Development gains top priority: Gogoi

Despite overcast skies, star-gazers and scientists lined up at the venues across Assam on Wednesday morning to get a glimpse of Venus passing over the Sun. Venues in all the districts were teeming with sky gazers from early in the morning to watch the rare celestial event through special telescopes and other scientifically-approved equipment. The Guwahati planetarium and the Regional Science Centre pulled huge crowds where people were queuing up for their turn at the telescopes set up to ensure hassle-free observation of the celestial event. The sky was normal before 6-30 but overcast skies denied the people of the state from catching a clear glimpse of the 'planet of love' moving over...

Aaranyak...

Assam sees the first wave of flood rendering around 15,000 people homeless because of incessant rains in the last two days. According to officials sources, water levels of major rivers, including Brahmaputra and Barak, are on the rise. In Lakhimpur and Dhemaji districts, iver 30 villages have been affected by the surging waters of Pisola river. At least 10 villages were hit in Baksa and Udalguri districts. The water levels in most of the major rivers Brahmaputra, Burhidehing, Subansiri, Pagladia and Barak are still rising.

Assam Governor Janaki Ballabh Patnaik on Tuesday called upon the people to take a pragmatic approach for striking a balance in ecology and environment rather than merely observing global events. Addressing a gathering of students at the Raj Bhavan in Guwahati on the occasion of the World Environment Day, he urged the people not to treat such occasions merely as a ceremony but take it as a day of reckoning to pledge oneself to plant a tree each for a safer and brighter future. He asked everybody to convince each of their own family members to take the 'green path'.