State ministers are giving the agriculture sector a breather by ignoring the Prime Minister's call to stop subsidising power supply and agreeing instead to charge a minimum rate. But this, too, is being resisted by farmers.

IN 1987, the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi offered to set up an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Assam as one of the sops to quell the student agitation in the state. Five years later, the

Scientists warn a rise in temperature will reduce the habitable area in North America's mountains and cause a reduction in the number of mammal species.

The drawbacks of modern, high yield crops are prompting farmers and researchers to go back to traditional, well adapted varieties.

A study in rural Bangladesh has found victims of watery diarrhoea treated with rice-based oral rehydration solution (rice-ORS) recover faster and require fewer hospitalisations than those treated

BEANS are one of the few crops grown for beauty as well as nutrition. Archaeologists in South America have excavated beautiful, multicoloured bean seeds buried with Indians 10,000 years ago. Analysis

THE DISCOVERY that bird brains call appreciate the finer nuances of music has a learn of scientists harmonising at Rockefeller University in New York. The scientists, led 13, Claudio Mello, have