New Delhi wants post-Fukushima certification, says French Minister India will postpone its final decision on the purchase of EPR type nuclear reactors from France until after the current post-Fukushima nuclear safety tests have been satisfactorily completed, it is reliably learnt. Srikumar Banerjee, Chairman of India's Atomic Energy Commission, conveyed this message to French Industry Minister Eric Besson when the two met during the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) consultations which opened in...

The famine in the Horn of Africa is being seen as an inevitable consequence of drought, "the worst for 60 years". But this famine was almost entirely preventable, and presenting it as a natural disaster doesn't help; nor does our insistence on waiting for a major crisis before responding. Even though lessons about how to prevent famines have been documented time and time again, we don't learn. The conflict in Somalia...

Long promised by the UPA government, the food security bill will be tabled in parliament in December this year. However, the National Advisory Council (NAC), which drafted the proposal, is tussling with the government over the “dilution and misdirection” of the Bill. The final Bill diverges from the original NAC draft on key issues: adoption of alternatives to the PDS such as cash transfers, the risk of inflation due to...

-DNA   Water scarcity is the main reason behind the suicide of farmers according to an approach paper on the 12th Five Year Plan (2012 to 2017) prepared by two Tamil Nadu-based experts. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, one farmer commits suicide every 30 minutes. The main cause of these suicides is non-availability of water at the initial stage of the crops leading to the ruining of crops and the subsequent...

-PTI     TIRUCHIRAPALLI: In an effort to use human urine as fertiliser, efforts to set up the country's first Human Urine Bank have been initiated at Musiri, about 35 km from here. The initiative, a joint effort of the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi and Society for Community Organisation and People's Education (SCOPE), Musiri, was launched to help extraction of Struvite from urine. Struvite is a phosphate mineral that can be...