Wasting five precious years in using various tactics, including use of police force, to acquire land for the proposed Rs 52,000-crore Posco project, the Orissa government on Thursday finally mellowed down its stand and agreed to hold talks with the anti-Posco activists.

The Naveen Patnaik government which attempted to clear the proposed Posco project site of the local residents by using force on Wednesday went on the back foot after the arrival of CPI general secretary A.B. Bardhan.

Finally the mission was accomplished. After two successive failures, India on Monday successfully flight-tested Agni-II intermediate range surface-to-surface ballistic missile.

India is most likely to test-fire its nuclear-capable Agni-II intermediate range ballistic missile from Wheelers Island near Dhamra off the Orissa coast on Monday morning, defence sources said.

The Orissa government, after successfully evicting tribal residents from Kalinga Nagar industrial estate in Jajpur district by use of force, on Saturday made a similar attempt to turn out local people residing in the proposed Posco steel project site at Paradip, nearly 130 km from here.

The Orissa government has decided to take steps to clear procedural hurdles to operationalise Sukinda chromite mines.

Suspected Maoists on Wednesday killed two village guards (chowkidars) at Katma village in Gajapati district, nearly 300 km from here, even as a group of CRPF jawans was engaged in a fierce gunbattle with the rebels in the Serenda forest in Sundergarh district.

Waking up to the dire straits of sugarcane growers and the difficulties faced by the domestic sugar producers in the country, the Union government is planning to come out with a “concrete package” for the sector in the near future.

May 11: In a major setback to the Rs 15,000-crore Vedanta University Project (VUP), the Union ministry of environment and forests on Tuesday asked the Anil Agarwal Foundation (AAF), the promoter, not to proceed for any construction and development works till objections and complaints raised against the projects were heard.