Its festival time in Nagaland

Insurgency has been pushed to the backbenches. With Christmas round the corner,it is now time for celebration in Nagaland.

Insurgency has been pushed to the backbenches. With Christmas round the corner,it is now time for celebration in Nagaland. While last week saw a huge turnout in the states first-ever piano contest in Kohima,the capital city,from December 1 begins the annual Hornbill Festival that also draws the highest number of foreign tourists to the state. Nagaland has engaged villagers around Kohima in the tourism business,with visitors now preferring to stay in villages rather than in hotels.

Kargil hero gallery in Meghalaya

Captain Cliffod Nongrum lost his life fighting in Kargil more than 10 years ago. The memories of this young hero from Meghalaya is kept alive as a gallery exclusively dedicated to him in the Rhino Heritage Museum in the Shillong Cantonment. Among the items that the gallery has put up is a handwritten speech that he was to deliver in a college in Shillong when he was suddenly called to proceed to Kargil. The museum itself is a heritage house.

Arunachal girl has Everest dreams

Tene Mina,a young mountaineer from Arunachal Pradesh who recently won a medal in the All India Advance Mountaineering Course,wants to scale the Mt Everest. Also a gold medal winner from the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute,Darjeeling,Mina had scaled the 5,426-metre Mt Kolahai peak as part of a pre-Everest exercise. Meanwhile,the state government has announced mountaineering as a priority area in its youth development programme.

Sikkim cops fine state ministers

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Policemen in Sikkim deserve to be praised for what they did last week. Traffic police in Gangtok,the state capital,seized two vehicles from a no-parking zone and levied a fine of Rs 500 each,despite the fact that the vehicles belonged to two senior ministers of the Pawan Kumar Chamling government. The vehicles belonged to IPR Minister Neeru Sewa and Housing and Building Minister Tilu Gurung.

Vanishing jackals ring alarm bells

Environmentalists in Tripura have discovered that jackals are fast disappearing from the states forests. A study,funded by Japan International Cooperation Agency,has recorded 266 butterfly species of which 51 are yet to be identified,seven new plant species and two new fish species have also been discovered. But with jackals recording almost nil,environmentalists are worried that something is wrong with the states bio-diversity.