It was the mother of all Nandigrams. If there was one Nandigram on March 14, 2007, then perhaps there were dozens of Nandigrams during the three-day cleanse-Marichjhapi operation in January 1979.    “It was Saraswati Puja. The police were just raining bullets as soon as the refugees landed in our village! Like everybody else on the road, I, too, fled for safety as I could see people falling either injured or...

In what eyewitnesses termed an extremely shocking incident, a Forest department team of the Panna Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh allegedly beat up a pregnant woman during a raid, resulting in a miscarriage leading to the death of her unborn twins on the spot. According to eyewitnesses, a Forest department team raided the house of Rakesh Adhikaari of Kunjaval village on Wednesday and tried to take him away for allegedly hunting...

The head of the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) warned today that the “slow-motion catastrophe” of non-communicable diseases could overwhelm even the wealthiest nations if the root causes of the epidemic, mostly lifestyle decisions, are not addressed. Margaret Chan, the WHO Director-General, told delegates at the First Global Ministerial Conference on Healthy Lifestyles and Noncommunicable Disease Control in Moscow that the fact the many of the chronic non-communicable illnesses in...

Indian cardiologists have produced what they say is the first evidence to show that chewing tobacco can constrict the blood vessels of the heart within minutes and possibly raise the risk of heart attacks. Their study on men who volunteered to chew a single gram of tobacco while having their hearts monitored has revealed significant reductions in the diameters of coronary arteries within 10 minutes after they began chewing. The cardiologists from...

As the stage is set for the crucial meeting of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP), a global regime to protect human health and the environment from dangerous chemicals, to be held in Geneva from April 25, a showdown between the Centre and Kerala has been underway. In the meeting with an all-party delegation from Kerala, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has reiterated the position taken by Union ministers...