A three-day Tarapur-Jaitapur anti-nuclear plant yatra was stopped the moment it began and hundreds of activists were detained at Boisar in this district on Saturday. Activists and supporters, including Justices (retired) B G Kolse-Patil and P.B. Sawant, social activist Vaishali Patil, and Admiral (retd) L Ramdas, were whisked away in police vans from Panchmarg Tarapur, where they had addressed a public meeting in the morning. They were brought to the Boisar...

Alternative too may pose health problems But most are not persistent in environment Several alternatives exist for Endosulfan in the country though those opposing its ban ignore that. An expert committee of the Central government had listed alternatives to Endosulfan for 47 out of 55 pests affecting 29 crops in Orissa in 2008-09. The Pesticide Action Network (PAN) International has pointed out this in a submission to the Stockholm Convention POPs Review Committee...

India is growing more wheat than it ever was. While other leading wheat producing countries like China and US are witnessing a decline in output, the country has stood as an exception with an estimated record production of 84.27 million tonnes of the staple foodgrain this year. Russia, Canada and Australia, too, are witnessing a downturn. “India is gaining internationally in the wheat production,” S S Singh, Project Director of Directorate of Wheat...

Arundhati Roy’s hilltop bungalow in a protected forest area will be demolished, a Madhya Pradesh revenue court ruled today upholding a lower court’s judgment that the land was acquired illegally. The bungalow at Bariyam village in Panchmarhi, 250km southeast of Bhopal, stands on a 4,346sqft plot that the author’s husband, filmmaker Pradeep Kishan, had bought in 1994. In an eight-page verdict, Bhopal-Hoshangabad division commissioner Manoj Srivastava rejected the petitioners’ plea of ignorance...

Unfazed by controversies surrounding the Bhushans, civil society activists on Thursday rejected demands for their resignation from the joint drafting committee on Lokpal Bill but one of its members Justice Santosh Hegde said he is thinking of resigning from it. The demand for the resignation of lawyer Shanti Bhushan and his son Prashant grew on Thursday following a CFSL report that a CD allegedly involving the senior Bhushan was not tampered...