The government is planning to tighten the rules for issuing and renewing driving licences to make the process “fudge proof” after a study showed drivers’ fault accounted for most road accidents in the country. A committee of state transport commissioners and officials from the National Informatics Centre recently came up with suggestions on possible amendments to the rules. The panel, headed by Andhra Pradesh transport commissioner Hiralal Samariya, has submitted its report...

-The Hindu Business Line The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has come forward to help in improving productivity of certain crops in three regions of Andhra Pradesh. It has expressed its willingness to train select group of farmers and officials of the Agriculture Department on best practices for this. The FAO, in coordination with the State Agriculture Department, will be charting out an action plan to take up...

Social activists and students of Jadavpur University took out separate processions here on Tuesday in protest against the police action last week against Ambikesh Mahapatra, a professor of the university, for circulating e-mails containing graphics of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and other Trinamool Congress leaders. Dr. Mahapatra, who was arrested in connection with the incident and subsequently released on bail, was present in both the processions. Students carried placards...

-The Hindu The Defence Ministry will challenge a judicial commission's findings on ownership of the plot of land where the controversial Adarsh Housing Society here was constructed. The two-member commission has concluded that though the Ministry was in possession of the land, the owner is the Maharashtra government. (The origins of the Adarsh Housing Society scam go back to February 2000. Though the housing complex was meant for serving and retired defence personnel,...

Natives of Niyamgiri feel that the police is acting as an agent of the Vedanta group, playing dirty tricks to help the company go ahead with its plans to mine bauxite from the sacred hills ONE OF the world’s most controversial mines is back in the spotlight after hundreds protested against renewed efforts to mine Odisha’s Niyamgiri Hills. Dongria Kondh and Niyamgiri supporters held their own ‘public hearing’ in Odisha...