Judgment of the Supreme Court in the matter of In Re: Zudpi Jungle Lands. A batch of applications involved a peculiar issue concerning the situation prevailing in the six districts of eastern Vidarbha region namely Nagpur, Wardha, Bhandara, Gondia, Chandrapur and Gadchiroli. The issue pertains to the status of the …
Pollution levels in the Hooghly river rise sharply after the idols are immersed at Durga Puja, revealed a study done three years ago by J J Ghose of Calcutta University. Though publication of the study had been held back for fear of offending religious sentiments, the state has now realised …
Dense cinchona and silver oak forests covering 3,000 ha in Valparai in the Annamalai hills will be replaced by tea plantations if the state-run Tamil Nadu Plantation Corporation Ltd (TNPCL) has its way. TNPCL was set up in 1976 to rehabilitate Tamil refugees from tea gardens in Sri Lanka. Since …
THAT THE world's population problem is not merely a numbers game, was the view expressed by most delegates attending the Population Summit of The World's Scientific Academies, held in New Delhi from October 24-27. The summit statement's emphasis on reaching "zero population growth within the lifetime of our children", therefore, …
* With the patents of several important drugs about to expire, even the giant German chemicals manufacturer, Hoechst, is trying to enter the North American generic drugs market by bidding for 51 per cent of the Copley group of USA. Hoechst says the share of generic drugs in the US …
Environmental issues in India are contested by different social groups, including the state. Since the law vests and divests contesting groups with rights and resources, it has itself become a subject of contest. Wildlife enthusiasts demand legislations to make sanctuaries inviolate from human interference, while others demand laws protecting the …
The Bhopal High Court has pulled up the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for "lack of seriousness" in handling criminal proceedings against Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), whose negligence caused the Bhopal gas leak in 1984. In a three-and-a-half page order given on September 27, chief judicial magistrate Anil Kumar Chaturvedi …
IN THEIR quest for cultivable land, tribals have cleared more than 2,025 ha of virgin forest in the Hadgarh sanctuary in Orissa's Keonjhar district in less than two years. According to the Antyodaya Chetana Kendra (ACK), a voluntary organisation that has been working in the area for nearly a decade, …
THE WORLD Bank recently organised a conference in Washington on 'Valuing the Environment'. There is probably no other way that market economists can deal with the environment except by treating it as an externality that ought to be 'internalised' through suitable valuation and appropriate fiscal interventions in the marketplace. The …
PAKISTAN'S cotton crop will reach the target of 960 million kg despite the locust threat and reports of a virus attack, according to the country's central cotton committee. The final output, however, will depend on the extent to which Pakistan is able to mitigate the damage from the locust attack. …
The Kerala High Court has blocked the state government's highly-publicised distribution of 28,588 ha of forest land to migrant farmers who occupied the land prior to 1977. On September 15, the court stayed the distribution of title deeds for land either occupied originally by tribals or included in the Idukki …
GERMAN industries and town councils agreed in the first week of September, to loan $345 million to the Duales System Deutschland (DSD) to rescue the country's ambitious recycling programme from the brink of bankruptcy. Trash collection companies had threatened to stop collection unless they were paid the $121.2 million owed …
PAKISTAN'S JUNIPER forests -- the second largest in the world -- have been struck by the dwarf mistletoe, reveal Pakistani scientists. The mistletoe is a parasite that hampers the growth of the host, seriously affecting seed development and leading to premature death. Vast stretches of the forest have been affected …
India's agricultural universities are producing far too many forestry graduates for the jobs available. Protests by the graduates prompted the Union ministry of environment and forests (MEF) to write to the department of personnel in the Union home ministry, requesting them to include forestry as an optional paper in the …
THE UPHEAVAL in Canada's forestry sector is shaking many of the biggest companies to their roots. Parent companies, strapped for cash, have stopped supporting subsidiaries that are making losses because of the low newsprint and pulp prices -- the mainstay of Canada's forestry industry. The giant CP Forest joined a …
THE EIGHTH session of the negotiating committee for a convention on climate change, held in August in Geneva, failed to agree on "joint implementation" by industrialised countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Joint implementation essentially means that industrialised countries can sponsor cheap efforts in the Third World to reduce greenhouse …
WITH PREDICTIONS by World Health Organisation officials that 40 million people will be infected by HIV by 2000 and six million of them will go on to contract AIDS and die, a cure for the disease holds out promise for vast profits -- and the Australians, at least, are determined …
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 …
SUB-SAHARAN Africa's debts have increased three-fold since 1980 and the only prospect is that the arrears will mount as just half the scheduled payments are being met. Solutions being explored range from implementing the so-called Trinidad terms to creating a UN Economic Security Council (ESC), whose 11 permanent members would …
IS THERE a tenth planet in our solar system? Astronomers who have observed Uranus and Neptune deviate from their calculated orbits, attribute such irregularities to the gravitational pull of an unknown planet, usually referred to as Planet X (Nature, Vol 363, No 6424). But Myles Standish of the Jet Propulsion …
THE MONSOONS in Bangladesh have once again triggered floods, displacing 1.5 million people. The worst affected are Sylhet and Chittagong, where road and rail links with the rest of the country were snapped. Bangladesh, located in the delta regions of two major rivers, the Ganga and the Brahmaputra, receives vast …
