-The Hindu   Civil society groups have demanded an apology from the former Home Secretary of India, G.K. Pillai, for his “insensitive, sexist slandering” remarks on Ishrat Jahan, who was killed in a fake encounter in Gujarat in 2004. “Stung by the Special Investigation Team report, which concluded that Ishrat was executed in cold blood, Mr. Pillai — hard-pressed to defend his affidavit to the Supreme Court that Ishrat was a Lashkar operative...

We have five million children in the labour market, say official figures. Their actual numbers may be four times as many. As a nation, we have failed each one of them…   Millions of our children still labour today, in factories, farms, kilns, mines, homes and city waste dumps, when they should be in school or in a playground. We profoundly fail these children, collectively depriving them of education, play, rest, healthy...

-Mid-Day.com    Drug rehabilitation centres in the city have recorded some shocking changes with regard to the number of narcotic users this year. Rehabilitation centres recorded a shocking increase in the number of pre-teens seeking help for drug abuse. According to many such centres, 13 is currently the average age of drug abusers in the city, while 16 was the age recorded last year. "The lifestyle has changed and it is not just BPO...

UPA’s much-publicised scheme, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), is not creating labour shortage for agriculture and dairy production alone, but the textile and handloom sectors are also facing the heat on this count. A Working Group report on textile and handloom sectors has noted that the scheme was drawing skilled weavers to ‘unskilled’ MGNREGA. It says that high-end weavers are sticking to the profession, but low-end weavers are...

-Globe and Mail Sister Valsa John wanted to go home. Living in self-imposed exile hundreds of kilometres away, she pined for the hut in an aboriginal village where she had built a life. She talked about the people she loved there, and the quiet of the nights. Then she added, in a voice both wistful and matter-of-fact: “If I go home, most probably they will kill me.” They did kill her. In...