-The Deccan Herald   The Kerala High Court in Kochi on Friday observed that frequent hikes in the prices of petroleum implemented by oil companies in the country amount to slow poisoning of the public. The court expressed its sympathy for the plight of the common man. The common man is at the mercy of oil companies, observed a division bench headed by acting chief justice of Kerala High Court C N Ramachandran...

The Opposition slammed the Naveen Patnaik government today for trying to make a political capital out of the flood relief operation by allegedly distributing relief material in bags emblazoned with conch symbol of the ruling party. The Biju Janata Dal (BJD), however, refuted the charge describing it as politically motivated. The state government decided to provide relief to the flood-hit for another seven days and provide them work under the Mahatma...

-PTI   A BJP team which visited Paramakudi, the scene of the September 11 police firing in which seven persons were killed, today said the incident was a result of "police excesses" and could have been avoided. The team, which included BJP national spokesperson Nirmala Seetharaman and Lok Sabha MPs Arjun Ram Meghwal and Kirit Solanki, condemned the firing and claimed that even after the incident people were targeted by police during the...

-The Hindu   Nothing is more reflective of the confusion and mix-up of priorities of the United Progressive Alliance government than the Mismanagement of fuel pricing. While struggling to control inflation through monetary policy, the government sees no problem in allowing oil marketing companies to continually raise the price of petrol. The latest hike, by more than Rs.3 a litre, comes on top of the two substantial increases earlier this year. Although...

Degraded soils, depleting groundwater, and chemical pesticides are playing havoc, placing agriculture in terrible distress. I haven’t forgotten that night. Sitting with a group of farmers in a village in Ludhiana district in Punjab, at the height of the Green Revolution, a farmer showed me a bag of fertiliser that he brought from the market. “Why are you showing me this bag”, I asked. “Wait”, he said, and began to open the...