-The Hindu Violations of Coastal Regulation Zone and Environmental Impact Assessment notifications make official claims questionable The debate over nuclear energy will go on, but the issue with the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP) is one of the several illegalities on which it is founded. In 1988, India inked the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant deal with the former Soviet Union. Two key elements in it were: the highly dangerous and toxic “Spent Nuclear...

-AFP NURJAHANPALLY: When Mahatma Gandhi took up the baton for home-grown cotton a century ago, he may not have realised the devastating impact its cultivation would have on the land he so loved. Cotton is a thirsty plant and parts of the country are drought-prone. But the intensive farming process for cotton leaches the soil and requires high pesticide and fertiliser use that pollutes further downstream. Now in Warangal, dotted with statues to...

-The Hindu Farmers’ protest against the proposed 1,980-MW power plant in the trans-Yamuna Karchhna tehsil of Allahabad district entered its 777th day on Tuesday. While the district administration recently served a month’s ultimatum on the farmers to return the compensation they had received for land acquisition, the farmers told The Hindu that they would not be able to repay the amount, regardless of the ultimatum. Meanwhile, they say they will continue agitating at...

-Mainstream Weekly Intense and motivated propaganda, powerful national and international diplomatic pressure, verging on pure and simple arms-twisting of the kind the Third World has been facing for decades by means of the active role of the econo-mic hit-men in the policy establishments, huge cash-back lobbying, both in India and abroad, blunt attempts to bamboozle the persons holding key positions in India’s policy establishment through a combination of hissing and kissing...

-The United Nations Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was today presented with a top United Nations award for his efforts to increase food production, contributing significantly to reducing the number of people around the world suffering from extreme poverty. “Let me give you one number that illustrates the magnitude of this contribution,” the Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), José Graziano da Silva, said in presenting the agency's highest award,...