-PTI A UP revenue board member and five others were today booked by the CBI in three new cases for allegedly fudging funds in NRHM projects estimated to be over Rs 250 crore as the agency carried out searches at 44 locations across the state and the national capital. Residential premises of revenue board member Pradeep Shukla and officials of public sector undertakings were searched during the operation which was spread across...

Calling for urgent measures to provide sanitation facility across the country, Union Minister of Rural Development Jairam Ramesh has pointed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that in addition to malnutrition another distressing national shame which India can't live with is open defecation. Mr. Ramesh, who also controls the Department of Drinking Water Supply which implements sanitation programme, has written a letter to the Prime Minister urging him to change the government's...

The lesson for India after Durban is that it needs to formulate an approach that combines attention to industrialised countries’ historical responsibility for the problem with an embrace of its own responsibility to explore low carbon development trajectories. This is both ethically defensible and strategically wise. Ironically, India’s own domestic national approach of actively exploring “co-benefits” – policies that promote development while also yielding climate gains – suggests that it...

It would be grave folly to recoil from the N-option, our safest Nuclear Is Clear     The world needs cheap energy and, as of now, nuclear plants are the most efficient means to that end     Switching to fossil fuel sources will add to global warming. In extremis, the oceans could boil away.     The lesson from Fukushima is no worse than that tsunamis are a danger to everything in their path *** After the...

-The Hindu   The Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana to provide health insurance cover is likely to be extended to more people among the vulnerable sections. This was decided at a Union Cabinet meeting, which reviewed the scheme on Thursday. The scheme has already been extended to MGNREGS beneficiaries, street vendors, domestic workers, beedi workers and those working at building and construction sites. “The scheme has been extended to a few segments of unorganised workers....