Worthies such as Ratan Tata who have been lobbying the government to go easy on Union Carbide Corporation (http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/5_27.pdf) would do well to read Carbide’s useful FAQs on the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas tragedy, which claimed over 10,000 lives. Worse, over 5 lakh humans, including those born after the disaster, are still suffering the consequences of the gas leak. Even now, Carbide refuses to accept any kind of...

Seeking to set at rest reports of differences with two key negotiators of the Indian team over the country offering unilateral concessions without obtaining any reciprocity and attempts to water down the Prime Minister’s per capita approach, Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said on Sunday that he held “discussions with them, and they continued to be [a] valued part of the negotiating team to guide us...

The road to Khardung La begins in the Indian town of Leh on the northwestern fringe of the Himalayas. Exhaust-spewing army trucks rattle up the side of dry rock, past Buddhist monasteries clinging to the craggy mountainside and alongside small farms barely scraping fertility from the earth. Khardung La, the highest motorable mountain pass in the world, is more than 18,000 ft. above sea level, the air so thin that...

A new report suggests that 175 million children will be affected every year by frequent natural disasters caused due to climate change. Painting a grim future, a report by child rights NGO Save the Children said climate change was the biggest global health threat to children that could increase risk of deaths due to diarrhoea, malnutrition, malaria and other diseases because of reduced community access to clean water, nutritious food...

An analysis of Wikipedia entries reveals the world’s knowledge deserts — which may provide a second wave of activity for the online encyclopedia  Are Wikipedia contributors running out of topics to write about? Recently, much has been made of the fact that the growth in the number of new Wikipedia articles has been gradually slowing and the number of volunteers apparently falling. But Wikipedia still has much to do, with...