International fund floodgates that stayed locked during the Left front regime are now opening up for Mamata Benerjee. Latest in the "parivartan" syndrome is the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which has given the green signal to go along with one of the state's most ambitious roadway projects - the 271 km express corridor connecting North and South Bengal. It is a Rs2,270 crore project, which World Bank had refused to fund in...

-Express News Service   A team of 13 research scholars from the Centre for Sustainable Technologies, IISc, will now conduct environmental service enhancement assessments at the national level starting from June. These scholars have conducted a study on environmental service enhancement and conservation and vulnerability reduction at Chitradurga district. "Talks are on to start the assessment by the last week of June at Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Meghalaya. Discussions are...

-The Telegraph   Smoke from cigarettes, diesel and burning trees contains a chemical similar to the gas that had leaked from a pesticide factory in Bhopal in 1984 and has been implicated in heart disease, cataract, and rheumatoid arthritis, US scientists said today. The researchers who developed an instrument to measure gaseous acids in the ATMosphere have found traces of the chemical called isocyanic acid that is produced during the burning...

-ToI   The government patched together an intricate—and flawed—fertiliser system over the last 40 years. It now wants to dismantle that monster. The challenge before it is to preserve its pro-agriculture and pro-poor objective, while correcting the flaws that crept in, reports M Rajshekhar If it all goes to plan, buying or selling fertiliser will never be the same for the 120-odd companies that make up this Rs 1,00,000 crore industry or...

The Supreme Court turned down on Wednesday a government demand to re-open the case into the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy and hand harsher sentences to seven men convicted of negligence. The court dismissed CBI's curative petition seeking restoration of stringent charges against Bhopal tragedy accused saying it was filed 14 years after the 1996 judgment, which was only a prima facie view of evidence that had come on record till that...