For most people, the nuclear energy issue is much like the story of the six blind men and the elephant: different pieces, but no coherent overall picture. For some, it

on july 3,50 Filipino ngos demanded that endosulfan should be banned. This came after a passenger ship

The climate-change prime minister loses some green points

A red panda in the Darjeeling zoo. File picture
Darjeeling, July 24: John has just fathered two lovely red pandas in Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park and has more than one reason to feel proud, having fought off 11 other males to catch the attention of Sheetal, one of only two reproductive females in the zoo.

The skewed sex ratio among the pandas is now beginning to worry the zoo authorities.

"We have 15 pandas out of which 12 are males. We are not sure of the gender of the new ones as they were born as recently as July 6,' said A.K. Jha, the director of the zoo.

The Doha Round of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) now is in its seventh year. It has entered a crucial phase in the past few months. Senior officials are expected to start trade-offs in the coming weeks in the core areas of agriculture and non agricultural market access (NAMA)-- industrial goods, to pave the way for ministers to take big political decisions for an outline deal, possibly this month or next.

Nuevo Laredo: Elderly foreign tourists are tapping Mexican pet shops for a drug used by veterinarians to put cats and dogs to sleep that has become the sedative of choice for euthanasia campaigners. Tourists from as far as Australia have travelled to Mexico to buy liquid pentobarbital, which causes a painless death in humans in less than an hour, right-to-die advocates say.

In the face of skyrocketing petrol prices, the New Zealand government has said that it would delay the introduction of a new petrol rates under the emissions trading scheme (ets) for two years.

New Zealand plans to ban commercial fishing near its coast and set up marine reserves to protect the rare Hector's dolphins, a government minister said on Thursday The Hector's dolphin is estimated to number around 7,400 from 29,000 in the late 1970s. However, one of its sub-species, the Maui dolphin, is said to be the rarest in the world and facing extinction with as few as 111 animals left. Fishing is blamed for up to three-quarters of the known deaths of Hector's dolphins.