-The Indian Express The Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) has recommended diverting over 500 hectares of forest land for an iron ore mining project in the Saranda forest division of Jharkhand, part of the core area of the Singhbhum Elephant Reserve, India's first reserve for elephants. The FAC is a statutory body that advises the environment ministry on diverting forest land. Its recommendations are not binding. The Singhbhum reserve, created in 2001, is spread...

-The Indian Express A series of arrests has helped investigators establish the links between some of the most high-profile terror cases involving Hindu extremists—from Malegaon 2006 to Modasa 2008. RAHUL TRIPATHI looks at what the investigators have found so far—and what they haven’t One cold December morning, Rambalak Dash left his ashram in Chitrakoot on the UP-MP border for a puja he had been called upon to do at a house in...

-Outlook Caste has nothing to do with graft. Even so, Nandy must be heard. Forging a link, however tenuous, between caste and corruption is akin to saying  that the average Indian male  has sex on his mind, caste and communalism in his heart and indigestion in his tummy. That was an irreverent response to the sweeping statement made by the “ageing enfant terrible” of Indian sociology, Ashis Nandy, during a discussion...

-The Indian Express A committee set up by the Ministry of Environment and Forests has suggested new parameters to declare pristine forested areas as ‘inviolate’ and thus out of bounds for mining or other harmful non-forest activities. The panel, headed by former environment secretary T Chatterjee, has recommended that national parks and wildlife sanctuaries; areas within a kilometre of protected areas; compact patches of very dense forests; last remnants of forest types...

-The Hindu IAF copter fired at as landing point was not sanitised; chopper and injured wireless operator abandoned There has hardly been a faux pas in anti-Naxal operations in recent months as discomfiting to the forces as Friday night’s tactless act in the Chintagufa area in south Chhattisgarh. Security officials unanimously agreed that there was a ‘serious lack of coordination’ among police, paramilitary and Indian Air Force personnel. On Friday afternoon, during a...