The food price inflation in India, measured by the wholesale price index of food items, touched a 10-year high for the week ended November 28, 2009 when it crossed 19% on point-to-point basis over the corresponding week a year ago. The cereal prices were up by about 13%, but pulses are up by 42%, and vegetables by 31%, although potato prices shot up by 102%. This is getting way beyond...

In a new twist to the alleged Rs 5,600-crore scam in giving away contracts for ambulance and emergency healthcare services to a private party in 10 states, the Centre told the SC that though the funds for the services were from National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), the onus rested with the state governments to ensure transparent bidding process. A PIL had alleged that it smelled a gigantic scam in former...

Paul A. Samuelson, the first American Nobel laureate in economics and the foremost academic economist of the 20th century, died Sunday at his home in Belmont, Mass. He was 94. His death was announced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which Samuelson helped build into one of the world’s great centres of graduate education in economics. In receiving the Nobel Prize in 1970, Samuelson was credited with transforming his discipline from...

A team from the World Bank will be in New Delhi soon to work out the nitty-gritties of a $1-billion loan to the urban development ministry for carrying forward the cash-starved flagship scheme for upgrading urban infrastructure, the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). There would, however, be conditionalities attached to the use of the fund as it would be reform-linked and only select states would get access to...

Patna, Dec. 6: The Bihar government has rushed a two-member fact-finding team to Ludhiana in Punjab where migrant labourers from the state clashed with police and local people over the administration’s alleged failure to provide security to workers. “The team, comprising a joint labour commissioner and deputy labour commissioner, was sent to Ludhiana last evening to find out facts about the incident and talk to the Punjab government officials on the...