-The Hindu   Faced with strong protests from farmers and a demand from the Maharashtra government, the Centre on Tuesday announced the lifting of the ban on export of onions with immediate effect. The decision was taken by the Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) on Food headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. “Ban on onion export has been lifted,'' Union Minister for Science and Technology Vilasrao Deshmukh told journalists after the meeting. Union Agriculture...

-The Economic Times   Prominent activist and key Anna associate Arvind Kejriwal claimed the income-tax notice asking him to pay dues of 9 lakh to the government is prompted by "political bosses" and without merit. The notice was slapped on him in August, days before Anna started the second round of his indefinite anti-graft hunger strike. The I-T notice and related developments threatened to deteriorate into yet another NASty row between Team Anna and...

Even as this shocking number of malnutrition deaths is reported from NAShik alone, much of Rs 600 crore child welfare budget seems to have been spent on expensive toys et al In commodity purchases that seem to give direct competition to the Organising Committee's orders for the Commonwealth Games (CWG), the State Women and Child Development department spent Rs 13,801 each for a set of four steel utensils consisting of a...

Residents of the state capital, who had planned to binge on non-vegetarian food after Sawaan, will have to go slow because of an increase in the price of onions, a common ingredient in meat and fish dishes. Ironically, vegetarian dishes, too, will cost more as the prices of greens have also shot north. Though you and I have to shell out more, there has been only a marginal increase in the wholesale...

A group of people, with placards showing Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, staged a demonstration in Delhi a few days ago against Anna Hazare's proposals on the Lokpal and the methods used by his team. More often than not, Dalits look with suspicion on any attempt to tamper with the Constitution. Team Anna has, however, suggested that its Lokpal bill would benefit Dalits more than anyone else. This led me to look...