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 …
FILM star Salman Khan's arrest in Jodhpur for killing a chinkara, an endangered animal, and Sahib Singh Verma's resignation as chief minister of Delhi are both developments that hold a message for environmentalists and all those engaged in environmental management. First let us look into the unprecedented action that has …
The next generation of anti-AIDS drugs could be based on a chemical extracted from green coffee beans, US researchers claim. Edward Robinson and his colleagues from the University of California made extracts from over 60 plants routinely used by medicine men of the Kallawaya tribes in Bolivia. They discovered that …
A number of mysteries including why Saturn appears to be much younger than the rest of the planets may soon be resolved. Gilbert Collins and his colleagues at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, USA, are working to unearth the reality. They have conducted studies with vast quantities of …
The Responsible Ecological Social Tour (REST) programme, which was launched a year ago, is coming under heavy criticism from environmentalists. The programme was launched in a cluster of villages near the Pra Chang mountain in northern Thailand's Phayao province for the purpose of ecotourism. Officials at non-government organisations running the …
THEORIES of gravity are coming under scrutiny because of the bizarre behaviour of some spacecraft. "We have been working on this problem for several years, and we accounted for everything we could think of," says John Anderson, planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), …
Pakistan will hold talks with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on taxes slapped by the European Union (EU) on unbleached cotton exports. Pakistan's exports of cotton fabrics have decreased sharply with the imposition of anti-dumping duty. But Pakistan has little hope that the WTO will go against the EU, which …
A MAJOR operation is on to restore the famous Dal Lake in Srinagar. Encroachments around the lake are being removed by the department of housing and urban development under its lake conservation programme initiated in 1997. According to the department, a major achievement of the programme is the reclamation of …
Female flight attendants run a higher risk of getting breast cancer. This could be due to the effects of jet lag on melanin, a hormone, the level of which is up to 10 times higher levels in the blood at night than during the day. Crossing time zones repeatedly may …
Despite the claims made by the Chinese authorities about an improved flood management system, the floods in northeast China have killed 2,000 people and left 14 million people homeless. Analysts believe that the situation would worsen if the Three Gorges Dam on the river Yangtze is built. Though the authorities …
IN AN exciting development, us researchers have discovered a "fountain of youth", albeit at a cellular level. The secret of everlasting youth, they say, is actually a DNA chain called telomerase. It is a cellular clock of sorts, winding down as the cells age. Its manipulation, say the researchers, can …
During the 1960s and 1970s, when modernisation and development first hit the Third World, the water buffalo was rejected as an unfit animal as far as its economic utility was concerned. But their thinking isn't the same anymore. "Water buffalo is not merely a work animal but a dependable producer …
Queasy students often pass out during dissecting frogs. However, all that may change. Using a virtual frog program developed at California-based Stanford University, queasy students can examine the cyber frog from any angle, peel back its muscles and take it apart and put it back together.
Pakistan has decided to lodge a formal complaint with the United States Patents Office against a patent given to a US firm, RiceTec Inc. on a premium rice brand originating in the Indian sub-continent. According to the commerce secretary, M Iqbal Farced, a verbal complaint has already been lodged for …
The Delhi High Court recently directed senior government officials to take appropriate steps to control noise and air pollution caused by firecrackers during Diwali. A division bench comprising Justice Y K Sabharwal and Justice K S Gupta directed that a meeting be convened by officials of the Central Pollution Control …
Island sheep may help resolve a fierce debate in ecology about population crashes. British researchers are using sheep populations on St Kilda, a remote archipelago off the west coast of Scotland, to check the relative importance of climate and local factors such as the availability of food. Ecologists usually do …
SEA turtles help fertilise the dunes where they lay their eggs, says an ecologist from Florida, who believes their unhatched eggs make an important contribution to the health of the beach. Coastal dunes are notoriously fragile, providing barely enough nutrients to support the animals and plants living on them. According …
As flood waters started to recede, the Chinese authorities began to count the cost of almost four months of devastating floods and draw up a plan to help millions get back on their feet. In northeastern China, water levels in the swollen Songhua and Nenjiang rivers were still high but …
SEVERAL studies show how human breast milk is far superior to the much-advertised artificial milk formulae. Compared to infants fed on these, those fed on breast milk have lower rates of diarrhoea, ear infections and bacterial meningitis an infection that causes inflammation of the brain and spinal cord. In this …
Nearly all the states in peninsular Malaysia logged below their annual quota in 1997, primary industries minister Lim Keng Yaik said. "In the last three to four years, the states have kept to their annual coupe (quota). "Some have even logged below their annual coupe," he said. "States are also …
In 1976 NASA's Viking spacecraft snapped a photograph of a feature on Mars that was startlingly familiar to all Earthlings: part of the rocky surface looked just like a human face. Most interpreted this Martian Mount Rushmore as a trick of light and shadow, but others credited it to alien …
