Heavy rains in Haryana and Punjab have suddenly made some basic necessities a lot costlier in New Delhi: the prices of green vegetables, for instance, shot up in the past three days.

The Kolkata Municipal Corporation is introducing unit area assessment of property from 2010-11 fiscal year. The proposal was passed by the mayor-in-council meeting on Saturday. So far, property tax was being calculated on the basis of a building’s notional rent. During the Left Front civic board tenure, Asian Deve-lopment Bank, the

Union minister Farooq Abdullah met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and home minister P. Chidambaram here Satur-day to seek assistance for the Jammu and Kashmir government headed by his son Omar.

India is planning to adopt the Chinese model of hybrid rice production, Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar said on Saturday. A Central team led by minister of state for agriculture K.V. Thomas visited China recently, collected information and submitted a report to him with his suggestions on the development of the Chinese hybrid rice.
The minister was speaking to mediapersons at the end of a two-day workshop on “Bringing Green Revolution To Eastern India.”

Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia on Saturday exhorted people to have faith in the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanism as the lack of “culture of dispute settlement” among them was proving to be a major cause of rising pendency with the courts.

In order to demonstrate the consolidation of the Congress-Trinamul Congress alliance to the people of West Bengal, Ms Mamata Banerjee has invited Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee for the Martyrs’ Day rally. The Trinamul Congress organises this annual event on July 21 at Esplanade to commemorate the killing of 13 Youth

Controversy rocked the historical Commonwealth Games Queen’s Baton programme in Lucknow on Saturday when a prototype of the baton was displayed at the Sahara Shaher here by the Sahara India Parivar.

With chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattachar-jee sitting by his side, Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar made it clear on Saturday that the Centre disapproved of acquisition of fertile land for industry. Had Mr Bhattacharjee paid heed to the Centre’s advice, his party would not have faced such a backlash from the people who are angry over his land acquisition overdrive.

Criticising the Centre’s move to set up a Group of Ministers (GoM) to consider amendments to the law to deal with honour killings, the CPI(M) said that the defence of honour killings by some of those in power is “abhorrent”. The party demanded that a draft of a comprehensive law to deal with such crimes should be tabled in the monsoon session of Parliament.

For any director, a debut film is always special and there is always a personal touch to it. Vikramaditya Motwane, the director of the much talked-about Udaan, is no different.