Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi both spoke out on Friday against the “cancer of corruption” in the country: while Dr Singh said rising growth levels had “increased the expectations” of people, Mrs Gandhi noted that growth was not an end in itself, and that while “our economy may increasingly be dynamic, our moral universe seems to be shrinking.”

After making it to the 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize, Kishwar Desai’s Witness the Night has been shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Book Awards. Witness the Night, published by HarperCollins, is a mystery novel set in a small town in India and has female foeticide at the core of its plot.

Environment minister Jairam Ramesh on Friday stated that decision in the Posco case will be taken within a couple of weeks. The fate of South Korean giant Posco’s `54,000 crores integrated steel plant in Orissa has been hanging in balance.

While fusion food gained prominence with the rise of Tex-Mex (Texan-Mexican) cuisine, thanks to the Spaghetti Westerns films, in our day to day lives we come across many varieties of food that we take for granted as either foreign or authentic Indian. Foremost among these are the food we get at most Chinese restaurants. Indians

Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah on Friday said there were “visible and invisible links” among the militants in the state, the Maoists, Left-leaning academicians and supporters.

So what if the judiciary has woken up to the gay reality? There’s still a section of the society that’s yet to catch up. Only recently, several multiplexes have refused to screen the just released gay film Dunno Y Na Jaane Kyun... citing the excuse that it’s not fit for family audiences. In the past whenever certain controversial films have come to the fore, multiplexes have always slotted them in specific time slots. So why discriminating now?

The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has said that the Chinese government was more concerned about his successor than him.
“That is not a serious question for me. It looks like the Chinese government are seriously looking. I made it very clear in 1961 that whether the institution of Dalai Lama should continue or not should be debated,” the 76-year-old spiritual head, who described himself as a “son of India”, said.

Veteran Hindi film actor Rishi Kapoor has welcomed the idea of revival of film ties with Pakistan. The star actor on Friday stated that joint production between the two countries should be promoted.

Union human resource development minister Kapil Sibal on Friday stated that the government was contemplating to enact a law in a few years to make sure that a majority of children should go from elementary to higher secondary education. The minister stated that the support for higher education was vital for the future of the country.

Realising that the government is being unable to effectively counter the Opposition attack on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the 2G spectrum allocation scam, the Congress high command on Friday fielded its legal brain and acting telecommunication minister Kapil Sibal to defend both the government and the PM.