VARANASI: The soaring mercury (over 37 degree Celsius) in mid-March in the city clearly indicates the heating intensity of summer in the coming months of May and June when water will be the most precious thing.

VARANASI: The millennia-old city welcomed the Nav Samvastar 2067 of Hindu calendar in its own style holding a series of programmes at the ghats and different other places on Tuesday.

To greet the rising Sun of the Hindu New Year, vedic students of Shri Vidya Mutt assembled on the Shakaracharya Ghat at dawn and performed yogik ashanas. The programme was organised under the auspices of Vidyashree Dharmarth Nyas, founded by the Shankaracharya of Jyotish and Dwarka Sharda peeth's Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati to propagate and preserve the oriental wisdom and Indian culture.

A family in Varanasi is struggling to nurture a cerebral palsy affected youth.

Attending to 21-year-old Shafaq since childhood has taken a toll on this poor family, as the father struggles to somehow arrange for the two square meal.

But disappointment overwhelms Hamid whenever he thinks how all his efforts for son's cure and care haven't been of much help.

Hamid, who is a weaver, has already sold off all his valuables to ensure treatment for Shafaq. But he finds his all efforts made so far have been in vain because the son hasn't improved much.

Two men were arrested here for robbing train passengers mostly on the Mumbai-Varanasi route after drugging them, police said Monday.

'Cash worth over Rs.1 lakh and other valuables have been recovered from the duo - Ram Bali, 28, and Ram Vachan, 35. They were arrested Sunday and found to be involved in robbing at least half-a-dozen passengers after drugging them. The hunt is on for their other accomplices,' said Superintendent of Railway Police Deepak Verma.

VARANASI: How about installing a solar panel in the house to tap solar energy or driving an energy-efficient hybrid car? While a number of papers on technological innovations in electrical and electronics engineering have gained attention in Prastuti-2010, a number of engineering students have also come up with eco-friendly renewable energy technologies and pollution-free sustainable development solutions to tackle burning issue of climate change, on Saturday.

New Delhi: A former MLA of Uttar Pradesh has admitted to giving money and helping the two suspected Indian Mujahideen terrorists who escaped during the Batla House encounter on September 19, 2008 in New Delhi.

Former Azmagarh MLA Abdus Salaam said that he knew one of the suspects, Junaid alias Harris. He also claimed that he didn’t knew that the boy was involved in terror activities.

Salaam made the claims in an exclusive interview with CNN-IBN.

CNN-IBN: When did Shahzad and Junaid (the two terror suspects) meet you?

Avis Andrews is accustomed to law -- and order.

However, that wasn’t the case when the Fremont attorney made a trip to India recently.

“It appears there is no order. The traffic is fascinating — carts and cattle in the road -- (but) they manage to miss each other,” Andrews said. “Tiny, narrow streets. You’ve got to get out of the way for cars, carts and motor scooters.”

It was another form of transportation that brought Andrews to India.

The main reason for the journey was to attend the Camel Festival at Pushkar.

“They have thousands of camels,” Andrews said.

VARANASI: Utter chaos prevailed in the trade tax office premises on Tuesday when lawyers and office employees came face to face. Situation became normal only after intervention of senior officers and police.

VARANASI: When the political class of the country is busy creating uproar in the Parliament on the issue of women reservation, the most essential and primary need of the fair sex-- particularly the adolescent girls--which is proper nourishment, has been overlooked.

If the analysis of a study conducted by the medicos of Banaras Hindu University (BHU) is to be believed, the nutritional status of adolescent girls has been far from satisfactory and it calls for urgent interventions at individual, family as well as community level.

NEW DELHI: Diagnostic chains such as Dr Lal Pathlabs, Super Religare Laboratories, Piramal Diagnostics and Metropolis are scouting for regional
diagnostic centres, which could trigger cons olidation and increase the market share of the organised players to about one-third of the total market in the next few years, company officials said.

At present, the $1-2 billion domestic diagnostic and imaging market is dominated by standalone regional players and organised chains hold 5-10% market share. These companies are growing at 40-50% compared with the industry growth of 15-20%.