Feature Article

It was once associated with the rich and urban. Today, hypertension is fast spreading in rural India. This is a cause for concern because hypertension, if not checked, can lead to heart and kidney diseases. Healthcare facilities are already poor in villages, where nearly three-fourths of Indians live.

Solar electricity lights the maximum number of villages in Chhattisgarh—but barely so.

India's tiger habitats may be shrinking but its tiger population has increased, claims the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF). On March 28, the ministry announced 295 tigers have been added to the previous estimate—the 2006 count had estimated 1,411 tigers in the wild, spurring corporate-sponsored save-the-tiger campaigns revolving around the number.

Amid the furore over a book by American historian Joseph Lelyveld that allegedly describes Mahatma Gandhi as a bisexual and a racist, the Centre is contemplating a law that would make showing any disrespect to the Father of the Nation an offence punishable with a jail term.

A beaver and a drop of water are “heroes” in a new comic strip that recounts their adventures in protecting the environment.

Ignoring protests by a section of the country’s academia, officials in Russia have announced plans to open a scientific institute to study yetis.

On March 25, BBC’s Caribbean Service aired its final programmes, ending 80 years of service.

John Maynard Keynes, the British economist, once described Issac Newton and physicists of his time as “not the first of the scientists, but the last of the sorcerers”. The British economist, rather uncharacteristically, did not substantiate. But in The Clockwork Universe, Isaac Newton, the Royal Society and the Birth of Modern Science, American science writer Edward Dolnick demonstrates the veracity of Keynes’ remark.

The Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) has written to states to include bamboo in the list of minor forest produce (MFP) and to take steps to facilitate its use, sale and management by communities. The letter, dated March 21, is addressed to all chief ministers. It acknowledges the provisions of the Forest Rights Act (FRA), giving communities the right to collect, use and dispose bamboo as an MFP.