Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is UPA's man with the political Midas touch. He needs to lend some of that magic to lift the economy out of its morass. By the Government's own estimate, the economy is expected to grow by a mere 6.9 per cent in 2011-12, a sharp decline from 8.4 per cent in 2010-11. Inflation remains uncomfortably high at over 7 per cent. Investor sentiment has been suffocated in the last one year by policy paralysis and corruption.

Rajasthan govt issue fraud certificates to Cong MP for solar projects

Mining in Aravalli continues unabated despite a Supreme Court ban on it.

The consequent price in terms of human casualty is huge - on Thursday, at least 10 labourers were feared killed when a stone mine collapsed due to blasting in the forest land near Bhiwadi in Rajasthan's Alwar district.

Five bodies were found, including two, on Friday. An operation was on to recover more bodies.

With this, the total toll related to mining activities in the district has risen to 48 in the past two years.

Environmentalist Vandana Shiva on Chipko movement

The government on Thursday allowed public sector oil companies to hike the price of petrol by Rs 3.14 per litre, further burdening the middle- class. The new price will come into effect from midnight Thursday.

The death knell was sounded only five years ago when environmentalists found that the vulture was vanishing faster than the dodo before its extinction. Twenty years ago, Indian vultures numbered 40 million; today, they add up to a measly 60,000. The bad news is that if immediate steps are not taken, the scavenger will be extinct in less than 10 years. Vibhu Mathur, principal scientist working on the vulture conservation project at the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), says, "We have lost 99 per cent of the population of the three most abundant species."

Your favourite dhaba near your office and the vendor selling hot kathi rolls and momos in the neighbourhood market will have to ensure minimum standards of food safety soon.

A new set of rules that comes into force on Friday states that all smalltime food sellers including hawkers, itinerant vendors or temporary stall holders will have to get themselves registered.

The registering authority may be a designated officer or a food safety officer or any official in the panchayat, municipal corporation or any other local body, notified by the State Food Safety Commissioner.

Bt brinjal gets fresh push for clearanceBt Brinjal may soon be back on the menu. The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) which met last week is pushing for its "partial release". In February 2010, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh had imposed an indefinite moratorium on the commercial release of the world's first genetically modified Bt Brinjal.

Urban revolution: 20 new trendsetters to redifine India by 2030India is on the threshold of an urban revolution, the scale and speed of which is unprecedented. It took nearly 40 years for the urban population to rise by 230 million but it will take only half this time to add the next 250 million. Cities will be central to India's economic growth.

New superbug NDM-1 and the misuse of antibiotics in IndiaIs the new superbug NDM-1 really here in Delhi? Can it be there in the water that I drink? In the hospitals? Is it really resistant to all antibiotics? But how can modern medicine function without antibiotics? Are they just sounding an alarm, or do I need to worry? What if I get a drug-resistant infection?