-PTI Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar today said he was not opposed to the National Food Security Bill and that he would prefer it to be approved by Parliament after a debate. "I am in favour of approving the food Bill through discussion in Parliament, which is the highest forum," he told reporters. Mr Pawar, who had earlier voiced apprehension that huge concessions on foodgrains could endanger food security and harm the interests...

-PTI After the exit of Aruna Roy, government has reconstituted the National Advisory Council by inducting renowned sociologist Virginius Xaxa into the 12-member panel chaired by Sonia Gandhi. The term of the panel, which has been giving legislative and policy inputs to the government ranging from the seminal rural jobs scheme to the latest food security bill, has been made co-terminus with the term of the present government. Xaxa, the new member...

-Reuters LONDON: Some 165 million children worldwide are stunted by malnutrition as babies and face a future of ill health, poor education, low earnings and poverty, the head of the United Nations children's fund said on Friday. Anthony Lake, executive director of Unicef, told Reuters the problem of malnutrition is vastly under-appreciated, largely because poor nutrition is often mistaken for a lack of food. In reality, he said, malnutrition and its irreversible health...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The Manmohan Singh government's target of skilling 500 million people by 2022 is grossly inflated and is based on a speech by late management guru CK Prahalad instead of any demographic analysis. The country would actually need only about half that number of trained manpower by then, the government's own think-tank, the Institute of Applied Manpower Research (IAMR), has said in a research paper. The IAMR, housed under...

-The Indian Express Digitisation of land records is a big step forward. Now to start guaranteeing titles While landlords across the country, several million of whom prefer to keep their houses locked up instead of renting them out, will cheer the cabinet clearance for the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Bill, the even bigger change relates to the digitisation of land records. The real estate Bill allows for the setting up of...