Union Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh has granted the final forest clearance to Posco's Rs.54,000-crore integrated steel plant in Orissa, even while urging action against the sarpanch of one of the villages protesting against the project. Last month, Mr. Ramesh offered some hope to the protesting people of Dhinkia and Gobindapur by taking note of the resolutions passed by their village councils alleging that the Orissa government had failed...

As many as 17 top officials representing the senior bureaucracy are believed to have amassed or misappropriated nearly Rs 603 crore between 2007 and 2010. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has submitted a list of the officials under investigation to the parliamentary committee on assurances. The CBI says these officers had misappropriated funds from the exchequer and entered into criminal conspiracies by making huge illegal financial transactions. The CBI says it...

“Declare State GM organisms-free on the lines of M.P., Bihar” Farmer groups here on Sunday demanded that Rajasthan be declared a genetically modified (GM) organisms-free State on the lines of Madhya Pradesh, which has recently decided to prohibit any environmental release, including field trials, of GM seeds and crops in view of their safety and impact on human beings and environment still being in doubt. Madhya Pradesh is the second State in...

Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan said here on Friday that people's movements in Kerala and other States had forced the Centre to change its stand at the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. Reports and photographs taken to the Convention from Kerala had also helped in arriving at the decision. “It was not just a campaign against the Centre but also one to create awareness of the dangers of the pesticide,” the...

Free speech advocates and Internet users are protesting new Indian regulations restricting Web content that, among other things, can be considered "disparaging," "harassing," "blasphemous" or "hateful." The new rules, quietly issued by the country's Department of Information Technology earlier this month and only now attracting attention, allow officials and private citizens to demand that Internet sites and service providers remove content they consider objectionable on the basis of a long list...