As fatal rains batter parts of the north Indian hill state of Uttarakhand, following a summer that also saw hundreds of deaths from heat waves, a new assessment out on June 19 from the World Bank warns of increasingly difficult effects of climate change on several parts of South Asia in the next 20-30 years. It argues that extreme weather events are likely to get more frequent, as temperatures rise. The...

-The Indian Express Last October, authorities in the north Karnataka city of Davangere rescued a 37-year-old man whose family had walled him into a room, with only a tiny window for ventilation, for 10 years after he had begun showing signs of schizophrenia. This month, authorities in Bangalore rescued a 35-year-old woman whose parents are said to have confined her at home for over five years after she showed signs of possible...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Alzheimer's disease, which is the cause of dementia in a large number of people, can be a very difficult journey not only for the patient but also for the caregiver. Shivani Roy's grandfather, who suffered Alzheimer's for over a decade, left his house in January 2001 never to return. The family tried its best but couldn't locate him. Getting lost in the city is a common...

-The Economic Times Criticism of the National Food Security Bill (NFSB) has led to the government dropping the idea of issuing an Ordinance and, instead, saying it would try to get the Bill passed in a special session of Parliament. But doubts persist over the very concept of the Bill. Is it not extravagant to subsidise food for such a large part of the population when the poor constitute only 30 per...

-The Telegraph Ranchi: Among 85,000 children between 6 and 14 with disabilities, about 70,000 have been enrolled in schools, says a report of Jharkhand Education Project Council (JEPC) that finds a mention in Unicef's Global Report on the State of World's Children-2013. The report, which was released at Suchana Bhawan today by the UNICEF in the presence of state authorities, also mentioned that the prevalence of disability was 1.7 per cent -...