-The Telegraph The Supreme Court today asked the Centre and environmentalists whether they want tribals to live in “abject poverty for the next 100 years” by insisting a Vedanta bauxite mining project shouldn’t come up in Odisha’s Niyamgiri Hills. “If the tribals are offered modern benefits, will they not accept? Do you want them to remain like that for 100 years, collecting firewood and tendu leaves,” Justices Aftab Alam, K.S. Radhakrishnan and...

-The Economic Times The Supreme Court has sought the Centre's view on inclusion of tribal people in the mainstream, saying they should be allowed to choose facilities such as roads, schools, hospitals and electricity in the wider debate over preservation of their habitat. The remarks were made by a three-judge bench on Wednesday in response to Solicitor General Mohan Parasaran's opposition to the Odisha government's plan to mine the Niyamgiri hills...

-The Hindu Kota, Rajasthan: The sun is about to set over grey-brown slabs in sandstone quarries in Kota district, Rajasthan. Babulal Khairwa sits at the edge of a quarry and attentively hits a taanki, a chisel shaped like a gigantic nail, placed on the stone with a hammer. Babulal hits the stone with the hammer till it cracks in a straight line. Each 2 by 10 square feet foot slab, or...

-The Times of India BHUBANESWAR: The Opposition on Wednesday accused the state government of perpetrating irregularities in the centrally-sponsored rural job guarantee scheme leading to embezzlement of an alleged 50% of the money earmarked for expenditure. Panchayati Raj minister Kalpataru Das rejected the allegations, saying Odisha was faring better than most states in implementation of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme launched in 2005. He said so far 100.33 lakh families...

-The Business Standard In the 90s, Mark Lynas was a most vocal critic of genetically modified (GM) technology. An author of books such as High Tide, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet and The God Species, he shocked the world when he later said he was wrong in opposing GM technology. In a lecture at the Oxford Farming Conference earlier this month, he apologised for vandalising field trials of...