-PTI Deteriorating air quality in the national capital could be a reason for serious health risk, government today said but maintained that there is no conclusive data to establish it. Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan also informed the Rajya Sabha that the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) is monitoring air quality in Delhi and steps have been taken to control environmental pollution. Noting that health effects, such as manifestation of respiratory ailments, could be...

-Outlook Concerned over the health hazards likely to be caused by cell phone towers, the National Green Tribunal has restrained several telecom firms from setting them up without following mandatory provisions of law and taking permission from the competent authority. "Considering gravity of allegations levelled and health hazard likely to be caused, we direct that no construction of cell phone communication towers shall be made without following mandatory provisions of law and necessary...

-The Hindu They have not rejected it; they have simply kept Ratul Khan’s application pending: Education Minister Ratul Khan is among seven top-performing high-school students to win an Assam government-sponsored scholarship to visit the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) headquarters in the United States, but he has been denied a visa. Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi on Tuesday handed over tickets to the six others who won the first three ranks in the...

-The Telegraph More than one in eight registered pesticides, including the controversial endosulfan, endanger people’s reproductive and nervous systems and may cause cancer and congenital deformities, a Supreme Court-appointed expert committee has said. The panel has suggested these pesticides should be phased out over the next two years instead of their existing stocks being immediately incinerated, as the latter process would cost the exchequer Rs 1,189 crore. A public interest litigation moved last...

-Agence France-Presse Nekpur: With both hands holding the basket of human excrement on her head, widowed grandmother Kela walks through a stream of sewage, up a mound of waste and then dumps the filth while cursing. "Nobody even pays us a decent wage!" she spits as she rakes mud and rubbish over her newly deposited pile, one of several she drops in the course of her working day cleaning toilets as a...