Senior biotechnology Scientists have questioned the rationale for public consultations on genetically modified (GM) brinjal called by the environment ministry to decide the fate of what could be India’s first biotech food crop. “I think this (public consultation) is absolutely unwarranted,” said Shantu Shantaram, a scientist who was among the world’s first regulators of biotech crops in the US during the 1990s and who says he strongly favours the introduction...

UN climate panel chairman Rajendra Pachauri today said the panel’s erroneous forecast that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 had not hurt its credibility and that he had no intention of resigning. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had earlier this week conceded that its fourth assessment report had without substantiation predicted that most of the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 because of climate change. “It was...

The high prices of essential commodities are expected to decline by the end of the rabi season in the next two months, Vijay Shankar Vyas, member of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, said here on Tuesday. “Food inflation would come down by March-April as we are expecting a good rabi production this year,” Dr. Vyas told journalists on the sidelines of the launch of a publication on agriculture, Millions Fed,...

Professor Syed Iqbal Hasnain, whose research on the melting of the Himalayan glaciers, led to a major controversy, on Wednesday blamed “certain prejudicial forces” for mounting a campaign against his “diligent” research. Speaking out for the first time since the London-based The Times quoted him as saying that his findings on the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035 in the impact of climate change were “speculative,” Professor Hasnain said “vested interests...

Indian geologists who had two months ago accused a UN climate science agency of misleading the world with alarmist predictions about Himalayan glaciers have now said they stand vindicated. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has launched an exercise to find out how its fourth assessment report issued nearly three years ago contained a prediction that most of the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. “We’re looking into it. We’re...