The slippery lifeline

Fresh evidence

The Washington dc-based National Research Council's committee on toxicants and pathogens in biosolids (solid organic matter recovered from sewage treatment) has recently come out with its report. The report, Biosolids applied to land: Advancing standards and practices, questions the very basis of the us Environmental Protection Agency's (epa) standards on application of sewage sludge to land.

Half-hearted democracy

If you like to judge a book by its cover, here's a mixed metaphor: the title is 'Deepening democracy in a fragmenting world', but the image shows pigeons flying out of drawn out hands. Depth and flight don't make an easy marriage. But this, perhaps, would be reductionism. The Human Development Report 2002 of undp offers some vital indicators about the politics-development link.

Satellite Maps Forests

The hills are alive with tradition. One method killsslashes and burnsthe other is healingand sustains. In the northeast hills of India are found medicinal plants that are treasured for their life giving potential. Tribals use these plants to kill pain and treat diseases.

Courting lung cancer

It has all the ingredients of a thriller novel. Big bucks, dirty politics, powerful organisations, wily strategy, secret documents, and gullible victims all over the world succumbing to lung cancer. Isolated voices of injured smokers against a powerful tobacco front are ruthlessly drowned but eventually an echo is created as litigants get together to launch an attack against the multinationals. The finger becomes a fist to knock out Goliath.