-The Hindu     Among basic services, sanitation - public toilets in particular - ranks as national Capital's worst public service Despite an overall improvement in the quality of life it offers its citizens, Delhi is home to large inequalities in access to basic services, the Capital's latest Human Development Report, which was released by Vice-President Hamid Ansari and Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Saturday, has revealed. Seven years after coming out with its first...

-Frontline Riding roughshod over farmers' concerns, the Gujarat government notifies a project to develop the Mandal-Becharaji Special Investment Region, an industrial hub spread over 50,884 hectares, affecting 44 villages. But the villagers see it as a real estate scam and are determined to resist it. GUJARAT may soon have several new townships. The Narendra Modi-led government has proposed to set up 13 special investment regions (SIRs), which are essentially industrial hubs...

-The Hindu The devastating landslips were caused by the undercutting of fragile hillsides for highways rather than by dams, which actually helped mitigate the floods The natural calamity of June 16 through 19 that devastated the whole of Uttarakhand and large areas of Himachal Pradesh and western Uttar Pradesh - an area of almost 20,000 sq.km. - was one of extremely rare severity among all the hydro-meteorological disasters to have struck India. Intense...

-The Telegraph Two Union government health agencies colluded with a foreign entity to conduct a mass vaccination campaign on thousands of girls in India four years ago, violating medical ethics and national laws, a parliamentary committee said today. The parliamentary standing committee on health and family welfare has blamed the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Drugs Controller General of India for collaborating with the US-based Program for Appropriate Technologies...

-The Hindu The long-pending Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill was passed by the Lok Sabha on Thursday night after Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh assured the House that the measure allowed enough room for State governments to implement it as per their requirements. The Bill is only setting a bottom line for fair compensation, rehabilitation and resettlement in the case of land acquisition and State governments were free to further...