-The Times of India Children's Day on Wednesday will be the most polluted day of the year, scientists from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune and Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) forecast on Tuesday. Scientists from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, and IMD have predicted that pollution from firecrackers this Diwali would, however, be about 10 per cent less than last year. "After the extreme pollution on November 9, Delhi will...

-The Telegraph The Supreme Court today banned tourism in the core areas of India’s tiger reserves till further orders, fuelling fears among tour operators and some conservationists that people would lose the chance to watch the animals in the wild, local economies would bleed and poaching would increase. The court, responding to a petition by a non-government environment organisation, acknowledged concerns expressed by the National Tiger Conservation Authority that tourism may be...

West Bengal: An agrarian crisis looms over the State as farmers commit suicide in spite of a bumper crop. THE topic of suicide figured repeatedly in SAFAR Molla's conversations with his neighbours a few days before his death. The 18-year-old marginal farmer from Kaltikuri village in Bardhaman district's Bhatar block talked about it quite casually, in fact even jocularly. Everybody in the village knew he was up to his neck in...

—PTI Two new videos have emerged that allegedly provide more proof of official involvement in “human SAFARis” for the benefit of tourists to see the protected Jarawa tribe of the Andaman Islands. The videos do not indicate the date when they were shot, but The Observer newspaper said the first film, a three minutes and 19 seconds clip, shot on a mobile phone, showed half-naked girls from the tribe dancing before an...

While Governor M K Narayanan has also put the weight of his office behind the growing concern over farmer suicides in West Bengal, the Mamata Banerjee government seems determined to play these down. In Burdwan, the state’s rice bowl, where 18 of the 27 deaths have been reported in the past four months, the district administration has been approaching families of victims for written statements saying the suicides had nothing to...