• A package is being prepared for relocating villages inside two Project Tiger sanctuaries in Rajasthan. The package, to be carried out with financial assistance from the World Bank, would include the rehabilitation of villagers and compensation for their land which they would leave inside the sanctuaries.
• The West Bengal government has decided to convert the Mahananda Wildlife Sanctuary in North Bengal into a tiger reserve. The two other tiger reserves in the state are Sunderbans and Buxa.
• The Union government has decided to set up a committee to draw up a 10-year perspective plan for the chemical and petrochemical industry. The panel will consist of members of the government and industry.
• Indian scientists are setting up a second nuclear reactor based on fuel extracted from Kerala's beach sands.
The first one, Karaini, is operating at Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) at Kalpakkam near Chennai.
• Contaminated groundwater may gradually kill infants in Bangalore's semi-urban areas of Mandya
district. A two-year study of ground-water from 19 wells in the district revealed nitrates and chlorides, which were above permissible concentrations.
• The first-ever project in the world to prevent pre-birth and childhoodblindness will be launched in Karnataka at Nelamangala, a rural district near Bangalore.
• The Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC) has once again been caught on the wrong foot with reports that jaundice was spreading in the walled city. Highly contaminated drinking water has been identified as the main cause for spread of jaundice, which is acquiring epidemic proportions.
• Nobel Laureate J D Watson said the Human Genome Project to identify all the genes in the human
DNA would be completed by the year 2003. He was delivering a talk on "From the double helix to the human genome project", organised by the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore.
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