All rural schemes will also get a common accounting format; audit to begin with MGNREGS in 12 states At a time when the government is reeling under a number of corruption cases—several of these following critical reports from the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG)—the ministry of rural development has roped in the statutory auditor to conduct a financial, compliance and performance audit of its schemes. All schemes of the ministries...

India recorded 9.8 lakh new cases of cancer last year, an increase of about 80,000 new cases as compared to 2009. Top cancer scientists from across the country along with Union health ministry officials and experts from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) met at the annual review meeting of the National Cancer Registry Programme in Guwahati to discuss the worrying trend over the last two days. This figure was...

-The Telegraph   Indian plant biologists have sequenced the full genome of pigeonpea, arming themselves with information that they say will help speed up the development of improved pigeonpea varieties and boost yields of India’s most popular pulse. A consortium of scientists from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research and several academic institutions has identified 47,004 genes that code for proteins in the pigeonpea (arhar or tur), a grain legume that is consumed...

-The Telegraph   Nearly four dozen deemed universities, found unfit for the tag by a review panel two years ago, have got no respite from another committee that was set up under Supreme Court instructions to re-examine their deficiencies. A three-member panel of current and former HRD ministry officials heard each of the 44 varsities deemed “unworthy” of the label and decided not to differ from what the review panel had said. The ministry...

-IANS   They may not be starving, but by American standards some 46.2 million people live in poverty today, more than at any other time in American history, erasing gains made in reducing poverty during the 1990s, according to a new study.  Compared to the 1990s they are more likely to be white, live in the Midwest, have a high school diploma and own a home, according to shows, the Brookings Institution, a...