doomsday predictions with respect to the Black Forest in Freiburg, Germany, seem to have backfired. Back in the '80s, hysterical cries of imminent death of the forest had reached a crescendo.

Two accidents at Germany's largest chemical group, Hoechst AG, in the last week of January this year, has led to nearly one tonne of toxic powder escaping into the environment

AGRICULTURE ministers of the European Community (EC) member-nations seem extremely reluctant to go ahead with their proposed "green agenda" at the cost of offending the farming

A piece of good news for those who cannot give up smoking -- take a lot of vitamin C and you could avert heart and lung diseases caused by cigarette smoke (Nature, Vol 370, No 6489). A team of

Scientists have discovered an oestrogen derivative that controls tumours and could be effective against other diseases like arthritis

A LONG-STANDING mystery about how bees -- considered completely deaf -- hear has been solved. Bees are known to convey information about the distance, direction and potential of a new food source or

THOSE who wax lyrical about the superior sound quality of compact discs over records or vice versa, do so merely for the sake of argument, conclude German music psychologists who found that only one

DRUG ADDICTION is not a modern age phenomenon for it seems even the ancients knew the pleasures of junkyism, claim scientists (The Lancet, Vol 341, No 8843). Franz Parsche and his colleagues at

While NGOs voice their concern at USA's interpretative version of the Biodiversity Convention, Germany has indirectly extended its support.

New evidence has emerged for the existence of dark matter -- an invisible constituent of the universe that is believed to play a key role in the formation of galaxies.