-The Telegraph Rainy weekend forecast for Kolkata and Bengal South 24-Parganas which encompasses a major portion of the Sunderbans is the most cyclone-affected district in the country, finds a study carried out by the India Meteorological Department in Pune. The first-of-its-kind analysis called Climate Hazards and Vulnerability Atlas of India was conducted recently by the wing of climate research and services at the IMD. The finding was based on all cyclones which passed within...

-TheWire.in One report suggests that Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh are also underreporting deaths due to COVID-19 Bengaluru: In a strange turn of events, the Gujarat state government informed the Supreme Court on January 16 that it has approved 68,370 claims for ex gratia for COVID-19 victims – while the state’s official cumulative death toll was only 10,094 until then. According to Times of India, the state wrote in its compliance report...

-Financial Express The state desperately needs a strategy for labour-intensive manufacturing; the attacks on cattle-trade have knocked down its once-thriving leather industry In 1955, the share of population below the poverty line (NSS 1955) in Uttar Pradesh was 64%, not too different from that in the Madras State (present-day Tamil Nadu), at 73.6%, or in West Bengal, at 53.6%. Four decades later, in 1993-94, while India’s poverty rate was 45.3%, UP’s was...

In the previous news alert, we looked at the under-nutrition problem in the Bundelkhand region in terms of 3 indicators -- proportion of children under 5 years who are stunted (height-for-age); proportion of children under 5 years who are wasted (weight-for-height); and proportion of children under 5 years who are underweight (weight-for-age). However, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data also indicates that severe under-nutrition like severe wasting and anaemia among...

-Hindustan Times The atlas, the first of its kind, will aid in disaster preparedness as extreme weather events rise in the wake of the climate crisis, scientists said. The Sunderbans in West Bengal, neighbouring districts of Odisha, and Ramanathapuram, Pudukkottai and Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu are the most vulnerable to high storm surges of as much as 8.5 to 13.7 metres that are induced by cyclones, according to the Climate Hazards and...