A standing ovation to those who actually do something about the problems they see around them—a story of a simple teacher who rescues kids without a future.

Namaste friends! My name is Amit Rajbhar. I stay in Chaknapur (Kosda) village, which lies in the Araji Line Block of Varanasi. Since the past 15 years, I have been working as a school teacher in the Asha Samajik Vidyalaya. It is run by an ngo called 'Asha for Education'...

Where happiness comes in small packages—the ever-delightful house sparrow.

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We often ignore our immediate periphery in our quest for finding excitement. Just think of the house sparrows! As a kid, out of sheer ignorance, I recall embarrassingly how I plundered their nests. But now, I compensate by feeding their chicks, watering them, and sheltering them in their cushy abodes.

In all this while, these humble birds never ever deserted their homes nor me...

Rainfall is probably the most common natural weather event on this planet. But it is not that common when it comes to the ice sheets of Greenland, where temperatures seldom cross the freezing point. But on August 14, 2021, something unprecedented happened. The Summit of Greenland, which is the highest point of its ice sheets, received rain for the first time in recorded history.

1,697 people killed in India after being struck by lightning between March 2020 and April 2021. Lightning strikes kill more people than cyclones, earthquakes and floods every year. As the Earth heats up, the number of extreme weather events like heat waves and thunderstorms are also increasing. Warming adds to moisture levels in the atmosphere not just in coastal areas but also the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

One fine day, we woke up and found our city, country, whole wide world and everything else come to a standstill. Something absolutely unexpected, not even in the worst of our dreams, had happened. Then, suddenly, all the related challenges began hitting us.

There came in the role of a teacher. I have been a person who is not so tech-savvy and struggles to overcome her anxiety about going online. In fact, just as me, there were many teachers, mostly at the verge of retirement, who were trying their best to connect with their students. We were aware that life shouldn’t stop because of the lockdown and that the show must go on. 

When we think about biodiversity, we usually think only of animals, birds, insects and plants. We forget that fungi are also biodiversity. According to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in the UK, fungi are ‘distinctive organisms that digest their food externally by secreting enzymes into the environment and absorbing organic matter... 

On July 1, 2021, Delhi experienced a heatwave, when the maximum temperature rose to 43.5°C. At the same time, Ganganagar, in west Rajasthan, reported India's highest temperature of 44.5°C. Some pockets of Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh, Delhi, north Rajasthan and west Uttar Pradesh still continue to face heatwave conditions. This issue is now prevalent world over. But the world is not only getting hotter but also wetter or more humid.

“You got the vaccine!?” Babbi screeched excitedly. She was talking to her 13-year-old cousin, Manu, in the US. “Did it hurt? Did you get fever? And did you get the clot?” Babbi could barely sit still during that video call.

“Nah… nothing happened,” Manu assured her, behaving like a responsible older brother. He didn’t experience any major adverse effects after the COVID-19 vaccine. But he understood why Babbi was worrying. He too had been scared of the vaccine and had read up extensively about it. Not wanting to lose this chance to show-off, he offered to explain how the vaccines work to Babbi.

In the rural village of Kanwarpura, Rajasthan, this doctor turned solar entrepreneur is using the KUSUM Yojana to boost his income by 200 times while providing clean energy to the farming community. The village of Kanmarpura was struggling with a water crisis when Amit Singh decided to seek out a modern solution for his deteriorating farmland and hence became the first person in India to generate income by selling clean energy to DISCOM using the PM- KUSUM Yojana. 

IPCC’s* sixth assessment report (AR6) has bad news for the future. The warming beyond 1.5°C or 2°C will be breached much earlier. Average global temperatures will continue to rise and could increase by 5.7 °C by the end of this century compared to 1850–1900.Consequently, the land surface will continue to warm more than the ocean surface. The Arctic will continue to warm more than global surface temperature. Extreme changes become larger with every addition to global warming.

Plastic pollution creates an evolutionary trap for young sea turtles, says a new study. The study is done by researchers from the University of Exeter, UK. The study included 121 sea turtles from five of the world’s seven species: green, loggerhead, hawksbill, olive ridley, and flatback.

They found plastic inside juvenile turtles along both the east and west coasts of Australia. Sea turtles usually hatch on beaches and spent their early years traveling on ocean currents...