book>> Our toxic world, A guide to hazardous substances in our everyday lives • Script Aniruddha Sen Gupta • Illustrations Priya Kurian • Toxics Link and Sage • Rs 395

There is something about India’s government machinery that makes it impervious to simple, low-cost solutions. It spends hundreds of crores of rupees to make available drinking water. The money, it is widely known, does not trickle down to villages that need potable water. The government knows it cannot achieve its goal with a centralized mindset.

Flowering plants and insects share a pollen-and-nectar history that goes back a long way. According to fossil records most of the insect groups originated before flowering plants appeared, which is some 140 to 190 million years ago. This would be during the late Jurassic and early Cretaceous periods.
Scientists at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center of Duke University and Environmental Science Center of Yale University, usa, shift the origin of flowering plants back further to 215 million years ago in the Triassic period.
   

The Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp) is in the midst of a crisis. However much its leaders deny its existence, it is very real. The crisis is layered: from factionalism and leadership problems, it extends to fundamental ideological and programmatic drift.

with chemical pesticides accumulating in crops, entering the food chain and creating pests with the next level of immunity, biocontrol is taken a little more seriously. Bacteria, fungi and insect parasitic nematodes assume greater importance in agricultural research.

This might sound perverse but this writer actually likes the water and power crises that is upon us. It is poetry to one who has long lamented young journalists’ lack of attention to the shortage of power and water and, of course, to the piling heaps of garbage in every city.

the drumstick tree grows in any kind of soil and requires very little care. People have many uses for the flowers, beans and twigs of the Moringa oleifera, or the horseradish tree as it is also referred to. The beans, in fact, are almost magical. They may not lead to a hen that lays golden eggs like the magical beans did for Jack in the fairy tale but they can be used to extract oil, provide nutrition when tossed into culinary preparations and prepare medicines.

A group of international campaigners has launched an online petition against Ethiopia’s Gibe III dam. The group wants to pressure Western donors and banks not to fund the dam, saying it would destroy the means of living of 500,000 people.


Ethiopia’s government says the dam is needed to generate enough electricity for its population and to sell abroad. It has called the campaign, online at www.stopgibe3.org, the handiwork of patronizing people in the West.

A document of the education department in the Australian state of Queen-sland suggests the use of rocks and leaves to bring an aboriginal perspective to maths lessons. The maths plan, available online, also recommends exploring patterns and symbols as well as using timelines that include the history of Australia’s aboriginals.

When established telecom firms said it was not economical to provide fast broadband services to Lyddington, people raised £37,000 to set up their own network. The 200 homes in this eastern UK village now have a broadband that offers them speeds of up to 40mbps (megabits per second). Homes in rural UK usually do not get broadband speeds of more than 2mbps. The broadband service is the endeavour of Rutland Telecom scheme, a joint effort between villagers and a local Internet service provider.