Union Minister for Water Resources Uma Bharati recently reiterated her commitment towards making the Yamuna Shuddikaran Abhiyan a success but said little else. It is obvious that in comparison to the Ganga about which she waxes eloquent at the drop of a hat, her treatment towards Yamuna can at best be described as step-motherly. Rashme Sehgal reports on efforts to save the river.
The Travel Photographer of The Year Awards winners have been chosen and they're a stunning selection celebrating the beauty of our planet and all its inhabitants. Photographers from 142 countries submitted over 20,000 jaw-dropping pictures that were shot on everything from high-end professional cameras to mobile phones, in categories including 'faces, people, cultures'; the natural world and the beauty of light. The winning images can be seen at the TPOTY exhibition, which is free, and will be on show at LondonBridgeCity next Spring. Rediff.com was kindly granted permission to publish 25 of the 150 winning and shortlisted images. Scroll down to see our picks of the bunch.
A blood-soaked Nandigram made Mamata Banerjee what she is today and underpins the hopes of the combustible West Bengal leader of clinching a third straight term in office.
The two Houses were adjourned for the day amid sparring between the treasury and the opposition benches on the issue.
Films that amazed Aseem Chhabra at the El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt.
The maintenance of track is increasingly becoming mechanised and capital-intensive.
'By not even acknowledging China's occupation of Indian territory Modi signalled to Beijing that he was not prepared to used forceful means to vacate the Chinese occupation, and that his government was reconciled to this loss of territory and accepted the fait accompli engineered by the PLA.'
Storm drains and guttering gushed while rivers of rain water ran down Singapore's streets on Friday as storms lashed the city-state, doing little to ease Formula One drivers' concerns ahead of the night race.
The long-term plans for Varanasi will take time to materialise but what has changed is the mood, says Aditi Phadnis
Readers share their best summer pics. You can share yours too!
'China physically occupies about 45,000 sq km of J&K as claimed by India, including 3,000 sq km captured in the 1962 War and never returned; and 5,180 sq km ceded to China by Pakistan in 1963.' 'It is hard to justify remaining silent about the return of China occupied Ladakh,' observes Ajay Shukla.
The sighting of 'tagged' turtles on February 22 night, the day mass nesting of Olive Ridley turtles started this year, established the belief that these marine creatures prefer Odisha for laying eggs.
With a staff in one hand and the other on his granddaughter's shoulder, the old man briskly takes the lead as the sun breaks over the horizon.
Modi also berated the Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress combine in Bihar, calling it an alliance of "double-double yuvraj" (two crown princes) whose sole concern was to protect their "respective thrones".
'We keep worrying about this variant or that variant. Forget about that.' 'Every variant can be stopped with a mask.' 'We don't want to do the simple thing of wearing a mask, but we worry ourselves to death about different variants.'
Coffee is a very small part of the magic that envelopes this beautiful land.
Modi also said that presently a 'new trend' is being seen in the country where protests are based on creating doubts through misinformation while union ministers urged farmers not to have any misconceptions about the three agriculture reform legislations.
Monday was the fourth consecutive day, proceedings were washed out over the Rafale jet deal and Cauvery issues.
Photographer John Moore, who took the picture that has come to symbolise the horror of the new family-separation policy in the United States, reveals what happened that night.
Count among The Light of Asia's many, many admirers over 132 years: Gandhi, Tagore, Vivekananda, Nehru and Ambedkar, Tolstoy and Kipling, Yeats and Eliot, Alfred Nobel, Dmitri Mendeleev and C V Raman. Jairam Ramesh reveals why he decided to write a book on Edwin Arnold, who wrote The Light of Asia.
Harvard will now study the civic ills of Mumbai and Delhi. But will any good come of it?
What is it about the charm of the Northeast and its mountains that it takes prisoners?
There's always been a degree of friendly tension between the two, with France regarding Belgium, and its French-speaking Wallonia region, as something of a poor cousin, while the Belgians often dismiss France as patronising and faux-superior.
How many of these have you tried already?
'When this COVID-19 restarted, the first thing I observed was that the patients are all below 50 years.'
Until last month more than two-thirds of the Indian Army was deployed against Pakistan. Of 14 army corps, just four-and-a-half faced China, while more than twice that number was ranged against Pakistan.
The large reptile was shot by Lee Lightsey who runs hunts for alligators, wild boar and turkey on his farm near Okeechobee in south east Florida.
Authoroties attributed the pollution to the lowered river level on account of reduced flow of water from the frozen source of the rivers in the Himalayas.
Geetanjal Krishna spends three days in Benares to understand why the city's famous handwoven silk industry is in the doldrums.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi left behind a "thirsty" and "frustrated" Bangladesh as the two countries could not reach an accord on the Teesta river water sharing issue during his visit to Dhaka, Chinese official media said on Monday.
We had managed to unshackle another youngster from the chains of buzzwords, says Keya Sarkar.
'Our men had suffered so much pain for the independence of other people in a foreign land.'
The 11-yr-old has already earned the sobriquet 'Nanhi Jalpari'
Madhur Jaffrey talks about her early years, and more.
Chances are any such disruption will not occur on the major shipping lanes but on some edge of the ocean between India and China. Even if there is no actual disruption, the costs of averting one can be punitive. The setting for this is provided by the energy shortage both countries face, says Subhomoy Bhattacharjee.
The first Lahore-Amritsar bus has crossed the Joint Check Post at the Wagah border.
Sub-zero temperatures could be a real issue for visitors in Pyeongchang for this month's Winter Olympics, but while Games fans shivered, athletes on Monday welcomed the cold.
