Reply affidavit on behalf of the Central Ground Water Board in the matter of Suo Moto case titled "Haryana 60.48% groundwater over exploited Kurukshetra worst Jhajjar best says" appearing in the Tribune, January 8, 2025. The CGWA report, May 3, 2025 addresses the issue of groundwater exploitation and violation of …
Malaysia has lifted a ban on the import of polypropylene and polyethylene, materials used in the plastics industry. The decision signals a temporary truce in its trade war with neighbouring Singapore, which claimed that its petrb- chemical industry had suf fered a blow because of the Malaysian move. The 2 …
The Tamil Nadu Assembly recently passed a bill to regulate aquaculturtb, amidst vociferous protests by the Opposition members, who opined that the bill would only force the farmers to relinquish the hold of their lands for prawn farming. Further, prawn farming would render the fertile lands and groundwater saline. The …
Aboriginal communities in Australia are elated over a new ruling by the Australian High Court: on March 16, the Court declared the federal government's Native Title Act, passed in late 1993, valid. It summarily tossed out a challenge to the Act by Western Australia's conservative government. The judgement has also …
The 3-part environmental impact assessment of the ambitious Bakun hydroelectric dam project has angered the Greens. In late February, Ekran Bhd, the company in charge of the project, announced that the assessment would be submitted in stages to Malaysia's Department of Environment by March-end. The first report regarding the reservoir …
BOTANISTS will now have easy access to information on Chinise flora. An English version of the Chinise Florae Republic Popularis Sinicae,documenting about 30,000 Chinise plant species, has been jointly published by the Science Press in Beijing and the Missouri Botanical Garden. It will also be available on floppies, tapes and …
China is opening its doors to the world in every sense of the phrase. In mid-February, the official Guangming Daily reported that the country had declassified 90 per cent of its scientific and technological secrets under new rules and regulations. The official explanation for the move is that the old …
British farmers are on the defensive as opposition mounts from animal welfare groups on current animal farming practices. In early February, a group of about 2,000 animal lovers clashed with the police in an attempt to prevent a truckload of veal calves from reaching the small port of Brightlingsea in …
Computers will now bring peace in war-ravaged West Asia. This hope has inspired Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres to initiate a project that could give a new direction to information technology in the region. On January 29, he organised a meeting with the Egyptian foreign minister and senior executives of …
ROWS and rows of men and women are shown marching ahead to fight for their rights, the right to have a say in their future. These people are the centre point of Ali Kazimi's film Narmada: A valley rises (87 mins). He documents the sequence of events that led to …
Zimbabwean farmers, already under severe stress, thanks to a meagre and delayed rainy season, are now pitted against an army with a difference. Their croplands have been invaded by an "army worm" -- a swarm of flying pests. The army worm has spread to many of Zimbabwe's main grain-producing northern …
AT THE End of Tears and Anger is a Japanese film on a doctor diagnosing a pollution-related disease. Investigating further, he comes upon its linkages with the social structure. The film bagged the Grand Prize in the 3rd Festival of Earth Vision, held in Tokyo in December last year. The …
After almost a year of wrangling over finances, 19 European nations have agreed to build the Large Hadron Collider (IHC). Unbelievable though it may sound, the us $1.6 billion research machine, to be located at Geneva in a 27 km doughnut-shaped tunnel under the French-Swiss border, will enable scientists to …
GLOBAL trade and agriculture now embarks on a new phase on January 1, 1995, with the establishment of the World Trade Organisation. However, the prickly question of control over crop seeds of the world seems likely to bedevil international negotiators. The latest uncomfortable reminder was exemplified by 2 separate challenges …
The World Bank plans to sow "Seeds of Hope" in war-ravaged Rwanda. The Bank wants to launch this initiative to restore agriculture in this impoverished African nation. Rwanda was virtually self-sufficient in food before the civil unrest in 1994, with 91 per cent of the population involved in farming. "But …
Japan has finally broken its long silence on its plutonium stockpile. A white paper on atomic energy by its Science and Technology Agency says that by 1993-end Japan had 4,684 kg of domestic plutonium reserves; 6,197 kg lay in Britain and France to be shipped to Japan after reprocessing. Agency …
Suppression of information has been a major stumbling block in environmental litigation. Government authorities frequently evoke the Official Secrets Act to declare documents secret. Even basic information like the area of submergence zone of the Narmada dam is classified. The state also claims immunity from producing documents in court under …
TIME was when people used to go into the forests to pick mushrooms. Now they are commonly available in vegetable shops in cities, thanks to the mushrooming of farmers across the country who are cultivating the fungus. Says R N Verma, director of the National Centre for Mushroom Research and …
The idea of reading molecular signatures to ascertain the degree of kinship between species is simple: a common parent gives rise to 2 daughter species which, following Darwinian logic, gradually become unlike each other with each successive generation, acquiring genetic mistakes or mutations. The earlier the time of divergence, the …
WASHINGTON is in the grip of a GATT fever with the American Congress and the Clinton administration locked eyeball to eyeball over Congressional approval of the Uruguay round. So far, President Clinton and his crew have tried in vain to convince Congressmen that the multilateral trade agreement is the best …
Since September this year, panchayats of Maharashtra's Nagpur region have complained that even large quantities of pesticides have had no effect on the brown aphid (delfocidas) pest rampant among their paddy fields. Their experience is shared by farmers the world over. Pests, weeds and diseases are increasingly developing genetic resistance …
