Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of News Item titled "2 killed in blast at illegal cracker unit in Thanjavur appearing in The Hindu dated 19.05.2025". The application is registered suo-motu on the basis of the news item titled 2 killed in blast at illegal cracker unit …
TECHNOLOGY change is resulting in problems of large-scale and permanent unemployment. The demand for blue-collar employees is decreasing, while that of white-collar workers is increasing. Overall, many economies are showing trends of becoming increasingly less labour intensive delinking outout from total employment. In the USA, blue-collar employment in the manufacturing …
IN SPITE of receiving 150 bids, the response to the first-ever auction of pollution rights, organised recently by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is termed poor. The 150 bids are a benchmark in the US agency's market-based strategy to reduce acid rain. Most of the allowances offered by private …
THE GOVERNMENT has decided to allow higher royalty payments than its present 8-per cent ceiling, on a case-by-case basis, to improve the quality of technology being imported. Finance secretary Montek Singh Ahluwalia says royalty payment norms are being reviewed, indicating a change of heart that hopefully will reassure multi-national companies …
US BIOTECH shares have fallen 33 per cent since January 1 and many firms face the dismal prospect of going out of business, if investors continue to shy away, afraid that drug price reforms will weaken the industry's profitability. Further deterring investors are US President Bill Clinton's public criticism of …
WHILE the European Community has rejected vehement French demands for a ban on the import of cheap fish primarily from Russia and other non-EC countries, it has agreed to monitor fish exports from these countries more closely. France -- one of the biggest fish consumers in the EC -- had …
FISHERFOLK and environmental scientists are blaming industries set up along the Sindh coast for causing serious health problems by emitting increasing amounts of carbon monoxide and lead into the environment, says a Panos report by Najma Sadeque. Of late, many people in Karachi, including children, have suffered brain haemorrhage and …
AS THE world's biggest per capita consumers of bananas, the Germans are understandably angered by an European Community (EC) proposal to restrict imports of the fruit from Latin America. The EC proposal, which is to come into effect July 1, would tax banana imports from Latin America at the rate …
FOLLOWING a series of accidents at Hoechst AG, one of Germany's three major chemical manufacturers, stricter controls and guidelines are expected to be imposed on them. German federal minister for environment Klaus Topfer is determined to intensify pressure on the industry to adopt improved safety standards and in Hesse, the …
ONTARIO Hydro's newly appointed chairman, Maurice Strong, has initiated steps to reduce the corporation's debt and review its operations, including its nuclear programme. Ontario Hydro, Canada's largest power corporation, owes US $29 billion. It raised its rates by 11.8 per cent in 1992 and in addition shelved expansion plans, retrenched …
INDIA is the first country to make environmental auditing compulsory. Countries such as the UK and the Netherlands have encouraged their industries to conduct audits since the mid-1980s, but it's not mandatory. The ministry for environment and forests (MEF) has decided to postpone from May 15 to September 30 the …
PEOPLE confined to wheelchairs will be able to reach for anything stored on the topmost shelves because a wheelchair has been developed in USA that can be raised a couple of metres without loss of normal mobility (Design News, Vol 49, No 1). Named Full Access Wheelchair, the new design …
ENVIRONMENTALISTS and civil rights lawyers strongly oppose the Sri iLankan government's move to shift jurisdiction of all cases involving projects approved by, the Board of Investments (BOI) from district courts to the court of appeal in Colombo. This means that a person may no longer petition a district court for …
HIROSHI Nakajima, newly re-elected director general of the World Health Organisation, could face a demand for his resignation at WHO's annual assembly in May in Geneva, unless allegations of financial irregularities are resolved. Nakajima won a hard-fought campaign in January for a second five-year term. Eighteen of WHO's 31-member executive …
THE BRAZILIAN government swung into action recently to evict thousands of gold-panners from a 94,000- sq-kin Yanomami reserve near the Venezuelan border to save the 9,000 members of South America's largest Indian tribe from an outbreak of malaria. Thousands of panners who left the reserve to celebrate Carnival elsewhere are …
A NEW V ACUUM cleaner has over come the perennial problem of dust clogging the filter and reducing the machine's efficiency. Dyson Dual Cyclone whizzes dirt and air around at high speed, but instead of using filter, the dirt is collected in a plastic container that can be clipped off …
THE TAMIL Nadu government's decision to encourage private industries to set up wind turbines has received a good response and with an increasing number of industries rushing to buy land, prices, have boomed in the two areas developed for wind farming - Muppandal in Kanniya-kumari di'strict and Kayattar in Chidambaranar …
IMMEDIATELY after the monsoon, most of the paddy-fields in central Kerala are prepared -- not for cultivation, but for brick making! Brick-making has been gaining momentum during the last 15 years because it is easy money. From about one hectare of paddy-field leased from farmers, a brick manufacturer can rake …
"WASTE is only a resource unused," believes Satyesh Chakravarty, a former professor of resource studies at the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta. He maintains waste disposal has become a major urban problem simply because urban refuse is treated as waste -- and not as resource. As a result, says …
Proposals to promote industrialisation in ecologically fragile but genetically rich areas such as the Himalayan states and the island territories have drawn equal flak from both environmentalists and environment and forest ministry officials, who say they will take the issue up with the Planning Commission. The five-year tax holiday lure …
HERE IS a country that can proudly boast that it has no industrial pollution. Though mainly dependent on fisheries and tourism, land reclamation, coral and sand mining and sewage dumping is posing nascent problems in Maldives. But Hassan Shakeel of the ministry of fisheries and agriculture says, "These activities have …
