National News

TWO WOMEN caught for overspeeding got into an argument with the traffic police in Vivek Vihar area of East Delhi on Saturday evening. The car driver has alleged that she was assaulted by one of the traffic policemen for getting into an argument with him, while the police maintain that the woman had slapped and bit two traffic policemen.

IT IS no secret that Delhi Traffic Police has been facing staff crunch, but the situation has worsened over the years with the number of traffic policemen not able to match the increasing road length and rising number of vehicles. Will the situation improve by month end when a large batch of constables join the Delhi Police cadre? Earlier this year, Delhi Police Commissioner Y.S.

KEEN TO engage undergraduate students in research in sciences, the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, has funded setting up of a research centre at Miranda House, Delhi University.

Come 2009 and cotton farmers in India will be able to produce their own Bt Cotton seeds. The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) of the government has approved a variety of Bt Cotton that is inbred and will produce seeds as well. So far, farmers have had to depend on seed companies to buy Bt Cotton seeds for every new crop, leading to high prices and protests.

At the point when university teachers are settling down comfortably in their careers, this 40-year-old professor of sociology at Nagpur University gave up everything to head to the jungles of Chhattisgarh, wear Naxal fatigues and pick up a rifle. Anuradha Ghandy, the highest ranking woman underground leader in India, died last month of malaria after 15 years as a Naxalite.

A cabinet committee chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday gave the green signal for implementation of a scholarship scheme that would annually help one lakh poor but bright students continue their studies beyond middle school.

The HRD Ministry's proposal to regulate international schools operating in India has hit a roadblock with the Prime Minister's Office asking the ministry to consult the Planning Commission before bringing the proposal for Cabinet consideration.

IN A move to deter the monopoly of the privately-run institutions offering courses in B.Ed, the Uttarakhand government has issued no objection certificates to as many as 18 government colleges allowing them to run self-financed B.Ed courses, officials said.

EVERY YEAR dozens of pilgrims lose their lives and hundreds get injured in accidents on the Char Dham Yatra route. This year, the Uttarakhand government has taken some innovative measures to prevent accidents and bring down the annual figure of causalities.

WILDLIFE EXPERTS and conservationists have expressed concern over growing human-animal conflict, leading to gruesome killings of endangered species like leopards. On Thursday, a mob killed a maneater leopard in Belihar village.

A 30-year-old man was knocked down and seriously injured by a Blueline bus on the BRT corridor late on Friday evening. The Blueline was not supposed to be there. These rogue buses that killed 120 people - one every three days - last year, are banned from getting on to the BRT corridor.

A DAY after he was reinstated as director of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Dr P Venugopal led a team of surgeons that stitched a hole in the heart of a one-year-old boy, said Dr A.K. Bisoi, who did the surgery with him. Dr Venugopal is now the oldest surgeon to perform an operation at AIIMS.

Maternal health has just been examined across Indian states and diagnosed, based on three indicators: infant mortality rates (IMR), antenatal care and institutional deliveries. Delhi has an IMR of 37 (deaths per 1,000 live births); only 29 per cent mothers receive recommended antenatal care. This is not the worst in the country - but not the best either.

POKHRAN'S HISTORIC moment is lost on the people of Khetolai. Living barely a few kilometres from the nuclear blast site of 11 May, 1998, the young and the old have a faint memory of the blasts that catapulted India into a nuclear power. However, the elderly take it with a pinch of salt.

Bengal prepared to witness the first phase of the seventh panchayat election with the shadow of Nandigram looming large and no political party willing to vouch that there would not be any violence on Sunday. CPI(M) tried its best to dismiss all charges of Red terrorism as 'rumours'.

In a perceived attempt to distance itself from the Left parties, the Samajwadi Party (SP) maintained on Saturday that � if invited � it was willing to discuss the nuclear question with the government.

In jeans and t-shirt, and sporting a chic hairdo, 32-year-old software engineer Anuj Mishra does not look the part he is playing in the Karnataka elections. But that is the whole idea, he says: to enter the field and turn the game in favour of the so-called misfits.

The first phase of the assembly elections in Karnataka saw 59 per cent voters casting their ballots across 89 of the 224 constituencies, which comprise the southern part of the state. But the figure would certainly have been higher if all those who came out to cast their votes had actually been allowed to.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi cold-shouldered HRD Minister Arjun Singh by refusing to acknowledge his presence or his contribution to education at a function on Saturday, a day after he alleged lack of internal democracy in the party and its changing yardsticks of loyalty.

The 10th anniversary of Pokhran II – the nuclear tests conducted by the NDA government on May 11, 1998 – will be a quiet affair. No official celebrations have been planned to commemorate the event.