-Hindustan Times Paris air is about five times lesser toxic than what it is in Delhi yet the authorities in the French Capital have a better plan to deal with the problem. By 2020, Paris will have no diesel car running on its streets and they will be replaced by vehicles running on cleaner fuels like on Hydrogen, natural gas and no emission electric or hybrid cars. “We have a plan in...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Union environment ministry has refused to release bio-safety research dossiers on genetically modified mustard developed by Delhi University under review for possible commercial cultivation, activists campaigning against GM crops claimed today. The activists said the ministry had turned down their request filed under the Right to Information Act for the bio-safety dossiers containing data on environmental and toxicity studies done on the GM mustard engineered with bacterial...

-The Times of India AGRA: Hot on the heels of state food safety officials exposing presence of more-than-permissible levels of lead and monosodium glutamate (MSG) content in Nestle's instant noodle brand Maggi, food safety and drug administration (FSDA) in Agra has found presence of detergent in milk samples of Mother Dairy, which is owned by National Dairy Development Board of India. FSDA's designated officer Ramnaresh Yadav, who exposed the adulteration, told TOI,...

-Down to Earth Threatened by an eviction notice from Shimla High Court over encroachment into forestland, villages come forward to claim their community rights More than 100 villages in Himachal Pradesh have filed their community forest rights claims for the first time since Forest Rights Act (FRA) of 2006 came into being. This happened after the Himachal Pradesh High Court passed an order, in April 2015, asking the government to remove any...

The fourteenth Public Accounts Committee (2014-15) report, submitted to the 16th Lok Sabha in April this year, has found that despite various interim orders issued by the Supreme Court from time to time (based on a writ petition that was filed by People’s Union for Civil Liberties in April, 2001), the Government of India has failed to universalize the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme. This means India has to...