Environmentalists, civil society groups and scientists working with marginal farmers have welcomed recommendation of the Supreme Court appointed Technical Expert Committee (TEC) placing a 10-year moratorium on field trials of GM crops in India. The TEC freeze advice includes field trials of Bt transgenics in all food crops which are used directly for human consumption. (See links below for the actual report and more details) The TEC, which was appointed in...

-Tehelka The sentencing of Wall Street wizard Rajat Gupta in the historic insider trading case has led to the fall of a one-time icon for many Indians “This is where destiny is taking me.” This is what former Goldman Sachs Group Inc director, Rajat Gupta, told old friend Pramod Bhasin, as he sat with a glass of scotch in hand, in a mid-town bar in New York. Little did Gupta know how prophetic...

-The Hindu Rebel IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt has secured permission from the Gujarat High Court to inspect some of the official documents relating to the 2002 communal clashes in Gujarat, before submitting his final affidavit before the G.T. Nanavati-Akshay Mehta Judicial Inquiry Commission probing into the Godhra train carnage and the subsequent violence. A Division Bench of the High Court, comprising Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya and Justice J.B. Pardiwala, has directed the...

-The Indian Express Families of Ahmed and Iqbal claimed they were detained in Jammu. The Special Cell had alleged that the ‘terrorists’ had been arrested outside Dilli Haat in South Delhi carrying arms On April 20, 2007, Mohd Shafi’s son Shabbir had gone on his regular trip to Jammu from their home in Bhadarwah, Doda District, to buy utensils for their crockery shop. When he did not return, Shafi went to Jammu...

-The Hindu Property empire was built on soft loans handed out in unusual circumstances, documents show In February, as rumours of the ambitions of Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law swirled amidst the heat and dust of the election campaign in Uttar Pradesh, her daughter Priyanka moved to scotch speculation about Robert Vadra’s possible political future. “He’s a successful businessman,” the younger Ms. Gandhi said of her husband, “who is not interested in changing...