-PTI   Taking action in the controversial Antrix-Devas deal, government has barred former ISRO chief G Madhavan Nair and three other eminent space scientists from holding any government jobs. The action comes in the wake of the controversial deal in which a private company was allotted scarce S band spectrum by ISRO allegedly in violation of rules. Besides Nair, K Bhaskaranarayana, former scientific secretary at ISRO, K R Sridharamurthi, former managing director of Antrix,...

Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia may be okay with a little overlap between the National Population Register exercise and UIDAI's aadhar project, but an earlier note prepared by the Plan Panel had pegged the cost of this duplication at Rs 15,000 crore.  Based on the premise that increased accuracy of iris as a third biometric, as compared to the use of all ten fingerprints, was marginal, the Planning Commission,...

-The Indian Express   The last time he was at the Jaipur Literature Festival, Salman Rushdie was barely noticed. He spent three days in the city in 2007, and faced no protests. Some of the protesters this time agree that few had known about that visit. The opposition began with the Darul Uloom Deoband in UP before being taken up in Rajasthan, where the protests were spearheaded by Amin Pathan, chairperson for the...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The Reliance/Network18 deal should make us wake up to the impending threat to media plurality. Few are discussing it. India has just seen one of the biggest media deals, where the country’s leading industrial and business giant has bought into the largest network of news and current affairs TV channels. Yet, the fact that this could mark the beginning of a trend leading to private media being controlled...

-IANS Two officials of the AMRI hospital were arrested Monday in connection with the Dec 9 fire at the medical centre, which claimed 94 lives, and sent to police custody till Jan 30 by a court.   "Pritha Banerjee (vice president-administration) and Sajid Hussain (security in- charge) have been ordered to police custody by the Alipore court till Jan 30. They were arrested from Alipore in the morning (Monday)," hospital's counsel Salim Rahman...