-AFP Delegations from some 140 countries agreed on Saturday to adopt a ground-breaking treaty limiting the use and emission of health-hazardous mercury, the U.N. said, though environmental activists lamented it did not go far enough. The world’s first legally binding treaty on mercury, reached after a week of thorny talks, will aim to reduce global emission levels of the toxic heavy metal, also known as quicksilver, which poses risks to human health...

-PTI Reflecting the dwindling standard of education across schools in rural India, a report has claimed that students required additional help of tuitions to achieve better learning outcomes. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), based on a survey covering about six lakh children in 567 districts of rural India, has said tuition-going students were much more clear with their arithmetic concepts. "The influence of additional inputs in the form of tuition on...

-The Indian Express The dismal picture painted in Pratham’s latest Annual Status of Education Report must provoke policymakers to urgently assess and tackle the crisis in India’s primary school education. Pratham, an NGO, has done stellar work these past years in surveying the learning outcomes in schools countrywide. Its 2012 report details a rapid decline in students’ ability to keep up with the syllabus. It has found, for example, that only...

-Deccan Chronicle The Annual Status of Education Report 2012 has revealed the standard of school education is not up to the mark in rural India, and claimed over half the children in these areas were at least three grade levels behind in reading and arithmetic abilities.   The report, prepared by Unicef backed NGO Pratham, claimed of all Class V students only 46.8 per cent could read a Class II text. Though 2012...

-The Telegraph A rights organisation today accused the Centre and state governments of giving huge, unaccounted grants to NGOs including blacklisted ones, often against a bribe. The Asian Centre for Human Rights said it was basing its claims on replies to a series of RTI applications it had filed in 2010. Releasing the report, “India’s Funds to NGOs Squandered”, the rights body’s director, Suhas Chakma, made these claims at a news conference...