Maulik Pathak / Ahmedabad July 10, 2008, 0:20 IST With oil flowing past $145 a barrel, leading companies in the country have lined up plans to explore opportunities in jatropha cultivation and prospects of biofuel. The companies are flocking to Gujarat, which has earmarked 1,900,000 acres in the Narmada region for the crop cultivation. The companies, including Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries and Tata Chemicals and the Essar group, are carrying out research and trials for producing oil from the cash crop in the state.

Barnala: At least 40 students of a government school in Roore Ke village in Barnala district were taken ill after eating fruit of jatropha (ratanjot) grown on the school premises. Sources said all the students were admitted to Barnala Civil Hospital, where they were said to be out of danger.

SAPPORO (Japan): Leaders of China, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa

NEW DELHI: The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has hoped that the ongoing G8 Summit in Japan would address the issue of biofuel policies, including subsidy that was contributing to the rising food prices, which could push an additional 100 million people into poverty.

New Delhi, July 8: Nobel Prize winning Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chief Dr R.K. Pachauri says Indian Meteorological Department (IMD), which has been reluctant in accepting IPCC's predictions on climate change, has unsatisfactory state of affairs. Dr Pachauri is one of the members of Prime Minister's council on climate change which has drafted the recently released India's National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC).

  ASTRID AGOSTINI Economist

The final press conference of the meet was postponed by an hour and a half because there were disagreements on the final document to be read by DG Diouf. According to fao sources, the dispute was to do with biofuels and the liberalization of agricultural trade. The delay did not come as a surprise; an undercurrent of dispute, stemming from differing concerns, was there all through the

New Delhi June 25: The Indian government's view that biofuels are responsible for current food crisis, stands vindicated by one more international report. A briefing paper by Oxfam released on Wednesday has blamed biofuels for contributing to the present food crisis. In its report named "Another Inconvenient Truth: How Biofuel Policies are Deepening Poverty and accelerating Climate Change", Oxfam warned that biofuels are not a solution to either the climate change crisis or the oil crisis. The cost of using biofules to improve fuel security are prohibitively high, the report pointed out.

Biofuels have failed to live up to their early environmental promise, but fuels made from plant waste and weeds may turn this around.

Ten years ago, running your car on biofuels meant covertly topping up your tank with chip fat. Now petrol is routinely mixed with ethanol made from corn, and diesel with squeezed rape, oil palm and soya. The current generation of biofuels was rushed onto the market in response to escalating concern in Europe about climate change, and in the US about energy security. But almost before the biofuels industry has got going, it has run into major problems. It has swiftly become a victim of its own success, gobbling up land and water in a way that has frightened the world.

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