Reports

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Western Ghats UNESCO

Western Ghats: No UNESCO tag this year

25 May 2012

The Western Ghats may not get its World Heritage Site status in the near future. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which assesses proposals for sites of natural significance, has asked UNESCO to defer granting the WHS tag to the Western Ghats. This means that the World Heritage Convention may drop this proposal now and India can submit a fresh proposal for nomination only after three years. The IUCN recommendation has been made in the IUCN Evaluation Report which...

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Women drivers

Sun film rule to eclipse their security cover

18 May 2012

As of now, it is a case of ironies, albeit quite bitter for some. With the police in the city, as elsewhere in the country, gearing up to enforce the Supreme Court’s directive on vehicles with sun films, many women are an apprehensive lot. The same tinted glasses that were seen by the court as one of the reasons perpetrators of crime manage to get away with impunity also provide a safety cover to a section of society that is arguably the most vulnerable to such crimes—women. Now, with the...

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The Himalayas

Himalayas: Up there it’s getting warmer, faster

16 May 2012

The Himalayas are warming more rapidly than the rest of the globe. Researchers have found that the average annual mean temperature during the 25-year period from 1982 to 2006 increased by 1.5°C, with an average increase of 0.06°C per year. This is about three times greater than the global average of temperature rise in the same time period. This has had an effect on rainfall too. The average annual precipitation during the same period has increased by 163mm or 6.52mm per year in the Himalayas...

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Western Ghats conservation

A big blow for conservation

12 May 2012

The Union ministry for environment and forests (MoEF) has effectively cut off its nose to spite its own face. The ministry has obtained from the Delhi High Court a stay on the order of the Central Information Commissioner (CIC) which had asked MoEF to publish a crucial ecological report on the Western Ghats by May 10. The CIC on April 9 had asked MoEF to “disclose” the ecological report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) in a months’ time. The ministry, in a brazen counter-move...

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Pensioners' paradise

Pensioners' paradise Bangalore turns a hell hole

11 May 2012

It’s more than an irony. It’s, in fact, tragic that the city once known as a pensioner’s paradise today ranks first when it comes to abuse of the elderly. A recent study on the state of the elderly in nine cities conducted by HelpAge India found that abuses are reported the highest in Bangalore (44%), compared to the national average of 22%. The other eight cities in the survey were Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bhopal, Chennai, Patna and Hyderabad. Though 84% of the elderly surveyed in...

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Illegal mining

440% increase in illegal mining cases in Maharashtra

11 May 2012

Till the other day it was Karnataka which had a bad name when it came to illegal mining. But in terms of sheer statistics, Maharashtra seems way ahead – with the state registering a whopping 440 per cent increase in illegal mining cases in the last five years. According the ministry of mines, the number of illegal mining cases detected in the state shot up from 4,919 in 2006 to 26,563 in 2010. To add to it, 20,928 cases were clocked in the first three quarters of 2011. Illegal mining cases in...

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Hampi heritage

ASI cuts funds for Karnataka

10 May 2012

At a time when more monuments and architectural sites in Karnataka are crying out for attention, the monetary allocation for the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to maintain central protected monuments in the state has been curtailed. The funds allocation for 2012-13 will be Rs17.55 crore as against the Rs19.85 crore that had been earmarked in 2011-12, Union minister for culture and housing and urban poverty alleviation Kumari Selja announced in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday. The allocation for...

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Namma mobile users

Namma mobile users smarter than ones in US

4 May 2012

Indian smartphone users are way smarter than their American counterparts. And they are heavier users of social networking sites too. In spite of having less than 50% of users that the US has (245 million), Indian smartphone consumers use their gadgets more than US citizens. Fifty-six per cent of Indian smartphone users go online multiple times a day (more than thrice) compared to 53% in the US. In fact, 94% of Indians connect to the Internet at least once a day compared to 88 per cent of...

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E-waste in India

Rule of dump: Discard e-waste the right way

3 May 2012

The new rules on e-waste that have come into effect from May 1 can be seen as the first step towards reducing pollution of the information era. The E-Waste (Management and Handling) Rule, 2011 were notified on May 30, 2011 by the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF), which set May 1, 2012 as the date for implementation. What makes the notification far-reaching with its ‘extended producer responsibility’ principle is that it puts the onus on companies which would now be responsible...

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Karnataka snares

Poachers now prefer snares over firearms

2 May 2012

It’s an old practice that seems to have made a comeback. The use of snares and traps to hunt wildlife had always been a conventional practice, one that had gradually given way to modern forms of poaching. But if numbers are anything to go by, these are emerging as a preferred form of catching wild animals in Karnataka. Over 80 traps and snares have been recovered or dismantled by the state forest department in Bandipur and Nagarhole national parks in the last three months. The forest department...

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