-The Telegraph   Stress strikes the pupils of a Murshidabad school every day not because of impenetrable syllabus or unsparing teachers but because they fear the Padma River can rise up and engulf them any minute. All it took for a wave of panic to crash in today was the rattle of tin cans on a truck and an exclamation from a teacher, which triggered a stampede in which 20 children were injured. The...

-The Telegraph   The mass mortality of fish in the Karala River has blown the lid off a toxic secret: poison is used to kill some of the catch that makes its way to several homes in Bengal. In the face of raids by officials to seize dead fish in Jalpaiguri, some fishermen today admitted that they use a pesticide called Thiodan to kill fish that are eventually sold in the markets. Lab tests...

Carrying forward from the opening of a school in Hamidpur Char & enrolling 378 children on Thursday, for whom education had been a distant dream come true, it was the day for yet another batch of 136 children enrolled in to a newly setup school in the age group of 6-8 yrs of Narayanpur Char in Manichak Block of Malda District, also visited by the 5 member Team of NCPCR...

-The Telegraph   Not all dawns break like this for Mamata Das. Swept out of bed at 6am by ripples of excitement swirling outside her home, Mamata found herself wading into the Karala, the “Thames of Jalpaiguri”. What else would you do when you wake up to news that lifeless fish after fish are bobbing up the River? They floated down in all shapes, sizes and species — the boal, a catfish and a...

-The Hindustan Times   Five of the six civil society members appointed by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee to bring the rebels to the dialogue table withdrew themselves from the job on Monday, citing unfavourable conditions in Jangalmahal. This has come four days after CPI(Maoist) central committee member Kishenji was killed by the security forces on Thursday. "We have expressed our helplessness and inability to the chief minister," said a statement signed...