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Cover Story

Metro projects can ease congestion. But lack of integrated planning is undoing the benefits of this mass transport system. Nidhi Jamwal and Ankur Paliwal report

Editor's page

Green buildings: how to redesign

There is a buzz about green buildings. But the question is: what does one mean by building green? And how does one design policies to make the green homes of our dreams?

News

News 360°

News 360°-Brief

Vaccine units need booster shots

Health ministry orders them to resume production but offers no action plan

Mumbai BRTS: held up in transit

Bus transport project changes hands; planners say it’s sabotage

Pay tax to get water

South Asia

Villagers block garbage route

Fire at Bayer plant

Toxic gas leak kills one, three villages hit

Poor monsoon means no power

Odisha reels under outages

High court eases loudspeaker ban

Knight Riders cheer; green activists see red

Energy audit shy

Coca-Cola asked to pay Rs 216 crore

Kerala gets tough with soft drink company for polluting Plachimada

Pink bollworm resistant to Bt: Monsanto

Commercial interest behind claim, says Centre’s research institute

‘Vedanta violated laws, tribal rights’

MoEF panel indicts mining giant

End of journey for Gwalior’s tongas

Drive autorickshaws, municipality tells horse-carriage operators

End of journey for Gwalior’s tongas

Drive autorickshaws, municipality tells horse-carriage operators

Interview

Mithi is a river, not real estate

Jagdish Gandhi wears many hats. A historian writing a book on Mumbai’s colonial past, he was among those responsible for restoring the Kutchh palace. He a...

Science & Technology

Culled, efficiently

A new model that cuts down the costs of controlling invasive animals

Towards least resistance

New strategies to combat TB

News for cooks

Frying meat on gas stove frees compounds that damage genes

Involuntary sex change

This is next in the series of frog extinction events

Modified to work

Salinity of black cotton soils can now be measured easily

Science & Technology - Briefs

Imaging: the future

FARHAT BASIR KHAN zooms in on the heart of motion in a picture

Wired to improve

New silicon-based solar cells

Traced, scanned, illuminated

Fear of invasive tests leads to a novel way of cancer detection

Insulin impulses

Avoid taking decisions when blood sugar levels are unstable

Web Check

Cellular sale

Streptococcus pyogenes. Most people will not care for the tongue twister.

Special Report

Lost and found

Karnataka villages are reviving underground springs that were once their lifeline in summers

On shifting sands

Thousands in Bihar prepare to migrate, again, as the Kosi changes course

Feature

In their own language

Ritual ease

Food

Healthy fast food

Sahyadri tribals eat buckwheat to stay fit

Leader

Our little understood urban dystopia

OUR understanding of Indian cities— their history, geography, sociology, politics— is seriously limited. At the time of its Independence, India was primarily a rural country. The government invested heavily in understanding rural India.

Crosscurrent

Slums as self-confrontation

The attempt to free cities of slums will only make them invisible

Review

Slum voices

Amiddle-aged woman whose only trips out of home have been to the neighbourhood grocer’s store describes what it means to suddenly become the sole bread earner. A man whose first act after buying a fridge is to cut off his neighbour’s electricity connection.

The back up man

Buzz Aldrin knows what it is to be second best. In his most famous photograph, his face is not visible. Taken on the moon, Aldrin’s face is entirely hidden inside his space helmet.

China syndrome in tiger trade

Each section of the Handbook on Wildlife Law begins with a quote from Sun Tzu, the ancient war guide from China.

From the blurbs

Theatre of Conflict, City of Hope, Mumbai 1660 to Present Times, Marriam Dossal, Rs 2450

The work traces the evolution of Mumbai from seven ‘islets’ to a megalopolis of hope, grit and despair. It traces how coconut gardens, rice fields and fishing villages yielded to cotton mills, docks and railways in the 19th century, and more recently to skyscrapers, malls and urban slums.

The Sunderbans, Folk Deities, Monsters and Mortals by Sutapa Chatterjee Sarkar, Orient Blackswan, Rs 550

Media

Political correctness

The government of Western Australia has launched a review of the language it uses when referring to aboriginal people. The state’s indigenous affairs minister Kim Hames has asked the Aboriginal Advisory Board to recommend the most appropriate collective term to use.

Degrees of insensitivity

The mayor of a Japanese town, which conducts an annual dolphin hunt, has protested the Academy Award given to The Cove, a documentary on grisly slaughter.

Virtual reality bites too

The South Korean police arrested a couple who became so obsessed with an online game that they starved their infant daughter to death.

News Snippets

>> Angola’s first health newspaper Jornal da Saúde de Angola was launched on March 11. A joint initiative by the country’s health ministry and Angola Doctors Order (OMA), the monthly newspaper’s 21,000 copies will be distributed free.

>> Learning about the Amazon’s biodiversity has become easier with the inauguration of the Museum of the Amazon near the jungle metro - polis of Manaos in Brazil. Scenic overlooks, giant aquariums and hanging walkways in the treetops give visitors an opportunity for direct observation.

Call to Cameron

Visual sophistry of James Cameron’s Avatar may have got it Oscars in technical categories, but many say the film’s plot was all too familiar.

Card carrying members

From July people in Belarus will not be allowed to enter Internet cafes without passports or other identification proofs.

A chip to block

Proud of their self-styled image as a nation of doglovers, people in the UK are chewing over a government proposal to insert a micro - chip in every canine in the country.

Letters

Relocated and damned

It is disheartening to learn the plight of residents of Bikhnathori village in Bihar who don’t have basic facilities like water and electricity (‘Corridor of uncertainty’, March 1-15, 2010).

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