Reiterating that the nuclear power plants in Kudankulam were “the safest in the world”, Russian Ambassador to India Alexander M. Kadakin on Tuesday said his country could not allow its scientists to remain idle indefinitely.

“We are not setting any deadline. But our scientists are sitting idle since October 2011. They are scientists of highest calibre and their services are very much needed in countries, including Slovakia and Russia,” he told reporters here.

The United States remained the primary backer of biotech crop technology in 2011, but adoption spread internationally as the total global planted area of genetically modified seeds grew 8 percent from a year ago, according to a report issued Tuesday.

Roughly 160 million hectares, or 395.2 million acres, were planted with biotech crops in 2011, up 8 percent from 2010, said the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA) in its annual report on biotech seed use.

Slovakia's four nuclear reactors have passed so-called stress tests against potential severe accidents, earthquakes, floods and other extreme events, the country's nuclear regulator reported on Tuesday.

The analysis followed Japan's Fukushima disaster in March 2011 which spurred the European Union to mandate safety tests of the European Union's 143 reactors.

The Slovak regulator released its report a day after the neighboring Czech Republic announced that the nuclear power plants of utility CEZ at Temelin and Dukovany had passed the EU-mandated stress tests.

Due to increasing costs of production, a slowed demand for electricity, and fresh memories of disaster in Japan, production of nuclear power fell in 2011, according to the latest Vital Signs Online (VSO) report from the Worldwatch Institute. Despite reaching record levels the previous year, global installed nuclear capacity—the potential power generation from all existing plants—declined to 366.5 gigawatts (GW) in 2011, from 375.5 GW at the end of 2010.

According to a new analysis, the United States now ranks 41st in the world in terms of neonatal mortality, the death rate of infants less than one month old. The rate is higher in the United States than in, among others, Cuba, Slovakia, Croatia and all of Western Europe and Scandinavia.

A study published in the August issue of PLoS Medicine reports that neonatal death rates in the United States have decreased over the period, but at a slower rate than in 117 other countries.

Lawsuit over CO2 cap The Slovak government has decided to file a lawsuit against the European Commission (EC) over its demand that Slovakia cut its annual carbon dioxide emissions from 2008-2012.

it is a downpour that has left most parts of central and eastern Europe submerged in misery. Over the past few weeks, unprecedented and severe storms have triggered floods in the region, claiming