising domestic violence against women despite conservative Muslims terming it an intrusion into a couple's privacy. The...