Order of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of In Re: News Item Titled "Neglected Katora Houz in Hyderabad’s Golconda Fort Cries for attention appearing in ‘The Siasat Daily’ dated 25 May 2025". The application was registered suo-motu based on the news item titled “Neglected Katora Houz in Hyderabad’s …
CHECK any restaurant in northern India; the chances are you'll find the name Palam Potteries on their plates and cups. Since 1955, this plant, located near the India Gandhi airport in New Delhi, has supplied its ware to restaurants and hotels. But the threat of relocation forced the management to …
"IT IS A sad reflection on our society that we shall probably have to wait for another series of massive locust plagues before politicians and financiers will take a serious long-term look at the problem," wrote Professor Chapman, a renowned expert on locust control in the 1970s. The truth of …
AIR, WATER, garbage, radon toxicity, sludge, noise. More than a part of our daily lives, these are perennial if hackneyed jargon. Few people would love to begin their mornings with them, fewer would care to read about them and even fewer disgruntled citizens would care to buy a book and …
THOUGH chemical manufacturer DuPont withdrew its Benlate DF fungicide from the market in 1991 and subsequently paid about $500 million to settle nearly 2,000 claims filed by growers, its troubles are not yet over. In the first of more than 400 Benlate damage suits, a jury in Arkansas found the …
IGNORING vehement protests by environmentalists, the Sri Lankan government has decided to go ahead with construction of a coal-fired thermal power plant in Trincomalee, on the island republic's eastern seaboard. Ecologists have been objecting to the project ever since it was first proposed in 1987 by the Ceylon Electricity Board. …
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, …
ALASKAN authorities seeking to rebuild the state's dwindling caribou herds have decided to allow airborne slaying of wolves to the extent that their population is halved. But beset by protests by US wildlife enthusiasts, such as the New York-based Fund for Animals, the helicopter proposal has been temporarily grounded. The …
WHILE it has become fashionable to talk of ecological economics, minus the jargon, the subject simply attempts to calculate the full cost, which includes environmental costs, that the society should pay for producing a commodity. And that is where it differs from everyday market economics -- it takes into account …
LINKING together individual molecules to make complicated structures, much in the same way as children playing with Lego, chemists are now trying to construct materials whose properties they can fix beforehand. At least half a dozen groups in USA, Canada, Europe and Australia are assembling large arrays of molecules to …
A SERIOUS error acknowledged recently by AIDS researchers at USA's prestigious Harvard Medical School is being cited as an example of what can happen when scientists rush into clinical trials pleading that the urgency of their work excuses corner-cutting. In the Harvard incident, field trials were held nationally, based on …
DESPITE China's much-vaunted economic development, more than half its population still depends on highly polluting fuels to meet domestic needs and several studies show that chronic respiratory diseases are on the increase because of exposure to the smoke from these fuels. In fact, chronic respiratory diseases are among the leading …
SCIENTISTS are making headway in using genetic engineering techniques to develop commercial varieties of rice strains that are resistant to diseases. Initial trials by researchers in China and Japan of rice strains modified to fight the red stripe virus, which in southeast Asia has been known to destroy entire harvests, …
THE ANGLO-US pharmaceuticals group, SmithKline Beecham, has linked up with Human Genome Services of the US to convert DNA coding data into commercial products, especially new drugs. Glaxo and Roche have also made similar forays in the race for a new range of drugs and diagnostic products, which are natural …
FOR AFRICA, by Africa, is the World Bank's new slogan while handling the continent's economic problems. V K Jaycox, vice president for the African region, recently said the Bank would no longer dictate development plans to African nations, would stop "imposing" foreign expertise on the governments and aim at "building …
SHAH JAHAN'S dream in marble is at greater risk from pollution today than two decades ago, when protest over damage to the Taj Mahal was at its peak. But even after 20 years, experts are still at odds on how serious is the threat to what is arguably the world's …
Indian-made autorickshaws may be taken off roads in Kathmandu as a pollution-control measure. Vehicular exhaust fumes from automobiles get trapped in the bowl-shaped Kathmandu valley, which is surrounded by high hills. Air pollution has reached such high levels, the authorities have been forced to undertake a study to identify short- …
A EUROPEAN Community plan to introduce a carbon tax to reduce oil consumption and pollution may run into heavy weather in Japan, Malaysia and some other East Asian states, whose officials say they would prefer to cut the lead and sulphur contents in oil that is considered harmful. "We believe …
ATMOSPHERIC pollution is taking a heavy toll of European trees. The 1991 survey of trees conducted by the UN Economic Commission for Europe shows nearly a quarter of all trees are defoliated.The majority of critically affected forests are in Bulgeria, erstwhile Czechoslovakia, Germany, Poland and the UK. Overall conifires are …
ALARMED by spiralling health care costs, the Japanese government is taking steps to wean the public away from its tendency to reach for a variety of pills at the slightest cough or shiver. The Japanese are the biggest spenders on drugs in the world, with a per capita expenditure of …
AN INDIAN-born biologist, Prafulla K Bajpai, and his colleagues at the University of Dayton, Ohio, have developed a novel drug delivery system that will bypass the harmful side-effects of AZT -- the primary drug used in AIDS treatment. AZT, which is usually taken orally as pills, causes swollen tongues, bleeding …
