-The Telegraph New Delhi: Swathes of eastern India resembled a gigantic overflowing bucket for parts of this week, with several areas flooded though the monsoon rainfall in the region till September was a staggering 28 per cent below average. Twelve of the region's 15 large river-fed reservoirs were brimming with water on Thursday night. Water levels in three of Jharkhand's five large reservoirs were above the full capacity although the operators, facing the...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: With the World Heath Organization's (WHO) International Agency for Research on Cancer declaring air pollution as a major cause of cancer, its findings have put the focus on Indian hotspots like Delhi, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Jharkhand which showed high concentration of life-threatening air pollutants. Air quality data of the government's pollution watchdog, Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), for 2010 - the last one in the...

-IANS NEW DELHI: Intense and destructive storms are likely to occur more frequently as global warming intensifies, Greenpeace said on Saturday. "Such intense and destructive storms are likely to become more frequent in the future as global warming intensifies. Even a small increase in the ocean's warmth can turn tropical disturbances into hurricanes or pump up an existing storm's power," said Greenpeace India member Biswajit Mohanty. According to the organization, Cyclone Phailin which...

-The Hindu     Toll from foot-and-mouth disease reaches 1,485, mostly in south Karnataka Bangalore: The steep death toll among cattle from foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) could have been exacerbated by an unusually heavy rainfall this monsoon, even as an inefficient vaccination programme left thousands of animals vulnerable to the disease. While FMD (a viral infection affecting animals with ‘cloven hooves' such as cattle, deer and wild boar) is not fatal by itself, a secondary infection...

-The Times of India The report issued on September 27 by the UN's intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) may sound similar to the one issued five years ago - after all, it says that humanity is causing climate change, though with more certainty. But on two key aspects this report has categorically said what was never said before. The first is that the carbon accumulation in the atmosphere and resulting global...