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Cover Story

A Consumer movement is catching on in Nepal.Communities are extending the grid to villages.This threatens to undo the effort put in small-scale off-grid power generation to fight poverty. How can Nepal harmonize the two initiatives ?

Editor's page

All is not well: climate negotiations in a new avatar

Climate change negotiations—cold after the freeze at Copenhagen—have warmed up again.In early April, negotiators met in Bonn, Germany, on the possible agreement that could be signed at the meet scheduled in December 2010 in Mexico.

News

Half a cervical cancer vaccine

Tests for early detection are more important in India

20 months of despair

Little help for people from the Bihar government since Kosi changed course

Pee for plants

Experiments explore the potential of urine as fertilizer

Slumdog sleuths unearth scam

Housing authority was rehabilitating them in illegally built multi-storeys

Tornado kills 129

Squalls sweep West Bengal, Bihar; survivors seek relief

Border village gets drinking water

And its place on revenue map

Forest fires singe Nagzira sanctuary

Tendu leaf contractors are prime suspects

Farmers in a bind

Proposed GAIL pipeline through Punjab will curb land rights

Rs 1.3 cr to a family

Court enhances compensation to Narmada dam displaced

International banks lobby for Lafarge

Amounts to influencing ongoing Supreme Court case, say activists

Drinking water audit report by March 2011

In addition to conducting financial audits, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), VINOD RAI, has decided to conduct a social and environmental audit. He spoke to JYOTIKA SOOD about his department's decision to audit pollution of drinking water sources in the country

Fire in Mundka scrap market

May be good news for landlords who now have metro connection

Ridleys in danger

Their young ones may not find food near shore

Curfew on tribals

For protesting road construction for steel industry hub

Neela Hauz to breathe easy

Cobalt-60 is in Delhi

Authorities unsure how to check entry of radioactive material in scrap

World Bank energizes South Africa

US $3.75 billion to fund power plants

News 360°

News 360° - Briefs

Interview

Tourism-dependent nations value elephants

Science & Technology

Tale of two reptiles

Fossils of an ancient snake wrapped around a dinosaur enraptures scientists

Timely preservation

The real magic beans

Drumstick seeds can clarify water up to 99.5 per cent

Undercover agents

What makes nematodes so good at killing crop pests

25 million years of error

Scientists got the origin of flowering plants wrong

Soils are breathing faster

The list of potential carbon emitters keeps growing

You forgot the lizards

Pulse relief

Attack migraine in its aura

Magnet turns detector

Measure of the soil’s remanence can quantify pollution

Web Check

New age lingo

www.urbandictionary.com

Many of us would be familiar with the abbreviations, “lol” and “rofl”. If you aren’t, maybe you should check out www.urbandictionary.com. It will tell lol stands for laughing out loud, and rofl means rolling on the floor laughing.

Feature

Lean pastures

Drought and a viral disease strike Jaisalmer’s livestock. Kurush Canteenwala finds out how the herders are coping

Coconut courier service

The economy of a village is built around coconuts—delivered free to a shrine via buses

The Shetty farm model

Engineer couple try out rainfed farming

Days of the dino

A priest-scientist to artists, dinosaurs have had their popularizers

Leader

Ideas to save government money

There is something about India’s government machinery that makes it impervious to simple, low-cost solutions. It spends hundreds of crores of rupees to make available drinking water. The money, it is widely known, does not trickle down to villages that need potable water. The government knows it cannot achieve its goal with a centralized mindset.

Crosscurrent

Stop looking to government

Individual initiatives can go a long way in solving the energy crisis

A party of non-economics

The BJP is losing out because of its pro-rich agenda and communal politics

Review

Home they brought the poison

book>> Our toxic world, A guide to hazardous substances in our everyday lives • Script Aniruddha Sen Gupta • Illustrations Priya Kurian • Toxics Link and Sage • Rs 395

From the blurbs

Enclosed Waters: Property Rights, Technology and Eco?logy in the Management of Water Resources in Palakkad, Kerala by Jyothi Krishnan, Orient Blackswan, Rs 395

Shades of green

Book>> The Green Pen, Environmental Journalism in India and South Asia • edited by Keya Acharya and Fredrick Noronha

In one of the essays in the book, journalist Lyla Bavadam quotes an African proverb: “Till lions have their historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter.” This sums up the requirements of an environmental journalist. In times when corporates have the ear of the government, environmental journalists have to represent the environment to people who make laws.

Ants’ point of view

Edward O Wilson is one of the most important biological theorists of our times. An expert on social insects, discoverer of new species and passionate advocate of biodiversity, he is best known for his groundbreaking work on animal behaviour.

Media

Shift control

When established telecom firms said it was not economical to provide fast broadband services to Lyddington, people raised £37,000 to set up their own network. The 200 homes in this eastern UK village now have a broadband that offers them speeds of up to 40mbps (megabits per second). Homes in rural UK usually do not get broadband speeds of more than 2mbps. The broadband service is the endeavour of Rutland Telecom scheme, a joint effort between villagers and a local Internet service provider.

Leaves and stone maths

A document of the education department in the Australian state of Queen-sland suggests the use of rocks and leaves to bring an aboriginal perspective to maths lessons. The maths plan, available online, also recommends exploring patterns and symbols as well as using timelines that include the history of Australia’s aboriginals.

Western disturbance

A group of international campaigners has launched an online petition against Ethiopia’s Gibe III dam. The group wants to pressure Western donors and banks not to fund the dam, saying it would destroy the means of living of 500,000 people.

Ethiopia’s government says the dam is needed to generate enough electricity for its population and to sell abroad. It has called the campaign, online at www.stopgibe3.org, the handiwork of patronizing people in the West.

News Snippets

>> On April 14, militants ordered music off the air in Mogadishu, Somalia’s war-torn capital. They said music is un-Islamic.

>> A new version of Romeo and Juliet will unfold through Twitter messages and on Youtube. Such Tweet Sorrow is a collaboration between the Royal Shakespeare Company and Mudlark that produces entertainment programmes for cell phones.

Historical signs

An innovative programme has given the hearing impaired greater access to the historical and cultural wealth of Havana. A sign language interpreter would accompany tourists to Old Havana, the historic part of the Cuban capital, if the group included hearing impaired.

Discredited

A bbc documentary about socialite Robin Birley and his carbon credits business venture in Africa should never have been broadcast, an internal inquiry by the corporation has revealed.

Print model

On March 28, a newspaper with an innovative business model evolved by a group of journalists and academics hit the stands in Chile’s capital Santiago. Diaro Uno (Newspaper One) promises to give a voice to those left out by the country’s media.

Letters

Farmers’ fundamental right

We must have the right to decide whether we want to eat Bt brinjal (‘Don’t make a mash of it’, February 16-28, 2010). Similarly, farmers should also have the right to decide what food to grow since they will be affected the most. Why just Bt brinjal, farmers will be affected adversely by any genetically modified (GM) crop. Such crops will steal their freedom of choosing seeds.

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