Friday's murder of Brahmeshwar Singh, chief of the outlawed Ranvir Sena (a private army owing allegiance to the powerful upper caste Bhumihars) in Bhojpur, 71 km from Patna, could become a major test for the seven-year-old Nitish Kumar government's continued ability to maintain social harmony in Bihar. Within hours of the killing in the early hours, Singh's supporters went on the rampage, upsetting the delicate caste equilibrium in south Bihar,...

Giving a twist to the series of probes by the CBI and the queue by the accused to secure bail from lower courts, a CBI court judge was suspended by the Andhra Pradesh high court for allegedly accepting bribe to grant bail to mining baron Gali Janardhan Reddy. The high court on Thursday suspended T Pattabhirama Rao, first additional special judge for CBI cases, Hyderabad. However, the high court did not...

A 26-year-old man from Hooghly who lost his tongue to cancer in a Mumbai hospital last week has lent his voice to a public health campaign urging the Bengal government to ban the sale of gutka laced with tobacco. Mantu Mahato, who was diagnosed with advanced tongue cancer earlier this year, five years after he started chewing gutka, has written a letter to chief minister Mamata Banerjee urging her to ban...

-IANS Facing a slow-down in the economy, the government has launched an austerity drive to reduce expenditure, banned new posts and meetings in five-star hotels besides restricting foreign travel. The finance ministry, which issued the office memorandum on "Expenditure Management - Economy Measures and Rationalisation of Expenditure" Thursday also asked all ministries to reduce non-Plan expenditure by 10 percent in 2012-13. "There will be a total ban on holding of meetings and conferences...

-IANS Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Friday approved setting up a monitoring system to fast track implementation of major projects with outlay of over Rs.1,000 crore, a day after the official data showed contraction in manufacturing activities. "In order to address the issue of major investment projects being delayed for a variety of reasons, the Prime Minister has approved setting up of an Investment Tracking System to ensure speedy implementation of such projects,"...