-The Economist   The world’s population will reach 7 billion at the end of October. Don’t panic IN 1950 the whole population of the earth—2.5 billion—could have squeezed, shoulder to shoulder, onto the Isle of Wight, a 381-square-kilometre rock off southern England. By 1968 John Brunner, a British novelist, observed that the earth’s people—by then 3.5 billion—would have required the Isle of Man, 572 square kilometres in the Irish Sea, for its standing...

Five days after Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi accused Mayawati government in UP of mega-scale corruption in the centrally sponsored schemes, union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has shot off a letter to UP chief minister Mayawati citing a huge scam in the MNREGA scheme in the state. According to sources, Jairam has specifically mentioned seven districts Balrampur, Gonda, Mahoba, Sonbhadra, Sant Kabir Nagar and Mirzapur where central funds have...

-The Hindu   A non-profit organisation here has accused Team Anna member Kiran Bedi of claiming travel expenses far in excess of what she actually incurred to attend a programme organised by them in 2009. George Abraham, general secretary of the Aviation Industry Employees Guild, said his organisation had invited Ms. Bedi to be chief guest for an International Women's Day function in Mumbai in March 2009 and that she had accepted the...

-The Telegraph   The Union health ministry today warned that bottle gourd juice should not be consumed if it comes from bitter-tasting pulp in an advisory on a practice promoted by yoga and Ayurveda evangelist Baba Ramdev among others. “Bitter-tasting bottle gourd juice should not be consumed at all,” the ministry said, urging that a small piece of the pulp of bottle gourd, lauki in Hindi, should be tasted before the extraction of...

Flaying the governments unique the Right to Education (RTE) Act awareness campaign which will be launched on November 11, non-Congress ruled states are calling it a "politically-motivated" move. The HRD ministry has decided to mail a letter from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to over 13 lakh elementary schools across the country to generate awareness about the Right to Education (RTE) Act. Called  'Shiksha ka Haq' (Right To Education), the awareness drive...