This paper presents a status report of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) on two crucial development parameters—inequality and poverty—that have a significant bearing on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs; especially SDG-1 and SDG-10). The paper tracks the origins and movements of absolute and relative poverty, …
With Russia's approval, the much-awaited Antarctic whale sanctuary will come into effect on December 6. Russia's agreement is a defeat for Japan's campaign to resume commercial whaling using Russian whalers. Now, Japan is also expected to give up its opposition to whale-saving campaigns. Russia's decision followed a fierce struggle between …
THE dawning of the free market era in Russia has plunged Siberia into a vortex of contradictions. Although the region is a treasure house of natural resources such as diamonds, gold, silver and oil, its mining towns - established by the Soviets to harness the abundant wealth - are on …
Russia's health care system is on the verge of collapse. With a freeze on capital investment, the situation has deteriorated to such an extent that a leading hospital in Moscow has resorted to using cats to root out mice and vermin from operation theatres. One of the more serious facets …
THE world seems to be edging back to the nuclear precipice that it had thought it had backed out gingerly from at the end of the Cold War. Between May and August this year, the German police seized 4 consignments of weapons-grade nuclear material from various parts of the country. …
The wolf is quite literally at the Russian door. The wolf population in the country has risen from 22,500 in 1990 to 30,000 last winter. Animal-watchers see a close link between the rise in lupine numbers and the economic crisis in the country. Inflationary trends have made a mockery of …
• FARNWAY, a farmers' cooperative in northeastern England, is all set to pave the way for bio-diesel-fuelled vehicles. It plans to run its cars and lorries on bio-diesel produced from rapeseed. Farnway is not alone in the venture. It is a member of British Bio-diesel, a consortium formed by a …
THE Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is uneasy about Russia's enormous oil reserves. A major worry, reports the Asian Wall Street Journal, is the huge volume of Russian oil that is flowing into world markets -- estimated to be approximately 10 per cent of OPEC's total exports. Among OPEC …
AS RUSSIA moves to a market economy, some celebrated but impecunious cosmonauts are cashing in on their space legacies. Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space, pocketed $255,500 as he watched his training space suit go under Sotheby's hammer in New York in December (Nature, Vol 366, No …
FACED with a serious paucity of storage capacity, the Russian navy has asked the government permission to dump radioactive nuclear waste in the Pacific. A Russian foreign ministry official said the government might have to allow the dumping if navy experts prove that the tankers in which the waste is …
AFTER much dithering, Russia has joined Europe, Canada and Japan in the US-led international space station project. Russia will merge its Mir programme with the US Freedom programme for the project, the first of its kind. Orbiting where Russia's Mir 1 is currently deployed, the project will consist of the …
SCIENTISTS have recently discovered it took only 5 to 10 million years to create the immense diversity of life in the earth's oceans. Earlier, they had thought this biological explosion lasted some 20 to 40 million years, during the Cambrian period. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have dug …
SCIENTISTS say the increase in the atmospheric concentration of methane -- a major greenhouse gas -- is fast levelling off (New Scientist, Vol 140, No 1991). Evidence of a halt in methane rise comes from measurements of atmospheric gases made at 26 stations around the world. In the 1970s, the …
CAVIAR, the ultimate synonym for luxurious living and a major Russian export, is facing a triple threat of poaching, pollution and petroleum. Female sturgeon swim down the Volga river to the Caspian sea with their bodies heavy with the eggs that are pickled to form caviar. But with poachers flourishing, …
NOW THAT the Russians have finally backed out of the deal to supply India with cryogenic rocket-engine technology, Indian space scientists face their biggest technological challenge ever. With more countries wanting communication facilities, satellite launching promises to be big business in the highest of high-tech leagues. The US, afraid of …
Each launch vehicle progressively developed by India is capable of placing bigger payloads into higher orbits. The country's hope of carving a niche in the space-launch market rests on the GSLV
Moscow's abrupt cancellation of the $350-million cryogenic engine deal with India is self-interest, pure and simple. This was conceded by no less a person than Yuri Koptev, who headed the Russian space team in the "negotiations" in Washington. Cancelling the contract with India, Koptev told a recent parliamentary hearing in …
UKRAINE might ratify the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), but it must be accorded special status as a "transition country" -- one with nuclear armaments on its territory that are in the process of being destroyed, says defence minister Konstantin Morozov. Western experts rate Morozov's offer as a bid to find …
THE PASSAGE of genes from one generation to another is a matter of chance. A given gene from a parent has a 50 per cent chance of turning up in the offspring, said Gregor John Mendel, often called the father of genetics. But now a Russian team, headed by Sergei …
SCIENTISTS claim to have unveiled through a DNA analysis the mystery about the fate of Czar Nicholas II and his family in the wake of the Russian Revolution. A team of British and Russian forensic experts matched the DNA from blood samples provided by three living relatives of the Czar's …
An offer of Rs 700 crore as aid by a consortium of Uzbek, Russian and Swedish companies has evoked jubilation among employees of the Tehri Hydroelectric Development Corporation (THDC), which is responsible for building the Tehri dam. The offer is a lifeline for THDC, which is desperately trying to raise …
