• Kochi has been selected as one of the centres for a major study, undertaken by the US-based Oakridge National Laboratory, to measure the phenomenon of global warming.

• An innovative Green Card Yojana has been announced by the Madhya Pradesh government. The scheme is aimed at using foodgrain as wages to improve degraded forestland and ensure land allotment to the local people.

• The first ecohotel in New Delhi will come up shortly. The hotel would be constructed with an internationally accepted set of environmental standards and specifications. It is believed that the builders will construct the hotel with large quantities of recycled material.

• The parliamentary standing committee on energy has said that public sector coal companies should meet environmental norms and produce low-ash coal. If they fail to do this, the polluting units will be saddled with large inventories, the committee pointed out.

• A 20-member gang looted sandalwood oil worth about Rs 84 lakh from the sandalwood oil extraction unit of the Tamil Nadu Forest Plantation Corporation at Thekkuppattu near Vaniyambadi recently.

• Parliament has passed the Inter-State Water Disputes Bill to provide for speedy adjudication of protracted water dispute cases among states. "The Bill aims at setting up a time- frame for tribunals to adjudicate river water cases,'said union water resources minister Arjun Charan.

• The State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) of Chennai has asked the Tamil Nadu government to constitute a committee to probe whether the dyeing and bleaching factory at Pudupakkam in Kancheerpuram district has taken sufficient steps to treat the effluents discharged by it.

• The Union shipping ministry has urged the Nagpur-based National Engineering Environment Research Institute (NEERI) to conduct a detailed environmental impact assessment (EIA) study of the Sethusamudram ship canal project in Tamil Nadu.