Haryana wants Union environment minister Jairam Ramesh’s personal intervention to save its two main water systems — the Yamuna and the Ghaggar — from certain death due to the millions of tonnes of toxic effluents being dumped into these rivers as they traverse Delhi, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

Concerned over high food inflation, the government has asked the states to timely intervene to check the prices of essential commodities.
Addressing a meeting of food ministers of the north zone states on Monday, Union minister of state for food, consumer affairs and public distribution K.V. Thomas said the states should ensure adequate availability of stocks in the open market by reviewing the stock limits of the commodities from time to time.

Voices of dissent within Bihar’s ruling JD(U) are becoming more nagging and numerous since the party went ahead with its agenda of taking disciplinary action against several senior leaders accused of engaging in anti-party activities during last year’s Assembly polls.

A Class 11 girl student was allegedly abducted and gangraped by three youth in R.K. Puram area of south Delhi, the police said on Monday.
The accused have been identified as Mohit Pal, the victim’s neighbour and friend, Sharad Kumar and Amit, the police said. The victim, who studies in a private school at

Refusing to enlarge the horizon of the issue of homosexuality legalised by the Delhi high court in a landmark verdict by striking down Section 377 of the IPC to the extent it applied to gay relationships, the Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a petition for making the three arms of defence forces as parties to the case reviewing the validity of the HC order of 2009.

The scene in Egypt is changing and there is now a possibility of a transition to a new form of state-power, though its character is far from pre-ordained.
Much would depend on power struggle or compromise between the two most organised and effective forces in the country — the Army and the Islamist radicals (the Muslim Brotherhood) — the barracks and the mosque.

The BJP will now be playing the brahmin card in Uttar Pradesh to regain lost ground. The appointment of veteran party leader Kalraj Misra as chief of the election campaign committee is an indication of the BJP’s motive.

The Centre is planning to seek a review of the Supreme Court order that members of banned groups cannot be treated as criminals till they indulge in violence, saying police cannot wait for them to carry out terror acts. A two-judge bench of the Supreme Court had recently held that mere membership of a banned group will not make a person a criminal unless he resorts to violence or incites people to violence or creates public disorder by violence or incitement to violence

The Central investigation agencies suspect that a large amount of foreign currency, nearly worth `20 crores, had been illegally stashed away by the trust backed by Karmapa Ugyen Trinley Dorje. Government sources said that investigation is going on to ascertain whether the ‘’unaccounted’’ money could have been used to amass

Refusing to grant any relief to the 85-year-old veteran Congress leader Narayan Dutt Tiwari, the Delhi high court on Monday asked him to give his blood sample for undergoing a DNA test on a paternity suit filed by a Delhi-based lawyer Rohit Shekhar, claiming himself to be his biological son.