-The Deccan Herald The State government, faced with severe shortage of doctors in rural areas, is likely to promulgate an ordinance to make one year of rural service mandatory for undergraduate and post-graduate medical students. Making an announcement to this effect in the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday, Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda said despite fixing a minimum salary of Rs 70,000, doctors were not coming forward to work in rural areas....

-The Telegraph The wage rate under rural job scheme NREGA could soon be brought on a par with the minimum wages for agricultural labourers fixed by states. The Centre is likely to amend the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) by incorporating a provision saying the wage cannot be less than the minimum rate for agricultural labourers in a particular state. At present, there are discrepancies between the two. A Karnataka...

-The Economic Times With its draft report alleging a coal scam, duly leaked to the media, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) is making a habit of choosing sensation over sense. Its allegation of loss to the exchequer in allocation of 2G spectrum colours the public discourse on the subject, but was discarded by the CBI court in the telecom case as the basis for a formal charge.  Its assumption that the...

It is a myth that cancer is prevalent only in urban areas More than 5,56,000 cancer deaths occurred in India in 2010 and 71.1 per cent of those who died were aged between 30 and 69 years, says a report on cancer mortality in India, published in the March 28 issue of The Lancet. While men in the age group of 30-69 years are more likely to die of oral cancers followed...

-PTI Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh opposing the proposed move to exempt nuclear regulatory bodies from the ambit of the Right To Information Act. In his letter to the PM, Gandhi opposed the proposals in the Nuclear Safety Regulation Act (NSRA) relating to introduction of new exemption clause in the RTI Act which will prohibit disclosure of nuclear energy and radiation issues under the transparency...