Over 250 activists, academics, intellectuals and democratic institutions have written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh demanding that medical attention be immediately provided to Adivasi school teacher, Soni Sori, who is currently in custody in Raipur Central Jail. NAC members Aruna Roy, Jean Dreze and Harsh Mander, poet Meena Kandaswamy and film-maker Anand Patwardhan are amongst the signatories to the letter. The text of the open letter...

Ignoring widespread concern over the safety, efficacy and cost of pentavalent vaccines, India’s central health ministry has, this month, approved inclusion of the prophylactic cocktail in the universal immunisation programme in seven of its provinces. Pentavalent vaccine doses, a cocktail of five antigens in a single shot, confers immunity against five paediatric diseases - diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, hepatitis B and haemophilus influenza type b (Hib), with the last one considered particularly...

-PTI President Pratibha Patil today announced she will forego the accommodation allotted to her for use after retirement following reports that the land for the house was given in violation of rules. “Considering the fact that the issue has got linked with the issue of war widows’ accommodation… the President has chosen to forego the aforesaid allotment of accommodation proposed to be made to her as her Post-retirement home in Pune,” Rashtrapati...

-The Telegraph   The urban development ministry is miffed at the budget allocation for the urban renewal mission and has told the House standing committee it would not “sit quietly” but fight for more funds from the finance ministry. The aggressive Posture comes despite the poor progress of the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission, with only 127 of the 555 projects under its first phase completed by the deadline of March 31, 2012. A...

AHMEDABAD: With potato prices ruling at Rs 20 a kg in retail in the domestic market, traders from Jammu and Kashmir have started importing potato from the two Line of Control (LOC) trade Posts of Srinagar and Poonch. With zero import duty on import at the LOC trade points, Pakistani potato is cheaper than the Indian variety by 20% to 40%. India's potato production is expected to be 33.5-34 million tonne...