-Associated Press London: In the first major global review of violence against women, a series of reports released Thursday found that about a third of women have been physically or sexually assaulted by a former or current partner. The head of the World Health Organization, Dr. Margaret Chan, called it "a global health problem of epidemic proportions," and other experts said screening for domestic violence should be added to all levels of...

-The Hindu There has to be a national mission to ensure that rural homes have access to clean cooking fuel and stoves instead of the killer chulhas that are claiming the lives of large numbers of women A large section of our country's population, nearly 75 per cent of rural and 22 per cent of urban households, still uses biomass for daily cooking. An estimated 80 per cent of the residential energy...

-The Telegraph A set of numbers, portents of atmospheric changes in the skies over India, had told meteorologist Om Prakash Singh something rare was going to happen over northwest India. It was Thursday, June 13, and a supercomputer that routinely crunches out five-day forecasts had consistently predicted a confluence of two weather systems, likely to take place by the weekend and deliver copious rainfall. As Singh and his colleagues at the India Meteorological...

-The United Nations More than a third of women worldwide are affected by physical or sexual violence, many at the hands of an intimate partner, according to a new United Nations report that offers guidelines to help countries respond to this global epidemic. The report, Global and regional estimates of violence against women: Prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence, represents the first systematic study of global...

-The Hindustan Times If there is one defining collage of the ongoing monsoon mayhem in Uttarakhand, it's this: multi-storied concrete houses collapsing like a pack of cards into an angry, wild river and cars and lorries being tossed around in the swirling muddy waters, as if they were plastic toys. As I watched the unfolding drama on TV, I remembered what a green campaigner told me some years ago in Uttarkashi:...