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, …
POLITICAL support for expensive scientific projects, plagued as they are by cost overruns, is dwindling in the US because with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the defence applications of space research are now less urgent. Besides, US scientists have suggested -- for the first time in modern memory -- …
TWO RUSSIAN scientists propose to get rid of radioactive waste by throwing it out of the solar system. The waste will be blasted out of the earth's atmosphere on conventional rockets and then fired out of the solar system using energy from the waste itself, according to Konversia, a Moscow-based …
INDIAN Space Research Organisation (ISRO) officials are not unduly worried by the stalled transfer of cryogenic rocket technology from Russia to India. They believe alternative cryogenic engine technology, which uses supercooled gases to fuel rockets, can be developed indigenously if Russia gives in to US pressure and withholds the transfer …
RUSSIA -- and the Soviet Union before it -- has dumped twice as much radioactive waste in the sea as 12 other nuclear countries put together, a special commission set up by President Boris Yeltsin reports. The dumping, first reported in a British weekly is said to be still continuing …
AS THE first president of the International Green Cross (IGC) -- an organisation that has been set up to help victims of human-made disasters and is to have offices at Geneva and The Hague -- ousted Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachov's new responsibility is to save the planet. At IGC's formal …
RIGHT on the heels of the Tomsk-7 nuclear disaster, the British weekly, The Observer, reports Russia has been dumping nuclear reactors at sea and plutonium from nuclear warheads is posing a threat to international fishing grounds off the Norwegian coast. The weekly also alleges that the Russian submarine fleet is …
AN EXPLODING tank of radioactive waste at a secret weapons plant in western Siberia is reportedly contaminating much of the surrounding area. In what is billed as the worst nuclear accident in the region since the Chernobyl disaster, a radioactive cloud billowed northeastward from Tomsk-7. Officials said the exact amount …
WHILE it was still dark on a recent February night, a swath of light streaked across Europe for a few moments, telling the world that brightness at midnight had become a reality. For six minutes beginning 0522 GMT (1052 AM in India) on February 4, sunlight reflected by a space-based, …
MEASURING the radioactivity of snake venom, scientists say, can fairly accurately determine overall con7 tamination in an area. This would be particularly useful in such places as the former Soviet Union, which is contaminated by different kinds of radioactive isotopes as a result of waste released from nuclear fuel plants, …
RUSSIA has offered to trade its cut-price satellite launch potential for a guaranteed number of launches at international prices. Space agency chief Yuri Koptiev said he would accept a quota of three launches a year, one-fifth of the total world market. This would generate US $200 million for the Russians, …
THE TEHRI dam project (TDP) is back in news. Even as engineering experts and scientists reiterated building such a high dam in a seismically sensitive region is hazardous, an offer from a consortium of Russian and Uzbek companies to finance the project brought joy to its proponents. A two-day workshop …
The cold war between the superpowers not only left the entire world cold in fear, but perhaps also cooled the Earth, say Russian researchers K Y Kondratyev and G A Nikolsky. Their theory is that the atmospheric nuclear tests of the early 1960s released into the stratosphere vast amounts of …
Australia is regretting buying a pig in a poke. A large quantity of peat moss it had imported from Russia has been found to be dusted with irradiated caesium (a soft, silver-white element of the alkali metal group, found in minerals) from Chernobyl. The moss was tested only after it …
AS MANY as 58 nuclear reactors in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe will be run to near full capacity to meet electricity shortages this winter, despite safety hazards. This follows the countries' failure in getting a firm commitment from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) at …
FOUR million ha of the Siberian coniferous forest, the taiga, are cut down every year, and it is feared that this may shortly increase as controls on logging disintegrate after the break-up of the former USSR, says a report prepared by Armin Rosencranz and Antony Scott of the Pacific Energy …
THE RECENT Group of Seven (G-7) summit clearly indicated what the outcome of the Rio conference is likely to be. There was no significant mention of any environmental issues nor was the subject of environmental aid debated at the summit. The single environmental issue discussed at the G-7 summit -- …
PROPONENTS of the Tehri Dam Project (TDP) have had the rug pulled from under their feet. The Soviet engineers who were supervising the project have gone home and money from the former Soviet Union is in jeopardy. So far, no alternative source of finance has been found for the Rs …
The dam's safety and design parameters must be cleared by the MEF. Environmental management plans must be formulated and clearance obtained from the MEF. Catchment area treatment: THDC will identify critically degraded areas, and prepare an action plan by December 31, 1990; treatment has to be completed by December 31, …
USA, Japan and the European Community have together pledged a total of US $75 million to the establishment of an International Science and Technology Centre in Moscow which will provide stable employment to scientists in the erstwhile USSR. That this is primarily a bid to scotch the likelihood of these …
Act 1 (18 April): Yeltsin suspends rocket technology transfer to India following the threat of sanctions by USA. Act 11 (26 April): Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao assures Parliament that the contract has neither been suspended nor cancelled even as U R Rao, chairperson of the Space Commission, returns …
