View Articles

The much-awaited verdict on the Babri Masjid-Ayodhya dispute has come after a wait for 21 years and the good thing is that the country has taken it in its stride. Although it is a please all verdict, the issue remains unresolved, as both the Hindu and Muslim petitioners are planning to knock at the doors of Supreme Court.

An International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission visited Senegal during September 15-29, 2010 to conduct the sixth review under the Policy Support Instrument (PSI) and discussions on the authorities' economic program that could be supported under a successor three-year PSI. The mission met with the Prime Minister and the ministers in charge of economy and finance, international cooperation and infrastructure, energy, the budget, and other government officials. The mission also met representatives of the private sector and development partners. The current Policy Support Instrument (PSI) for Senegal will end this year.

Twenty-four developing-country officials took part on 21—24 September 2010 in the sixth workshop designed to help their countries make use of flexibilities in the WTO intellectual property agreement in the area of pharmaceuticals.

The tenth review of the trade policies and practices of the United States of America took place on 29 September and 1 October 2010. The basis for the review is a report by the WTO Secretariat and a report by the Government of the United States of America.

New Delhi: A meeting was held recently between Ministry of Mines and Secretaries from State Governments to review steps taken to curb illegal mining.

India is known for its rich biological diversity .The country has already documented over 91,000 species of animals and 46,000 species of plants in its ten bio-geographic regions. Nearly 65,000 native plants are still used prominently in indigenous health care systems. The country is also recognised as one of the eight Vavilovian Centres of Origin and Diversity of Crop Plants. Here we have more than 300 wild ancestors and close relatives of cultivated plants still growing and evolving under natural conditions. At the same time we loose certain species or their number dwindles for various reasons. These are threatened plants.

There are 335-recorded threatened medicinal plants in India. They range from Critically Endangered (CR), Endangered (EN), and Vulnerable (VU) to Near Threatened (NT) as per IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria. On the basis of their studies, Foundation for Revitalization of local Health Traditions (FRLTH), which is a Centre of Excellence of the Ministry, has assigned Red List status to these plants.

About 80% of the seismic energy is released by earthquakes occurring along the plate boundaries. These earthquakes are called as interpolate earthquakes, due to the fact that they are directly associated with forces related to the interaction of the plates.

Major earthquakes are often followed by a number of smaller magnitude events called, aftershocks that originate from the same source region of the main shock or principal shock, Aftershock sequences may continue for several days, weeks, months and even years.

The Indian subcontinent has a history of devastating earthquakes. The major reason for the high frequency and intensity of earthquakes is that India is driving into Asia at a rate of approximately 47 mm/year. Almost 54% of the land is vulnerable to earthquakes. The latest version of seismic zoning map of India assigns four levels of seismicity in terms of zone factors. Bureau of Indian Standards [IS-1893 (Part-I):2002], based on various scientific inputs from a number of agencies, has grouped the country into four seismic zones viz. Zone-II, -III, -IV and –V unlike its previous version which consisted of five zones for the country.