The Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has given environment clearance to the controversial Jaitapur nuclear power project slated to come up in Madban village (Ratnagiri district) along the Konkan coast. This is the second major project, after the Navi Mumbai airport, to be cleared by minister Jairam Ramesh in a week. The 9,900-mw Jaitapur nuclear Power Plant, the country's largest, will be set up in collaboration with the French...

Wants States to have power to ban pesticides Forest Minister Benoy Viswom has said Kerala was of the considered opinion that the Centre should take a relook at the Pesticide Management Bill of 2008. In a letter to Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh on Saturday, he said that Kerala, upon studying the draft of the Bill, had found it not addressing the core issues of pesticide misuse,...

Jharkhand embarked on its first panchayat polls in three decades on an encouraging note today, recording an impressive turnout in defiance of a few determined efforts by Maoist groups to disrupt the process at various places. Voters queued up from early morning, helping the state to notch up a poll percentage of 64.7 per cent with chief minister Arjun Munda’s home district of Seraikela-Kharsawan recording the highest turnout of 79 per...

Focus may be on forestry issues and reducing emissions from deforestation This beach resort, swarming with tourists and sports utility vehicles and having opulent hotels and evident unsustainability, may not be the ideal place for a climate change conference but the real issues of climate change are too critical not to be debated anywhere. The United Nations Climate Change Conference that gets under way here on Monday may not result in much...

For past several weeks, thousands of farmers in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Rajasthan, Bihar and Jharkhand have been left in the lurch. They had planted urd and til crops in a large acreage, and to their dismay no grain formation took place in the standing crop. Unable to bear the economic loss, at least four farmers have reportedly committed suicide. Thousands of farmers have been pushed deeper into economic distress....