“We wont sell milk cheap. We would rather give it free or dump it in the fields” cheered the dairy farmers of Europe. They have been on a prolonged strike to protest against the falling prices that went 40 per cent below cost of production. More than 80,000 farmers took part in the continent-wide movement, agreeig not to supply milk to those industrial conglomerates that produce cheese,  skimmed milk and other products. Instead, they distributed 22,000 litres of milk to public for free, formed a milk lake in front of Europian Union office in Brussels and dumped litres of it in the  agricultural fields. The problem in the European milk market is, that there is surplus supply and falling demand.

Farmers have borne the brunt of this problem and have seen their sale prices tumble. In the 1980s, they used to have unsold ‘milk lakes’ and ‘butter mountains’. Thus in 1984, EU came up with milk quotas- limiting over production- for every farmer. This year the E.U. quota has been set at about 134.3 million tonnes of milk, But last November, EU had announced phasing out of milk quotas by 2015 as a mark of liberalisation. This is being opposed by farmers, as they have grasped the formula for disaster : more milk per farmer = less money per farmer.

270 km from the metropolitan Chennai - Dinosaurs dwelt. The fossilized eggs found in the village of Sendurai in Ariyalur district reveal this intresting bit of history. This area of Cauvery basin was probably the largest habitat for them in India. A group of researchers, including students, led by the Periyar University geology lecturer MU Ramkumar discovered the cluster of eggs. "We found clusters and clusters of spherical-shaped eggs of dinosaurs. Each cluster contained eight eggs. Each egg was about 13 to 20 cm in diameter and they were lying in sandy nests which were 1.25 metres in size," he said. "We always knew that dinosaurs once roamed the area as fossils had been found there during earlier expeditions.

But this is the first time that hundreds of nests embedded with clusters of dinosaur eggs have been unearthed in the district," he said. Preliminary investigations showed that the eggs could belong to the aggressive Carnosaur and the docile, leaf-eating Sauropod species. The first Dinosaur fossils were traced by British geologists in the 1860s. More than 150 years later, a dinosaur egg was found in a cement factory of the state-owned Tamil Nadu Cements Ltd in the 1990s. But officials realised it was a dinosaur egg only 10 years later.

No we are not promoting a packaged food item, but telling you about the latest variety of rice developed by Indian scientists at the Central Rice Research Institute. "One can get ready to eat rice after soaking it for about 45 minutes in ordinary water, and 15 minutes if soaked in lukewarm water, whereas other rice varieties need cooking," Tapan Kumar Adhya, head of the Institute said. It can be grown within 145 days and gives yield of 4-4.5 tonnes per hectare.

The best part is that it is not a genetically modified rice, but an improved variety of existing ‘Komal Chawl’ variety of rice found in Assam. The rice variety can be grown in all the eastern states of Assam, Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa and coastal Andhra Pradesh.