The Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority Bill is a first step towards granting functional autonomy to the country's nuclear regulator. THE true independence and functional autonomy of the existing Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) has been questioned for long. The issue gained further importance in recent months after it was raised in many quarters in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March in Japan. To allay public fears as...

-The United Nations   Signs of ozone depletion are again appearing over the Antarctic, the United Nations reported today, adding that prevailing temperatures and polar stratospheric clouds indicate that the degree of ozone loss this year will most likely be about average in comparison to the past decade. However, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) noted that it is still too early to make a definitive statement on the level of depletion of ozone...

Fighting the insurgency will need careful planning and sustained innovation. But New Delhi seems to have only big sacks of cash and even bigger words. Eleven weeks after the annihilation of an entire company of the Central Reserve Police Force in a Maoist ambush in April 2010 near the village of Tarmetla — the largest single loss India has ever suffered in a counter-insurgency campaign — Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram...

The ministry of rural development has written to all the states warning them not to go slow or suspend works under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act at any point of time in the year. The communication reminding the provisions of the right to work Act comes in the wake of reports that some states are going slow in execution of works under the UPA's flagship social sector programme,...

-The Times of India   Delhi Police on Friday denied permission to veteran social activist Anna Hazare to hold an indefinite hunger strike at the Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on August 16. The Delhi Police referred to the Supreme Court's 2009 order to deny team Anna permission for the indefinite strike anywhere in Delhi, the Times Now channel reports. The police, in its letter to Hazare, said that as Parliament would be...