-The Indian Express The rescue work was going on till late on Friday night “to locate the remainder persons still stuck under snow or stranded at work sites since late evening”. After a glacier near Niti Valley in Uttarakhand broke off Friday, rescue operations by the Army managed to rescue nearly 300 people who were working at a Border Roads Organisation camp in the area till late in the evening. The rescue...

-Down to Earth The country reported 82,170 VIIRS alerts in the fortnight till April 14; Uttarakhand sees significant jump in number   India recorded 82,170 forest fire alerts from April 1-14, 2021 nearly double the number reported during the same period past year, according to Global Forest Watch (GFW), an open-source monitoring application. The country reported 43,031 alerts during the corresponding fortnight in 2020, according to GFW data using Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer...

-Down to Earth Destruction of date palm trees during cyclone Amphan and warming Weather have resulted in a huge decline in production of West Bengal’s trademark nolen gur It is safe to assume that anyone coming from Jaynagar would be carrying nolen gur (date palm jaggery), goes a proverb in West Bengal. The locality in South 24 Parganas district is known for its sweets since pre-Independence days. Jaynagar moa, a sweet made...

-TheWire.in Natural farming is a type of organic farming, based on the elimination of chemical inputs and use of locally available resources to reduce farmers' input costs and make agriculture remunerative. We need to fix agriculture in India – our current system is exploitative for both our farmers and the environment. Today, nearly all public spending in agriculture goes to support input-intensive practices that have only deepened the crisis. As we are...

-The Tribune Punjab, Haryana may witness rain deficit New Delhi: For 2021, private forecaster Skymet Weather has predicted “normal” monsoon rains for the country at 103 per cent (907 mm) of the Long Period Average (LPA) rains this year. The rains will be “normal”, ending in the upper half of the normal range, the spread being 96-104% of LPA, said Skymet president GP Sharma. The prediction comes with an error margin of 5...