The Delhi government's "go green go solar' campaign is fast catching up with educational institutions switching to renewable energy to meet their water needs in the power-starved national Capital. Around 50 schools and colleges including Miranda House, Sri Ram College of Commerce, St Stephans, Modern School, Delhi Public School at RK Puram and Air Force Bal Bharati school have installed solar water system at their hostels.
Delhi government is planning to ban private buses on the BRT corridor. According to sources, the move follows yesterday's accident on the corridor, in which a security guard was killed by a private bus. So far 10 accidents have been reported on the BRT corridor and out of them six had taken place this month. Only one of the cases involved a DTC bus. According to a senior official of the transport department, the drivers of private buses are not disciplined and they drive in a rash and negligent manner.
Giovanni Marchitelli has something to show Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi when Italy's leader arrives Wednesday: a month's worth of garbage piled next to his pizzeria. Marchitelli, 64, hopes that Berlusconi will force local officials to solve the continuing problem due to full landfills, or his family's pizzeria will be out of business. "We can't stand to work anymore because of the garbage smell," he says. "People won't stop and eat because of the garbage."
A growing wave of companies in all sectors
Heavy rainfall in the Southeast and record snowpack in the Rockies have eased dramatically the nation's worst drought in more than a century. Drought conditions are the least severe since January 2006. A quarter of the USA is suffering some form of drought today, down from 65% last summer, federal agencies said. In the Southeast, where drought has been most severe, the area in drought has plummeted from 86% in August to 40% today.
Suez expects to land "multiple" large-scale projects in Brazil after a consortium led by the French electricity and water group won a concession for a $5 billion hydroelectric plant in the Amazon. Due to merge with state-owned gas supplier Gaz de France in coming weeks, Suez said the Brazilian deal would be profitable despite agreeing to sell two-thirds of its production 45 percent below market prices.
Certain kinds of carbon nanotubes -- hailed as a new "wonder" material -- behave like asbestos and could lead to a lung cancer that appears decades after exposure, an international team of researchers said on Tuesday. The findings suggest that the lightweight building block, 100 times stronger than steel and used in a number of everyday products, could be dangerous if inhaled in sufficient quantities, the team wrote in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
Germany outlined plans on Tuesday to extend the world's "protected areas" to conserve natural habitats and appealed to industrialised states to donate cash to aid developing nations meet the costs. Germany, president of a UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Bonn, announced its "Life Web Initiative" on the second day of the May 19-30 meeting and said it aimed to create a greater number of protected zones and better coordinate them. About 4,000 delegates have gathered in Bonn to try to agree on ways to slow the rate of loss of plant and animal life.
Scientists have discovered the tracks of a herd of 11 long-necked sauropods walking along a coastal mudflat in what is now the Republic of Yemen, the first discovery of dinosaur footprints on the Arabian peninsula. Sauropods, the largest land animals in earth's history, walked on four stout legs and ate plants. "The nice thing is we finally filled in a bit of a blank spot in the dinosaur map," said Anne Schulp, a palaeontologist at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, who worked on the study.
A Palestinian-designed electric car drew admiring stares on Tuesday from Gazans forced to use cooking oil to power their cars because of a fuel shortage. "At first people laughed, saying it would not work, now people are begging us to convert their cars," said Fayez Amman. Working with fellow electrical engineer Wasim al-Khuzundar, Amman hooked up an engine to 32 batteries. Driving their small car through the streets of Gaza City, they said the vehicle could travel up to 200 km (120 miles) on a single charge.
China raised the number of dead or missing from a devastating earthquake to more than 70,000 on Tuesday, as rescuers found another survivor eight days after the huge tremor hit. A government statement said the number killed had now topped 40,000, and state news agency Xinhua reported that a further 32,000 were missing. Authorities had previously said they expected the final death toll to exceed 50,000. More than 247,000 were injured.
A new animated map of the earth from space illustrates the potential impact of climate change over the next century and can be viewed on your computer. The project, Climate Change in Our World, is the result of cooperation between web search engine Google, Britain's environment ministry and the country's Met Office. Based on Google Earth which uses NASA satellite images, viewers can run a time lapse series to watch the earth warm under medium case scenarios up to 2100 either from a planetary perspective or zeroing in on countries and even cities.
Myanmar's junta has given the World Food Program permission to use helicopters to send aid to cyclone survivors, the United Nations said on Tuesday, as flags flew at half-staff across the country to mourn the dead. The first day of a three-day mourning period passed in torrential rain and diplomatic prodding of the reclusive generals to allow more international aid after Cyclone Nargis hit in early May, leaving 134,000 people dead or missing.
Global temperature rises should be kept well below the European Union's target of 2 degrees Celsius to avoid costly damage to people and their lifestyles, according to a European Parliament report. European consumers must be given better information about the "carbon footprint" of goods they buy, including products imported from outside the 27-nation bloc, it added.
Congressional Democrats on Monday said White House pressure may have influenced the Environmental Protection Agency to reject a bid by California to impose strict limits on emissions from new cars and trucks. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson rejected California's plan on Dec. 19, 2007, despite recommendations from agency staff to approve the tough limits, Democratic staff said in a memo based on five months of investigation.
As the world grapples with fears of a major food crisis, the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator has decided to reserve $100 million from the world body's emergency fund to address immediate issues arising from it. John Holmes, who also serves as Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, said that these funds will be used for life-saving activities in the hardest-hit sectors, including food, agriculture, health, nutrition and logistics.
About six waves of massive extinction are known in the history of the Earth, the last one wiped out dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Now, add one more to the list
Nearly half of the workforce in Indian industries, especially in urban areas, is overweight, and 27% suffer from hypertension. These revelations came across in a study conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to gauge workplace health problems. The survey showed that 27% of the workforce suffered from hypertension, 10.1% suffer from diabetes and 47% were overweight.
Greenpeace says the world's most popular electronic game consoles contain high levels of toxic chemicals, though they do not pose an immediate danger to gamers. A report by the environmental watchdog group says Nintendo's Wii, the Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 use varying degrees of bromine, PVCs and other potentially harmful chemicals, including phthalates, which can affect human hormones.
With a view to revive the negotiations in the multilateral trade, the WTO released two revised draft texts on Monday evening
