-Agence France-Presse Nekpur: With both hands holding the basket of human excrement on her head, widowed grandmother Kela walks through a stream of sewage, up a mound of waste and then dumps the filth while cursing. "Nobody even pays us a decent wage!" she spits as she rakes mud and rubbish over her newly deposited pile, one of several she drops in the course of her working day cleaning toilets as a...

-Outlook Hoogly (West Bengal): Seven persons have died after drinking illicit liquor at Payradanga village in this district, police said today. About 20 villagers drank liquor on Sunday night and fell SICk, following which they were brought to Panduah rural hospital. After their condition deteriorated, they were shifted to the Imambara Sadar Hospital at Chinsurah. While one person died on way to Chinsurah, two others died during treatment there, officials said. As some of...

-The Telegraph People who stop smoking before the age of 40 may on average gain an extra 10 years of life expectancy, according to a study that researchers say has relevance to India where people typically quit only after falling ill. A British study described as the world’s largest to assess the hazards of smoking and the benefits of quitting has shown that quitting before 40 can help avoid excess mortality observed...

-The Hindu Have Emami and Karuturi bitten off more than they can chew in their land quest? Indian companies which invested in controversial deals involving hundreds of thousands of acres of land in Ethiopia have found themselves out of their depth in a fast-growing African economy that is still in the process of building critical transport and irrigation networks. Documents related to one such transaction reveal how Emami Biotech, a subsidiary of the...

-CNN-IBN When I was asked to travel to Haryana for a ground report on the sudden spurt in the number of rape cases being reported from the state, I frankly didn't think the story was worth much. The number stood at eight rapes in about 25 days...eight was just a figure, a number, a statistic...I didn't see a story, I didn't see the trauma, I didn't see the pain. The night...