According to reports, the animal “weighs around 300 pounds” and is believed to be a “man-eater”, as described by Naveen. P, a wildlife writer and author. However, there is no official government data to support this high death toll. The tigress has gone missing in the dense jungle area of Maharashtra and caused mass panic in the town of Pandharkawada, where bodies have been turning up with missing limbs and claw marks. However, it is unsure if all of the deaths are tiger-related as a signal animal has not been known to cause so many human fatalities before.

Endless efforts to capture T1 have been made in the past, including employing one of India’s best-known game hunters. Authorities have tried to track and tranquilise her using camera traps, expert shikaris (Indian hunters), and a thermal imaging drone. They have even fielded elephants mounted with veterinarians armed with tranquilliser guns to track her down, none of whom have been successful so far.

The desperate hunt is now hoping to try a very unusual bait; the Calvin Klein fragrance Obsession. Calvin Klein contains a pheromone called civetone, which was first derived from the glands of a cat-like mammal, and is now most often created synthetically. The compound, with its musky odour, is one of the world’s oldest perfume ingredients and happens to be totally gripping to big cats. Big cats are drawn to the scent and then proceed to musk themselves against its scent in order to replace it with their own, according to Miguel Ordeñana, a biologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.

Obsession’s feline appeal was confirmed in 2003 when a curator at New York’s Bronx Zoo tested the effects of 23 perfumes on two cheetahs. Estée Lauder’s Beautiful performed the worst, distracting them for a mere two seconds. Nina Ricci’s L’Air du Temps did well, keeping the cats preoccupied for 10.4 minutes, but Obsession performed the best. The cheetahs got plainly obsessed over the scent, spending on an average 11.1 minutes inspecting the fragrance. Since then, the cologne has been used by wildlife authorities to encourage wild cats to spend more time close to cameras and sightings have increased manifold.

While Indian animal activists have created an uproar that the animal should be not trapped or killed, the Supreme Court has ruled that should capture prove difficult in this particular case; the animal should be destroyed.

Officials hope that the Calvin Klein fragrance, along with the use of two special Italian sniffer dogs, will help end the tiger’s reign of terror.

By Anshu Sachdeva.

The cancellation from India follows a further dispute over the occupation of the Himalayan territories of Jammu and Kashmir. On Wednesday the 19th of September 2018, Maleeha Lodhi, the UN ambassador to Pakistan argued to persuade India to allow a UN resolution to the problem. She suggested Kashmir’s fate be decided by an assembly administered referendum on the location’s sovereignty.

Pakistan’s neighbouring country fired back as, Syed Akbaruddin, India’s ambassador to the UN has called the international body of the assembly “ill-suited to perform mediation” of the issue “in every circumstance.”

The cancellation of the 73rd session meeting has happened now only days after. Raveesh Kumar, Delhi’s foreign affairs spokesman, declared refusal of India to attend the assembly in New York later this October. The meeting was intended to take place between India and Pakistan’s foreign ministers; Sushma Swaraj and Shah Mahmood Qureshi, but now has been called off due to India’s accusations of Pakistan as formulating their own “evil” and non-peaceful agenda.

Kumar mentioned the insurgency scene within the Himalayan territory of Kashmir which it claims is funded and militarised by Islamabad on Pakistan’s account. He also cited the discovery of the dead bodies of three Indian police officers discovered in the area.

On the same day, China refused to back either Pakistan or India on the issue and declared that the dispute was solely for the two countries to solve between themselves.  China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang released the following statement: “The Kashmir issue is an issue leftover from history… China hopes India and Pakistan can increase dialogue and communication, and properly handle relevant issues and jointly safeguard peace and stability.”

The Pakistani government has responded to India’s cancellation of the meeting with deep disappointment. They have declared to constantly feeling the need to resolve the on-going disputes between the two countries peacefully, and owing it to the future generations of Pakistan and the prosperity of their people in order to do so. The government further released the following statement: “In our view, dialogue and diplomacy are the only constructive way forward for the two countries to address mutual concerns, rebuild trust, resolve longstanding disputes and establish durable peace in South Asia.”

Manisha Bhanot

The University of Bath-led project was selected to receive the 2018 Atlas Award in recognition of its potential impact on developing societies around the world.

According to research, small particles which are made completely from plastic bottles could replace atleast 10% of the sand in the concrete mixture, potentially saving 820 million tonnes of sand each year.

Other materials include plastic bags which were trailed. However, bottles which were ground and graded to match sand particle proved to perform the best.

India is one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. A booming construction sector has led to a surge in the cost and demand for sand.

Unregulated sand extraction that comes from riverbeds has come increasingly widespread and is now banned in many Indian states, after fears that it could lead to coastal erosion and an unstable fishing industry.

The growth in India’s urban population also suggests that plastic waste has become a significant problem, with 15,000 tons of it dumped on the streets daily due to a lack of recycling facilities.

Cambridge University lecturer in concrete structures, John Orr, who has completed the research while he was working at the University of Bath, had said the findings could help to tackle both problems.

He said: “Typically when you put an inert, man-made material like plastic into concrete, you lose a bit of strength because the plastic material doesn’t bond to the cement paste in the material in the same way that a sand particle would.”

“The key challenge here was to have a limit between a small reduction in strengths, which we achieved, and using an appropriate amount of plastic to make it worthwhile.”

“It is really a viable material for use in some areas of construction that might help us to tackle issues of not being able to recycle the plastic and meeting a demand for sand.”

The research, in partnership with Goa Engineering College, India, has recently been published in the journal Construction and Building Materials.