-The Economic Times A rise of just 2 degrees Celsius in global warming could make over a quarter of the world's land to become drier and more desert like, increasing the threat of widespread drought and Wildfires, new research led by one of Indian origin has found. The study showed that reducing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere to limit global warming under 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius would dramatically reduce the...

-Hindustan Times Every year in October, farmers in northern India burn stubble due to lack of alternative ways for its disposal. This leads to heavy pollution in Delhi-NCR before winters. This year too, as farmers begin to set stubble afire, HT travels to Punjab and Haryana for a ground report. Honking its way down the narrow Taraouri Road, in Haryana’s Karnal district, the 16-wheeler truck vanished into a dense cloud of...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Narendra Modi dispensation, which has used social media as a force multiplier and reaped huge political dividends, is now having to reckon with its rumour-spreading powers that threaten to throw a spanner in the government's GST blitz. In the first three days of the rollout of the new tax regime, the finance ministry has had to step in twice to counter rumours that were spreading like Wildfire...

-The Hindu Determining whether extreme weather events are caused by climate change is crucial in planning for risks. Else, we will reach a situation in which corrective action may not be enough to protect us Over the past several years, headlines on weather-related extreme events have included heavy downpours followed by floods, droughts, storms, heat and cold waves, and wild fires. Such events typically destroy lives, property and ecosystems while stretching the...

-The Hindu With a plethora of government departments and international organisations putting out so much statistical data in the public space, often contradicting one another, it is the government's duty to clear the air with up-to-date and coherent statistical data linking social and economic indicators Purchasing Power Parity or PPP has validated a long held surmise that the poorer countries are not as badly off as they are made out to be...