Commerce minstry's subsidy package to bail out vanilla farmers The commerce ministry will bring out a subsidy package to bail out vanilla farmers who have been badly hit by the falling prices of

Riddled with ambiguities

IT IS not often that Whiting, Indiana, makes the national news. But Indiana's plan to let bp, a British energy company, expand an oil refinery there, possibly increasing pollution in Lake Michigan, has raised hackles not just in neighbouring Illinois but all the way to Capitol Hill. Barack Obama, a senator from Illinois, wrote a stern letter.

The murky rules for keeping the Great Lakes clean

civil rights groups have protested against privatising lakes in Bangalore. The Lake Development Authority (lda) of Bangalore has leased out a few lakes, including the Hebbal lake

Artists, scientists, writers, teachers and entrepreneurs in Venezuela's northwestern state of Zulia have set up a foundation to sponsor an eco-tourism museum. At the heart of their endeavour is

China has sacked five officials for "dereliction of supervision' and "inadequate work' after green algae covered the country's third largest lake, the Taihu, triggering a drinking water crisis for

When Dr Marc Stollreiter, a first-time German visitor to Kashmir, went on a shikara ride on the picturesque Dal lake recently, he was shocked by what he saw beneath its tranquil waters. "We found huge quantities of syringes and needles. We saw mounds of rotting garbage. We saw tourists throwing empty chips packets, plastic bags and the like from shikaras into the lake."