-The Guardian World Bank report calls for action to cut common pollutants such as soot, which could save millions of lives every year Cleaner cookstoves could save a million lives every year, but costs need to decrease sharply for poor households in developing countries to be able to afford them, according to a World Bank report. On thin ice: how cutting pollution can slow warming and save lives, published on Sunday evening, calls...

-Down to Earth Data also shows higher marginationalisation of the country's Scheduled Tribes The latest data released by the Census of India shows that the child sex ratio (number of girls per 1,000 boys) among Scheduled Tribes (STs) in the country has declined faster than in other categories of the population between 2001 and 2011. But the number of girls born per 1,000 boys is still higher in the ST category than...

-The Indian Express New Delhi: Eleven-year-old Vidya clearly remembers the last time she ate a midday meal at school. It was three months ago, the day school authorities discovered a lizard in the food. "She carries her own lunch ever since. On days she doesn't, I give her lunch money to eat chole-kulche outside school," her mother Sangeeta Devi says. Sangeeta Devi isn't the only parent refraining her child from eating midday...

-The Hindu Chennai: Tenzin, 10, and Norubu Sherpa, 7, are not wandering monks, but they are newly-inducted monks indeed, and have wandered far from their home in West Bengal. These children were found roaming around in the Chennai Central railway station before Deepavali, and volunteers of Karunalaya, an organisation working in the area of child rights, took them to their shelter in Royapuram. "The Railway police told us to provide them a home...

-The Times of India KOLKATA: First the good news. Bengal's sex ratio - 949.9682 - is at its highest since 1901, when it was 945. Now, the bad one. The state's women are still getting married very early - at 20.3 years - which is the least mean age for effective marriage of women in the country. The national average is 21.2 years. The data isn't surprising, for Bengal still ranks fourth...