Maharashtra, an Indian state, is facing one of the worst droughts in the past 40 years. Reports say severe droughts have prompted people to migrate to Mumbai and neighboring states of Gujarat, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh from 3,905 villages in 12 districts of the state.
Districts of Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Jalna, Beed and Osmanabad are reported to have only enough drinking water reserves to sustain through March. Impending summer will only worsen the situation and the state will have to transport water from neighboring districts and even by trains from other states, a high-ranking bureaucrat told Times of India.
The bright dancing lights of the aurora are actually collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun that enter the earth's atmosphere. The lights are seen above the magnetic poles of the northern and southern hemispheres. They are known as 'Aurora borealis' in the north and 'Aurora australis' in the south..
Auroral displays appear in many colours although pale green and pink are the most common. Shades of red, yellow, green, blue, and violet have been reported. The lights appear in many forms from patches or scattered clouds of light to streamers, arcs, rippling curtains or shooting rays that light up the sky with an eerie glow.
Following criticism that the smoke looked unusually dark and distinct compared with that seen before, a spokesman has admitted that it is not made simply of incinerated ballot papers.
Instead, the smoke is a mixture of chemicals made by adding cartridges containing potassium perchlorate, anthracene (a component of coal tar), and sulphur to the burning ballots.The Rev. Federico Lombardi added that the white smoke signalling a pope has been elected will be produced by potassium chlorate, lactose and chloroform resin.
The Highways Agency said it had been working throughout the night with emergency services and local authorities to respond to "hundreds of incidents" which took place in heavy snow and strong winds on its network of roads in Kent and Sussex.
50mph winds created snow drifts of up to a metre in height, in many cases blowing snow back on to the carriageway as soon as it had been cleared, they added.
" This is not only an environmental issue but also a public moral problem. What's been polluted is not only Shanghai's river water but also the spirit of our country people."
The surge in dumping of dead pigs — believed to be from swine farms in the upstream Jiaxing area of neighboring Zhejiang province — has followed police campaigns against the sale of pork products made from diseased pigs.
A large portion of the Middle East lost freshwater reserves rapidly during the past decade. New data revealed already an arid region of Tigris-Euphrates Basin, which grows even drier due to human consumption of water for drinking and agriculture.
A HUGE dust storm has hit Tokyo, blanketing the city with brown dust that darkened the skies and rapidly transformed what had been a clear and sunny day.
Meteorologists said the phenomenon was caused by a sudden cold front, and was not linked with the suffocating pollution that hung over the Chinese capital Beijing last winter.
Tropical Cyclone Sandra was still a very strong storm, hovering at sea northwest of New Caledonia on Monday.
While far to the east of Australia, Sandra was helping to whip up rough surf and rip currents, which will be likely to last through at least Wednesday, along some Queensland beaches.
The report, which covers the recently-concluded "meteorological winter" from Dec. 1 through Feb. 28, shows that 2012-13 was the 20th-warmest winter of the past 118 for the Lower 48. It was also a relatively wet winter, placing 25th-wettest since 1895-96.
Only four states had "near normal" temperatures, defined as the middle one-third of the historical range, according to the NCDC report. Six states were cooler than normal, all of them in the Southwest. None of those states placed among their ten coldest winters.
