Till The Last Drop

This book is the outgrowth of one of J. Stephen Funks major injury lawsuits, one in the 1970s, where the dishonesty and a conspiracy of silence by the medical profession supported a negligent doctors efforts to maintain his exalted and privileged place in society. In real life, he exposed the doctors duplicity for all to see, and provided an orphaned child just legal compensation for the loss of her young and innocent mother. In Last Drop of Blood, the heartless and amoral doctor, his wife and her father will stop at nothing to conceal the truth. The widowed husband and a courageous, young nurse provide the help a relentless attorney needs to expose the conspiracy. Through twists and turns, the unexpected ending reveals itself to be more just and satisfying than predictable.

The Times Book of the Year pick ‘Smart, sobering, and scholarly. ’ – Steve Brusatte, the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs A gripping, thought-provoking and ultimately optimistic investigation into the world’s next great climate crisis – the scarcity of water. Water scarcity is the next big climate crisis. Water stress – not just scarcity, but also quality issues caused by pollution – is already driving the first waves of climate refugees. Rivers are drying out before they meet the oceans and ancient lakes are disappearing. It’s increasingly clear that human mismanagement of water is dangerously unsustainable, for both ecological and human survival. And yet in recent years some key countries have been quietly and very successfully addressing water stress. How are Singapore and Israel, for example – both severely water-stressed countries – not in the same predicament as Chennai or California? In The Last Drop, award-winning environmental journalist Tim Smedley meets experts, victims, activists and pioneers to find out how we can mend the water table that our survival depends upon. He offers a fascinating, universally relevant account of the environmental and human factors that have led us to this point, and suggests practical ways to address the crisis, before it’s too late.

With India’s per capita edible oil consumption nearly doubling in the last decade, so has its generation of Used Cooking Oil (UCO). UCO is the leftover oil from frying and cooking that is produced both in homes and in commercial food manufacturing and service businesses. Repeated use of UCO has been linked by extensive scientific and medical research to a number of non-communicable diseases, including cancer, heart disease, and organ damage. Consumption of UCO in any form is regulated in many countries, including India, due to its adverse health impact. However, through home and commercial reuse, almost 60 percent of the UCO produced in India makes its way back into the food chain. The Repurpose Used Cooking Oil (RUCO) initiative was started by India’s food-safety regulator, the Food and Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), to combat the growing diversion of UCO back into food supply. The goal is to develop a legal and regulatory framework to shift UCO away from the food chain and towards other waste-to-wealth industries including bio-fuels, soaps, and oleo-chemicals. However, this initiative has had limited impact due to policy gaps like those that allow topping up UCO with fresh edible oils, compounded by low levels of societal awareness, poor compliance among UCO generators, and ineffective ground-level implementation by the FSSAI and state-level food safety authorities.