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• Labour minister P A Sangma informed Parliament recently that the Centre had approved a Rs 850 crore child labour eradication scheme in the country.

• Under the National River Conservation Programme, polluted stretches of the Cauvery will be cleaned at a cost of Rs 38.2 crores. This was stated by Kamal Nath, the environment and forests minister, in Coimbatore.

• The National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad has stated in its journal, Nutrition, that potato chips were more harmful to teeth than chocolates, traditionally thought to be the culprit.

• A 10-point programme to save the exquisite Taj Mahal in Agra has been initiated by the Centre. This includes minimising the effects of pollution to the monument from the nearby Mathura refinery.

• A meeting of chief ministers, forest ministers and tribal MPs of the 7 north-eastern states will be convened by the Centre shortly to discuss issues related to forests, including the largescale deforestation in the region.

• In order to combat ecological problems in Asia, the Asia Pacific Environment Association (APEA), with its headquarters in New Delhi, was formed by several NGOs from 8 countries, including India, Japan and Philippines, etc.

• Agricultural scientist M S Swaminathan, while delivering the Dr B P Pal memorial lecture in New Delhi, said that conservation and efficient use of genetic wealth can help in the production of an extra 200 million tonnes of foodgrains required to meet the needs of the increase of 1 billion in the global population in the next 11 years.

• Srinagar's Dal lake, a principle tourist attraction in Jammu & Kashmir, is getting choked by the spread of aquatic plants and algae in it. Its area has shrunk from 33 sq kms to less than 10 sq kms in 50 years.

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