Representatives from 127 governments have agreed to add endosulfan to the United Nations' list of persistent organic pollutants to be eliminated worldwide. The action puts the widely-used pesticide on track for elimination from the global market by 2012. The decision was among more than 30 measures taken by Parties to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants to strengthen global action against POPs at their meeting in Geneva last week. The...
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Learning with the Times: Endosulfan has chronic adverse effects on humans
What is Endosulfan? Endosulfan is a pesticide which was introduced in the 1950s and soon became a leading chemical to fight a broad spectrum of insects. The out-of-patent pesticide is marketed under several names across the world. The most common of these names is Thiodane. It is used in paddy, cotton, vegetables, fruits, Cashew, tea, coffee and a wide range of other crops. Because of its effectiveness against termites, it is...
More »Bid to restrict subsidised LPG use by R Suryamurthy
The government plans to restrict subsidised domestic LPG cylinders to six per household every year. For additional cylinders, consumers will have to pay the market price. Data show 65-70 per cent of households use 5-6 cylinders (14.2 kg) a year, while the remaining use more. In Calcutta, PSU oil marketing firms suffer a loss of Rs 329.73 by selling an LPG cylinder at Rs 365.10. A senior oil ministry official said the proposal...
More »I-T dept urges CBI action against tainted babus of MP & Chhattisgarh
The Income Tax department has recommended CBI action against four senior IAS officers of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh who had been raided by the department last year and assets worth hundreds of crores recovered from them. Arvind Joshi and his wife Tinoo Joshi, both 1979 batch IAS officers; M A Khan, a retired IAS officer; Babulal Agarwal, a 1988 batch IAS officer and two executive engineers were raided by the I-T...
More »Ghost of Marichjhapi returns to haunt by Snigdhendu Bhattacharya
It was the mother of all Nandigrams. If there was one Nandigram on March 14, 2007, then perhaps there were dozens of Nandigrams during the three-day cleanse-Marichjhapi operation in January 1979. “It was Saraswati Puja. The police were just raining bullets as soon as the refugees landed in our village! Like everybody else on the road, I, too, fled for safety as I could see people falling either injured or...
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