China braced for Typhoon Nida and issued a red alert ahead of its landfall in the southern areas on Tuesday, with hundreds of flights cancelled on the mailnland and Hong Kong.
Last month was the hottest June in modern history, marking the 14th consecutive month that global heat records have been broken, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Tuesday.
The Supreme Court refused on Monday to put on hold the Centre’s notifications that declared blue bulls, monkeys and wild boars vermin, allowing them to be culled in three states.
With the death of four people on Tuesday, total 56 people have died of lightning strikes in four days in Odisha, officials said.
New Delhi: The National Green Highways Mission got underway on Friday, with Union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari kick-starting the initial plantation drive along 1,500km of national highways at a cost of about 
New Delhi, Jun 10 (UNI) An international team of scientists have found a potentially viable way to remove anthropogenic (caused or influenced by humans) carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere and turned it into rock.
Seeking to quash the orders of the Union environment ministry and state governments of Bihar, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh on culling of animals, activists are set to move Supreme Court against it. Just last week, Union cabinet colleagues Maneka Gandhi and Prakash Javadekar were involved in a war of words on the environment ministry’s decision to declare Rhesus Macaque monkeys as vermins in Himachal Pradesh for a year, allowing to kill them for damaging crops and property. The ministry has already allowed culling of nilgai and wild boars in Uttarakhand and Bihar while proposals from Gujarat and Maharashtra are pending.
Now, based on official documents and proposals sent to the Centre by the three states, activists said that no scientific study was done before allowing culling of animals, in contravention of the environment ministry’s own advisory dated December 24, 2014. The ministry’s 2014 advisory, encouraged state governments to seek central assistance in declaring wild animals such as Nilgai and wild boars as vermins. But, it had asked states to also specify the scientific basis for seeking vermin status for animals, in their proposals, which is found to be missing.
“While our fundamental opposition is permission to cull animals for which we will move court, it has also come to light that state proposals were inadequate and lacking in data on crop damage, population studies and specific areas where the problem is acute. In the Uttarakhand proposal, senior officials have admitted themselves that no study or survey has been done,” said Gauri Maulekhi, an animal rights activist. State proposals and related documents reviewed by dna confirmed Maulekhi’s claims.
With the exception of Himachal Pradesh, who have provided some details on compensation paid to farmers, Uttarakhand and Bihar’s proposals find no mention of crop damage and monetary losses incurred. In fact, the Bihar wildlife board helmed by chief minister Nitish Kumar cleared the proposal to kill nilgai’s and boars without any deliberation during the meeting, minutes show.
Maulekhi added that monoculture, encroachment of forest land, unregulated tourism, reduction of buffer zones and consequent fragmentation, mining and blasting are some of the key reasons for the rise in human-animal conflict, and these issues will be raised in court. “When the herbivores and smaller mammals don’t have water to drink and adequate vegetation to feed on, they are bound to stray into human habitations,” Maulekhi said.
@Agency report.