-The Hindu But shola forests have remained “relatively unchanged” Kochi: The new year heralds bad news for the high-altitude grasslands of the Western Ghats. Over four decades, the country lost almost one-fourth of these grasslands and exotic invasive trees are primarily to blame, find scientists. Though grassland afforestation using pine, acacia and eucalyptus ceased in 1996, the exotics still invade these ecosystems, confirms a study published on January 2 in the international...

-The Hindu Opposition slams move; Mayawati challenges Centre to impose it nationwide Lucknow: To tackle the menace of stray cattle, the Yogi Adityanath-government in Uttar Pradesh has decided to set up ‘temporary’ shelter homes for cows across the State but the costs will be borne by the public in the form of additional ‘cow welfare cess’ on excise items. In a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, the State government decided to introduce an additional...

-The Hindu The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will record biometric data including the fingerprints and iris scans of about 30 lakh applicants who have sought to be included in the National Register of Citizens (NRC) after having been excluded from the final draft published last year. Almost 30 lakh out of the 40 lakh people who found their names missing from the NRC had filed claims to be included during...

-The Hindu Business Line Export sops, higher consumption to help get rid of excess milk powder stocks The New Year is set to bring smiles on the faces of dairy farmers, thanks to firm prices of the skimmed milk powder (SMP) following export incentives by the government. Most co-operative dairies and private players were able to get rid of their excess SMP stock, which led to firming up of prices by at least...

-The Hindu Cleaner stretches recorded across all riverine States New Delhi: The water quality of the Ganga in 2018 has “improved over last year”, according to a written statement in the Rajya Sabha on Monday by junior Water Resources Minister Satyapal Singh. The statement said “dissolved oxygen” levels had improved at 39 locations, and “biological oxygen demand” (BOD) levels and faecal coliform had decreased at 42 and 47 locations respectively. These three parameters...