On the 20th anniversary of the saola's discovery, conservationists say the population of the reclusive species has dropped dramatically

Wild saola caught on a camera-trapped in Bolikhamxay Province, central Laos
An 'Asian unicorn' or saola caught on a camera-trapped in Bolikhamxay Province, central Laos in 1999. Photograph: William Robichaud/WWF International

Poaching in Vietnam and Laos may be driving the "Asian unicorn" to extinction, warns the WWF on the twentieth anniversary of its discovery.

The United States on Thursday announced the imposition of antidumping tariffs of more than 31 percent on solar panels from China.

The move by the Commerce Department is certain to infuriate Chinese officials already upset after recent bilateral frictions over China’s human rights policies and its increasingly confrontational approach toward American allies like the Philippines and Japan.

The antidumping decision is among the biggest in American history, covering one of the largest and fastest-growing categories of imports from China, the world’s largest exporter.

India needs to take lessons from the killing of rhinos in South Africa in order to take pre-emptive lessons in protecting its tigers.

Three rhinos are being killed every day in South Africa for their horns, which outrival the price of gold in the black market. Rhino poaching is being carried out by sophisticated criminal syndicates who are smuggling these horns to Asia.

China and Vietnam on Wednesday justified making of traditional medicines with bones and body parts of captive tigers, leading to a strong protest from participating countries at the ongoing three-day Global Tiger Recovery Programme (GTRP). Both claimed that it was legal to make traditional medicines with bones of captive tigers and that these medicines are used for research purposes in its universities and schools. China also refused to come up with any concrete commitments to stop making of traditional medicines with tiger parts.

Project Tiger is not the great success story that the government would have you believe. India has lost 32 tigers in the last four months with two tigers having being killed last month in Tadoba Tiger Reserve by poachers using iron foot-traps.

Fourteen of these tigers have been lost to poachers till May 2012, minister for environment and forests Jayanthi Natarajan told reporters on the sidelines of the first stocktaking meeting to review the implementation of the Global Tiger Recovery Programme. “The remaining 18 tigers died natural deaths and we are constantly looking into reasons for this,” the minister said.

With hundreds of schemes and thousands of crores dedicated to agriculture failing to substantially improve the condition of farmers as also to meet the rapidly changing demands of end consumers, the Maharashtra government has initiated a Private-Public Partnership (PPP) for Integrated Agriculture Development (PPP-IAD) project under the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) “New Agriculture Initiative”.

Oil giant ONGC along with a Vietnamese company will launch joint exploration for oil in the South China Sea despite objections from China, a top company official said today. “There is nothing wrong in it. ONGC Videsh has got this assignment through an international bid and we will go ahead with our exploration work with a Vietnamese oil company,” ONGC chairman and managing director Mr Sudhir Vasudeva said here. ONGC Videsh is an arm of the oil PSU to prospect for oil and gas acreages abroad.

The World Health Organisation said Monday it was ‘concerned’ about an outbreak of a mysterious skin disease in central Vietnam which has killed 19 people, mostly children.
More than 170 people have fallen ill with the unidentified illness, which causes stiffness in the limbs and ulcers on victims’ hands and feet that look like severe burns.
‘We are concerned about this. WHO is very aware of this case,’ said Wu Guogao, the organisation’s chief officer in Hanoi, adding Vietnam had not asked for help with an investigation into the outbreak.