Revving up the race for manufacturing hybrid vehicles on a mass scale that could reduce dependency on depleting oil resources and also address environmental concerns, Toyota Motor Corporation has announced that it plans to begin manufacturing lithium-ion batteries by next year for a plugin hybrid vehicle to be launched in 2010. This was announced at a Toyota environmental forum that was kicked off by an address, delivered on video, by R K Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Anil Agarwal will tell you that he likes all his metals

Beijing: At least 62 were killed in torrential rain and flooding across south China, the government said. Floods pose a threat to Gaungxi province if the embankment of Xijiang river bursts open, while four other rivers have crossed danger levels, officials said. Over one million people left their homes and moved to safer places as heavy rains made water levels in rivers soar and overflow into settlements close to them across nine provinces in the country.

Paris: European and US scientists will bid a fond farewell on July 1 to the space probe Ulysses, which has circled the Sun gathering data for 17 years, almost four times its expected lifetime. The first major collaboration between Nasa and the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 1990, "changed forever the way we view the Sun and its effect on the surrounding space,' David Southwood, ESA's director of science, said in announcing the end of mission. Stuffed with 10 observational instruments, the 370-kg probe is the only satellite to have circled the Sun's poles.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica has broken up further, with an area of about 160 square kilometres breaking off from May 30 to May 31, 2008. The Wilkins Ice Shelf, a broad plate of floating ice on the Antarctic Peninsula, is connected to two islands, Charcot and Latady. A report in ESA said that in February, an area of about 400 sq km broke off from the ice shelf, narrowing the connection down to a 6km strip.

West Bengal government remains unwavering in its commitment to industrialisation despite the CPM's poll reverses in the recent panchayat polls, says Nirupam Sen, state commerce and industries minister. Sumali Moitra spoke to Sen, who is also a member of CPM's politburo: Will the panchayat poll results slow the industrialisation momentum?

Puducherry: N Anand, fondly called "Bussy' Anand, is a busy man. A firsttime MLA, he was elected from the Bussy assembly constituency in the Union territory in 2006 and hence the prefix. And when the 44-year-old legislator of Puducherry Munnetra Congress is not pushing for schemes, meeting voters or discussing local politics over a cuppa, he's clearing garbage, cleaning clogged drains and spraying mosquito repellent across the town. And he does this with his own money, spending Rs 75,000 to Rs 85,000 every month from his earnings.

Thwarts Bid To Put Onus On Developing Nations India may have won the first round at Bali in December 2007 but the UN meeting on climate change at Bonn from June 2-13 saw the developed countries try to alter the Bali agenda. India, along with the G-77 grouping, had to fight hard in the subsidiary meeting to defend the Bali roadmap.

Congress is set to hit the agitational pitch in Gujarat on

Of the 152 developing countries, 57 will not reach the millennium development goal of putting all primary-aged children in school by 2015, the latest global monitoring reports of Education for All (EFA) and International Labour Organization (ILO) has said. Incidentally, June 12 was observed as

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