-Hindustan Times WHO will be updating the list of priority pathogens—agents that can cause outbreaks or pandemics—to guide global investment, research and development, especially in vaccines, tests and treatments, the UN health body announced. India is working on a plan to effectively combat public health emergencies and disease outbreaks in future, according to people familiar with the matter, even as WHO on Monday announced it will be identifying pathogens that could cause...

-PTI/The Telegraph Our team swung into action and douse flames soon after we receive such information from Forest Survey of India, says Deputy Director Kumar Ashish Medininagar: The Palamu Tiger Reserve (PTR) of Jharkhand has witnessed small or big forest fire incidents around 1,600 times this year, a senior official said. However, there is no report of any damage to wild animals due to the fire incidents. Dehradun-based Forest Survey of India (FSI) which...

-The Hindu How the people of Landour with the help of friends raised money for medical equipment at the Landour Community Hospital — all in a day Five days ago, Priya Kapoor, the editorial director of Roli Books, tweeted out to say that the Landour Community Hospital (LCH), an 80-year-old institution, was fundraising for a ventilator. She appealed especially to those who had “visited and loved Landour”, saying, “Every bit counts.” Landour...

In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few.   Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...

Forest fires are not just confined to countries like the United States of America (California, 2020), Brazil (Amazon forest, 2019-2020) or Australia (2019-20); they happen every year across many states in India too. Media reports suggest that forest fires have taken place in the recent months in Odisha's Simlipal National Park, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, among other states. Forest fires have also been reported this year in Nagaland-Manipur border (Dzukou...