-The Hindustan Times The smog that nearly choked Delhi in November was caused due to the burning of post-harvest rice stalks in Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh. Every year, rice is harvested using combine harvesters, which leaves a residue in the field. Earlier, harvesting was done by hand and the people who worked on the fields would take out the stalks and use them as food for animals. This practice is...

-AP STOCKHOLM: A U.N. report on rising greenhouse gas emissions reminded world governments on Wednesday that their efforts to fight climate change are far from enough to meet their stated goal of limiting global warming to 2°C (3.6°F). The report by the U.N. Environment Programme, released just days ahead of a major climate conference, said the concentration of heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is up about 20 per...

-Business World Wind, water and the sun can help India cut dependence on coal and gas For India, energy security has never seemed more real, more urgent than now. Forty per cent of the country’s 1.2-billion populace is yet to have access to electricity. Even those getting grid supply suffer poor quality of power. Towns see Power cuts more than half the day. The country’s energy deficit, according to the Central Electricity...

-The Times of India CHANDIGARH: As Nasa satellite images over the past few days show, Punjab is literally on fire. In the images, the state is pockmarked with red dots which correspond to blazes deliberately lit by farmers to get rid of their paddy stubbles after harvest. It's an environmentally disastrous practice that the state government has shown little urgency in tackling. Among the fallout of this mass-burning is smog that spreads...

-The Times of India DHARMAPURI: Outraged by the suicide of a man who felt humiliated after his daughter married a dalit boy in secret, a mob of non-dalits went on the rampage in three villages of Dharmapuri district, looting and burning houses of dalits late on Wednesday, police said. The 2,500-strong mob set ablaze 148 houses in Natham, Anna Nagar and Kondampatti villages. They claimed that the "humiliation" caused by the marriage...