-The Times of India GURGAON: US retail giant Walmart is planning a series of partnerships with small and mid-level suppliers in India across product categories to create a big list of private label brands that will be priced substantially lower - as much as 10-15% - than established products and brands. The move is part of the company's strategy to go deeper into the Indian market and create cost-effective and efficient...

-Outlook In an alarming trend, girl child numbers in India have shown a sharper decline than the male children in the decade beginning 2001, leading to a skewed child sex ratio. Ahead of the International Day of the Girl Child on Thursday, government today said that while the decade saw an overall drop in share of children to total population, nearly three million girls, one million more than boys, are "missing" in...

-The Times of India Top Congress leader and defence minister A K Antony said government should not acquire land for private entities since it is a big trigger for agitations, reverting the debate over land acquisition bill to the strict norms that were sought to be diluted on the pretext of industrialization.  Antony told the Sharad Pawar-LED group of ministers debating the proposed bill that land had become a scarce resource and...

-Mainstream Weekly Intense and motivated propaganda, powerful national and international diplomatic pressure, verging on pure and simple arms-twisting of the kind the Third World has been facing for decades by means of the active role of the econo-mic hit-men in the policy establishments, huge cash-back lobbying, both in India and abroad, blunt attempts to bamboozle the persons holding key positions in India’s policy establishment through a combination of hissing and kissing...

-The Indian Express The long-standing tiff between the National Human Rights Commission and the National Conference-Congress LED government in Jammu and Kashmir on the issue of jurisdiction in cases involving alleged human rights violations is yet to be resolved. The latest flashpoint is the high court stay that the government has managed to get on NHRC proceedings in 34 pending cases of alleged human rights violations, most of them against security forces...