Jorhat, May 28: The Kaziranga National Park will have an added attraction soon. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has sanctioned funds to transform a hamlet named Durgapur, adjacent to the abode of the one-horned rhino, into a model village where tourists can get a taste of the Assamese way of life.

Bokakhat sub-divisional officer Debo Kumar Nath said work on the project would begin early next month.

The village will have a namghar (prayer hall), a batsora (gateway) in each house, a community hall and 73 families. “Once the village is inaugurated, tourists visiting the national...

IMPHAL, May 28 – Manipur Government has decided to extend “disturbed area status” of the state for another six months from June 1 in spite of strong protests from various social organisations and communities, official sources said today, reports PTI. The decision to prolong the status under Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958, was taken at a Cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister O Ibobi Singh here yesterday in view of the deteriorating law and order situation, the sources said.

They said the Act which was first imposed in September 1980 in the state had been in extension from time to...

Agartala, May 27: Environmental degradation is well on course to replace insurgency as the burning problem in Tripura. Stating this at a seminar on Solid Waste Management to Combat Water Pollution in Tripura, US consul-general in Calcutta George Neil Sibley said the failure to manage the growing solid waste in the capital and other urban areas was beginning to pose serious health hazards.

The seminar was organised by the Association for Research on People and Nature, an NGO.

Environmentalist Biswendu Bhattacharya, who has studied Tripura extensively, said solid waste was accumulating in the...

Silchar, May 27: In village after village in south Assam’s Cachar district, when people think of clean drinking water, they look at the skies. Not for rain-bearing clouds, but for the sun. A project modelled on a successful exercise implemented in countries like Columbia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and Nigeria, is being experimented with gusto by volunteers of some NGOs in south Assam, Mizoram and Meghalaya.

Welcome to the future, when one can be guaranteed micro-biologically safe drinking water by just embarking on the innovative method of using solar radiation to kill pathogenic microbes...

IMPHAL, May 27: In third such attack, militants struck at the residence of Manipur Urban Development Minister L Nanda Kumar Singh here, but no casualty was reported, official sources said today. Two militants riding a two-wheeler lobbed a bomb at Singh's house at Nagamapal area at 8.30 p.m yesterday.

The minister was not at his house at the time of attack as he was present at his official residence at Lamphel area, 4 kms from here. The bomb fell short of its target and went off near a neighbour's house damaging a portion of it.

The attackers then fled from the spot, the sources said adding...