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Briefing about the trade performance for the financial year 2010-11, here today, Shri Anand Sharma, Union Minister for Commerce & Industry said that “We have received the export figures for this fiscal and it is indeed heartening to see that our exports for the year ending March 2011 touched US$ 245.9 billion registering a growth of 37.5%”.

New Delhi: The country will have normal monsoon this year. Releasing Long Range Forecast for coming June to September period, Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, Shri Pawan Kumar Bansal said, “ The rainfall for the country as a whole is most likely to be Normal i.e. 96-104% of Long Period Average (LPA). There is very low probability for season rainfall to be deficient (below 90% of LPA) or excess (above 110% of LPA). Quantitatively, monsoon season rainfall is likely to be 98% of the LPA with a model error of + 5%. The LPA of the season rainfall over the country as a whole for the period 1951-2000 is 89 cm.”

MANILA, PHILIPPINES - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is extending financial assistance to help Armenia upgrade its urban transport services to improve living conditions and bolster economic opportunities in 12 of the country's major and secondary cities.

New Delhi: Cooperative Ministers of States and Union Territories are meeting here tomorrow to discuss ways to ensure autonomy and democratic functioning in cooperative institutions. Shri Sharad Pawar, Union Agriculture and Food Processing Minister, will inaugurate the National Conference of Cooperative Ministers.

The world economy while gaining growth remains fragile, with the financial system still unstable, continuing surge in oil and commodity prices, volatile capital flows, and high food price-driven generalized inflation across developing Asia, posing risks especially to its fast-growing major economies like China and India.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Milosevic Modi has again demonstrated that his capacity for setting new lows in politics remains undiminished. His government has banned Great Soul, a new biography of Mahatma Gandhi by former New York Times India bureau chief and editor Joseph Lelyveld. The ground for the ban, passed after a unanimous vote by the Gujarat Legislative Assembly, is based on hearsay—a review by Andrew Roberts, a British practitioner of canned imperialist history and vulgar celebration of royalty, in The Wall Street Journal, one of the world’s most wretchedly Right-wing papers.

Anna Hazare’s announcement that he will accept parliament’s rejection of the Lokpal bill shows that he has mellowed over the past few days. Such a statement would have been unlikely at the time when he was sitting on fast at Jantar Mantar surrounded by his acolytes. But his latest stance is an acknowledgement that the process of the bill becoming law can be more complicated than he may have presumed.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will provide up to $150 million in credit guarantees to help India scale up its use of solar power as a major renewable energy source.

New York: It is important to ensure that security measures do not hamper the movement of mail or undermine the growth of the postal sector, says the head of the United Nations Universal Postal Union (UPU) after a group of experts met to discuss safety standards in the industry.

New York: Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is expected to decline slightly this year despite the prevailing high prices of opium, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported today, saying that Government effort to discourage production could yield further reduction.