Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
ACTION-packed days seem lined up for delegates at the 9-day International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) at Cairo early this month. Although there is general unanimity on overall objectives - the management of rapid population growth, increasing environmental degradation and pervasive poverty - dissensions that marred the preparatory committee …
THE Pacific atoll of Rongelap in the Marshall Islands is still paying the price for a badly-managed American nuclear test explosion 40 years ago, which drove its people from their homes, irrevocably changing the course of their lives. The final straw came in late July, when the exiles from Rongelap …
HAD Dante been to Antarctica, he might have painted a different picture of hell. Fire and brimstone, the symbols of torture, may have given way to blistering blizzards, long periods of uninterrupted blinding sunlight or netherworld darkness -- and almost complete isolation. While Dante's hell was reserved for the dead, …
Nissan Motor Co, Japan, seems in for rattling-bad times. A study by Japan's transport ministry has found that more people have died from carbon monoxide poisoning in Nissan cars since 1985 than in other Japanese makers' vehicles. Nissan has responded by offering free safety checks on its Skyline, Laurel and …
The Australian government might set a precedent by compensating people treated with hormones from human pituitary glands, which have been linked to deaths from the rare Creutzfeldt Jakob disease -- the human form of the mad cow disease. This follows the report of an independent inquiry, which found fault with …
GREEN connotations of a different kind have left several Pakistani citizens aghast at a recent decision by the Sindh provincial government to ban the manufacture and sale of polythene bags made of recycled plastic. Officials claim the decision was taken on environmental considerations because the disposal of these plastic bags …
EIGHT years ago, an odd battle was fought in the US: conservators debated whether the Californian condor should be rescued from the brink of extinction through captive breeding or left to "die with dignity". There were only 5 of these giant gallant birds left in the wild and the only …
Apart from massively polluting the air, 4-wheelers present another environmental problem -- the annual disposal of billions of litres of engine oil that need to be replaced every 4,800 km for cars and every 32,000 km for trucks. Engineers at the Florida-based TF Purifiner Inc, recently devised an oil-cleaning system …
SOUTH African airforce personnel battled an Atlantic storm to fly in a helicopter and save penguins in Dassen Island, Cape Town, when they were endangered by oil from an old wreck. "This is certainly the worst oil pollution disaster we have ever had," said Allison Dehrmann, an official of the …
The one good, vengeful thing that the Red Injuns gave to the West was a stinky, filthy, addictive, noxious wad of goo, which virtually made a reeking tabagie out of the English court. Over time, it slipped from being Sir Walter Raleigh's court status symbol to possibly the biggest mass …
*Every year, 4 million children in Africa and Asia die of diarrhoea. * Nearly 800 million people in the 2 continents are at serious risk of contracting chronic respiratory diseases and cancer from indoor air pollution. * It is believed that global warming could trigger epidemics of tropical diseases worldwide. …
INDIA has 12 million blind people and about 8 million people who are sightless in one eye. The main causes of this disability are nutritional deficiency and lack of health education -- blindness can be prevented and cured. "Eye diseases associated with malnutrition are more common in the south than …
THE ozone layer over the US had thinned to unprecedented and worrisome flimsiness during 1993, say scientists who had monitored sunlight at various ground sites over the year. Between January and April of last year, ozone concentration was 12.6 per cent below normal (New Scientist, Vol 142, No 1927). What …
His last act symbolised his philosophy of life: live for others. Arun Kumar Sen, who died on March 1 this year, bequeathed his body to a medical school for dissection and experiments. The press hailed this act as the first of its kind in West Bengal. The act was typical …
THE Japanese have come up with a process that makes wood resistant to fire, decay and warping. Earlier attempts at improving one of the 3 attributes invariably worsened at least 1 of the other 2. In the new process developed at the Miyagi Prefectural Institute of Technology, the wood tissue …
YOU love those swatches of lustrous, flowing hair, but visits to the beauty salon may do more harm than good. After a year of extensive research on blood flow to the brain, New York-based neurologist Michael Weintraub found that the risk of stroke is far greater when the neck is …
CAN India suddenly go vegetarian? Several animal rights activists have come forward with offers of alternative employment for the butchers who have lost their jobs as a result of the High Court order passing the closure of Delhi's Idgah slaughterhouse. But will this sardonic professional rehabilitation solve anything? As long …
DESPITE (or is it because of?) his lifelong work in fields directly related to environment, Eisenbud is not likely to be a mascot for most of today's environmentalists. About the green movement's persistent anti-technology tone -- especially in its initial period -- he notes that it has often been technology …
* The state of health around the world shows a broad improvement, but the gap between the least developed countries (LDCs) and the rest of the developing world has actually widened. * More people can expect to live longer. In 1990, 91 countries with a combined population of 3,600 million …
THE sea has advanced to their doorsteps but they have to go far and wide to catch fish. These are the fisherfolk of Ratnagiri district, which accounts for nearly Rs 500 crore of the foreign exchange the country earns from the exports from fisheries. The breakwaters, jetties, big trawlers and …
