Vistara will stop giving plastic water bottles on board its flights, in a bid to reduce plastic usage. The airline, which had earlier banned chewing of gutka on its flights, on Wednesday said it “plans
Washington: Some stores have begun rationing rice, the price of wheat flour has gone through the roof, there's no butter on store shelves, and petrol at the pump is at an all-time high. The usual developing country woes from Asia, Africa and Latin America? Try again. These are stories from the US and Japan, the world's most advanced nations that stand for prosperity and plenitude. Astonishing accounts of panic buying and rationing are surfacing from Tokyo to New York as world leaders are breaking out in cold sweat over tightening food supply chain.
The current food crisis is nature's way of cocking a snook at man's pompousness. With all the tall claims of progress in science, we are yet to find a permanent solution for the most basic of needs i.e., food. Food riots have been reported from a number of countries including Bangladesh, Egypt, Haiti and the Philippines. Elsewhere the prices of edible commodities are hitting the roof.
The Resource Alliance, a UK charity, in association with The Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, recently announced the India NGO Awards 2007 for NGOs that promote good standards and practices in resource mobilisation, accountability and transparency. CEO of The Resource Alliance Simon Collings spoke to Saira Kurup: Why is it important for NGOs to have accountability and transparency?
But don't support military options against Tehran Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comes visiting New Delhi on Tuesday. Since the last visit by an Iranian president in 2003, the suspected efforts to acquire nuclear weapon by Tehran has become a bone of contention between the two countries. Iran formally denies that it has any ambition to become a nuclear weapons power. At the same time it asserts its right under Article IV of the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) to develop uranium enrichment technology for peaceful purposes.
Malaria caused by the deadly plasmodium falciparum parasite is becoming common in India. Even though the number of malaria cases have declined from 30 lakh in 1996 to 16 lakh in 2006, infections caused by plasmodium falciparum have increased from 38% to nearly 50%.
Under normal circumstances, the event that got India international respect would have been an occasion to celebrate by the country's
Bokaro: With the Lok Sabha elections just a year away, PM Manmohan Singh on Tuesday turned the foundation-laying ceremony of the Bokaro Steel Plant's expansion and modernisation programme into an occasion for announcing sops for Jharkhand. He said the Centre was planning to open a new university and an institute of management in Jharkhand. He added that the Centre would give Rs 120 crore for upgrading the Ranchi-based Rajendra Prasad Chikitsha Bigyan Sansthan. He also proposed schemes to convert the Barhi-Jamshedpur, Hazaribag-Ranchi, Ranchi-Jamshedpur roads into four-lane highways.
Routine sampling of blood and faecal extracts from backyard poultry in Tripura has detected the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu virus, infecting birds in a village, 130 km from the state capital Agartala. The virus was isolated from Kalachari village in Mohanpur block just before it started to cause largescale mortality among birds. The samples, that were picked up on April 16, were found to be positive with H5N1 by Bhopal's High Security Animal Disease Laboratory on April 19. However, the final notification of a new outbreak in Tripura was issued by the Centre only on Monday night.
Sasan: Call it the lion's share, twice over. For every
It is surprising that inflation climbed to 7.41% in the week ending March 29 despite the fact that Centre took some radical measures to arrest price rise. It is not that India lacks talent. Manmohan Singh, P Chidambaram and Montek Singh Ahluwalia are some of the best economic brains in the world. The mistake these politicians seem to have committed is that they somehow lost direct touch with the people. Had they been in touch with agriculturists on the ground, they would have foreseen the shortage of foodgrains, vegetables and other commodities months in advance.
