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As many as five such dogs have been spotted so far.
Why are dogs near Navi Mumbai’s Taloja industrial area turning blue? Untreated industrial wastes being released into the Kasadi river may be the answer. As strays often wade into the river for food, the waste is dyeing their fur a bright shade of blue. On Wednesday, the Navi Mumbai Animal Protection Cell took pictures of a dog whose fur had been dyed blue.
The group filed a complaint with the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) on Thursday, saying animals in the area were suffering because dyes were being released directly into the river by industrial units. The area has nearly a 1,000 pharmaceutical, food and engineering factories.
“It was shocking to see how the dog’s white fur had turned completely blue,” said Arati Chauhan, resident of Navi Mumbai who runs the animal protection cell. “We have spotted almost five such dogs here and have asked the pollution control board to act against such industries,” she added.
As stays often wade into the river for food, the waste is dyeing their fur a bright shade of blue.
The polluted water is also likely to affect human health. In August 2016, fishermen were concerned that the polluted river water was affecting the stock of fish. They collected samples from the discharge of the common effluent treatment plant, which 300 industrial units use to treat their waste.
A water quality test at Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation found the waste treatment was inadequate. The levels of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) – the concentration of oxygen required to sustain aquatic life – was 80 milligram per litre (mg/L). Levels of chloride, which is toxic harms vegetation, aquatic life and wildlife, were also high. According to Central Pollution Control Board guidelines, fish die when BOD level are above 6 mg/L.
Levels above 3 mg/L make the water unfit for human consumption.HT had reported that untreated industrial waste pumped out by the plant had raised pollution levels in the Kasadi River to 13 times the safe limit.
The polluted Kasadi river.
“After numerous complaints to MPCB over the years, only the stench at Kasadi has reduced. However, the pollution levels continue to be extremely high and dissolved oxygen is negligible,” said Yogesh Pagade, member of a local fishing community who had conducted the study last year.
MPCB officials said they had taken cognisance of the complaint. “Allowing the discharge of dye into any water body is illegal. We will take action against the polluters as they are destroying the environment,” said Anil Mohekar, regional officer, MPCB, Navi Mumbai. “We have directed our sub-regional officer to investigate,” he added.
Animal rights activists have, however, asked whether the move comes too late. “We have only spotted blue dogs so far. We do not know if birds, reptiles and other creatures are affected or if they have even died owing to the dye discharged into the air,” said Chauhan.
The body of a child after a reported gas attack on Tuesday in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib Province.
One of the worst chemical bombings in Syria turned a northern rebel-held area into a toxic kill zone on Tuesday, inciting international outrage over the ever-increasing government impunity shown in the country’s six-year war.
Western leaders including President Trump blamed the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and called on its patrons, Russia and Iran, to prevent a recurrence of what many described as a war crime.
Dozens of people, including children, died — some writhing, choking, gasping or foaming at the mouth — after breathing in poison that possibly contained a nerve agent or other banned chemicals, according to witnesses, doctors and rescue workers. They said the toxic substance spread after warplanes dropped bombs in the early morning hours. Some rescue workers grew ill and collapsed from proximity to the dead.
The opposition-run Health Department in Idlib Province, where the attack took place, said 69 people had died, providing a list of their names. The dead were still being identified, and some humanitarian groups said as many as 100 had died.
The government of Mr. Assad, who renounced chemical weapons nearly five years ago after a large chemical attack that American intelligence agencies concluded was carried out by his forces, denied that his military had been responsible, as he has done every time chemical munitions have been used in Syria.
A statement from the Syrian military accused insurgents of responsibility and said they had accused the army of using toxic weapons “every time they fail to achieve the goals of their sponsors.”
But only the Syrian military had the ability and the motive to carry out an aerial attack like the one that struck the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun.
Russia offered another explanation. A spokesman for its Defense Ministry, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said Syrian warplanes had struck an insurgent storehouse containing toxic substances to be used in chemical weapons.
Witnesses to the attack said it began before 7 a.m. Numerous photographs and graphic videos posted online by activists and residents showed children and older adults gasping and struggling to breathe, or lying motionless in the mud as rescue workers ripped off victims’ clothes and hosed them down. The bodies of at least 10 children lay lined up on the ground or under a quilt.
A few hours later, according to several witnesses, another airstrike hit one of the clinics treating victims, who had been sent to smaller hospitals and maternity wards because the area’s largest hospital was severely damaged by an airstrike two days earlier.
The scale and brazenness of the assault threatened to further subvert a nominal and often violated cease-fire that had taken hold in parts of the country since Mr. Assad’s forces retook the northern city of Aleppo in December with Russian help, emboldening the Syrian leader to think he could win the war.Photo
Victims receiving treatment at a makeshift hospital.
The attack also seemed likely to dampen peace talks that have been overseen by the United Nations in Geneva and by Russia and Turkey in Astana, Kazakhstan.
Incredulous over the chemical assault, humanitarian groups demanded action from the United Nations Security Council, where partisan divides over who is to blame for the Syrian war have paralyzed its members almost since the conflict began in 2011.
On Tuesday night, Britain, France and the United States were pushing the Security Council to adopt a resolution that condemns the attack and orders the Syrian government to provide all flight logs, flight plans and names of commanders in charge of air operations, including those for Tuesday, to international investigators.
The draft resolution, negotiated among diplomats from the three countries on Tuesday, was later circulated to all 15 members of the Council. It could come up for a vote as early as Wednesday.
For Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly blamed what he has called President Barack Obama’s failures for the Syria crisis, the chemical weapons assault posed a potential policy dilemma and exposed some glaring contradictions in his own evolving positions on Syria.
The White House called the attack a “reprehensible” act against innocent people “that cannot be ignored by the civilized world.”Photo
Victims of the attack on Tuesday. It appeared to be the largest and most toxic chemical attack in Syria since August 2013, when more than 1,000 people were killed in the Damascus suburbs by the banned toxin sarin.
At the same time, Mr. Trump’s spokesman, Sean Spicer, denounced Mr. Obama for having failed to make good on his famous “red line” statement in 2012, suggesting he would intervene militarily in Syria if Mr. Assad used chemical weapons.
But in August 2013, Mr. Trump exhorted Mr. Obama not to intervene after a chemical weapons attack near Damascus that American intelligence attributed to the Syrian military killed more than 1,400 civilians, including hundreds of children, according to United States government estimates at the time. “President Obama, do not attack Syria,” Mr. Trump said on Twitter. “There is no upside and tremendous downside.”
Mr. Trump’s administration, which would like to shift the focus in Syria entirely to fighting the Islamic State, has in recent days described Mr. Assad’s hold on his office as a political reality — an assertion that has drawn strong condemnation from influential Republicans who say Mr. Assad must leave power.
Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, who had said that Mr. Assad’s fate “will be decided by the Syrian people,” struck a sharply different tone on Tuesday, urging Mr. Assad’s allies Russia and Iran “to exercise their influence over the Syrian regime and to guarantee that this sort of horrific attack never happens again.”
Mr. Tillerson added that “Russia and Iran also bear great moral responsibility for these deaths.”
Russia has insisted that it had no military role in the strike. But a State Department official who briefed reporters in Washington said Russian officials were trying to evade their responsibility because Russia and Iran were guarantors of the Assad government’s commitment to adhere to a cease-fire in the peace talks that the Kremlin had helped organize in Astana.
Rescue workers from the White Helmets civil defense organization said that many children were among the dead and wounded. Radi Saad, who writes incident reports for the group, said that volunteers had reached the site not knowing a chemical was present and that five of them had suffered from exposure to the substance.
While chlorine gas attacks have become almost routine in northern Syria, this one was different, medical workers and witnesses said. Chlorine attacks usually kill just a few people, often those trapped in an enclosed space, and the gas dissipates quickly.
This time, people collapsed outdoors, and in much larger numbers. The symptoms were different: They included the pinpoint pupils of victims that characterize nerve agents and other banned poisons. One doctor posted a video of a patient’s eye, showing the pupil reduced to a dot. Several people were sickened simply by coming into contact with victims.
The opposition minister of health, Mohamad Firas al-Jundi, said in a video that he had been in a field hospital at 7:30 a.m. when more than 100 people arrived wounded or sickened.
“The patients are in the corridors and on the floors of the operation rooms, the E.R.s and in the patient rooms,” he said. “I saw more than 10 deaths due to this attack.”
Symptoms included suffocation; fluid in the lungs, with foam coming from the mouth; unconsciousness; spasms; and paralysis, he said.
“It’s a shocking act,” he said. “The world knows and is aware of what’s happening in Syria, and we are ready to submit evidence to criminal laboratories to prove the use of these gases.”
A 14-year-old resident of the attacked town, Mariam Abu Khalil, said she had left home for her examination on the Quran — scheduled for early morning because fewer bombings were expected then — when the attack took place. On the way, she saw an aircraft drop a bomb on a one-story building a few dozen yards away. In a telephone interview Tuesday night, she described an explosion like a yellow mushroom cloud that stung her eyes. “It was like a winter fog,” she said.
Sheltering in her home nearby, she saw several residents arrive by car to help the wounded. “When they got out, they inhaled the gas and died,” she said.
The attack appeared to be the deadliest chemical attack in Syria since the August 2013 assault. Under threat of United States retaliation, Mr. Assad agreed to a Russian-American deal to eliminate his country’s chemical weapons program, which until that time it had denied having, and to join an international treaty banning chemical weapons.
But the operation took far longer than expected and raised questions about whether all the materials were accounted for. The head of the international monitoring body, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, complained in an internal report about misleading statements from Damascus and expressed concern about possible undeclared chemical weapons.
Since then, the organization, working with the United Nations, has found that the Syrian government used chlorine gas as a weapon three times in 2014 and 2015, violating the treaty. Rebel fighters, doctors and antigovernment activists say there have been numerous other chlorine attacks, including at least two in the past week, in one case killing a doctor as he worked.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has also accused the Islamic State of using banned mustard gas in Iraq and Syria. The area around Khan Sheikhoun is not held by the Islamic State, but by other insurgents: Qaeda-linked militants and a variety of other rebel groups.
A chemical weapons attack, if carried out by the government, would be a brazen statement of impunity, coming during a major international meeting in Brussels where officials are debating whether the European Union and other countries will contribute billions of dollars for reconstructing Syria if it is presided over by a government run by Mr. Assad.
The bus was decked up at Ultadanga in the northern fringes of Kolkata on Thursday evening.(HT Photo)
The revered cow has a new utility, as biogas produced from its dung will fuel the cheapest mode of transport for people in the country.
A Kolkata-based company has designed a bus that will run on biogas produced from cow dung.
The first bus will be flagged off on Friday and will run between Ultadanga in the north and Garia in the south in Kolkata.
At just Re 1 for the 17.5 km stretch, the bus will be the cheapest mode of transport for a passenger in the country.
(The lowest fare in a Kolkata bus is Rs 6, which goes up to Rs 12 for 17 km, and that of a Delhi bus that run on CNG is Rs 5 for 4 km and upwards.)
Phoenix India Research and Development Group, which has produced the biogas from cow dung, has tied up with heavy vehicle major Ashok Leyland to manufacture the 54-seater bus at a cost of Rs 13 lakh approximately.
As many as 15 more buses will be launched on different routes in the city this year. All will have the same fare structure.
The biogas that will be used to drive the bus is produced at a plant in Bengal’s Birbhum district. (HT Photo)
Biogas is produced from animal and plant waste and principally consists of methane. It is a non-toxic colourless flammable gas that can be used as fuel for vehicles, cooking and generating electricity. It is also a clean source of fuel and environment-friendly.
“We are producing biogas principally from cow dung in our plant in Birbhum district. The fuel is transported to Kolkata in tankers,” said Jyoti Prakash Das, chairman and managing director of Phoenix India Research and Development Group, the company which is launching the service.
Explaining the economics, he said, “The biogas we produce costs Rs 20 a kg. The bus can run 5 km on one kg now.”
Das, who has a PhD in Botany and has been working on biogas for the past eight years, said they are planning to source a technology from Germany that “will enable the vehicle to run 20 km on the same amount of fuel. The tank can hold 80 kg gas, and therefore, the vehicle can run 1,600 km on a full tank. That’s why the fare is so cheap.”
The salary of drivers and conductors will be given from advertisements that will be put up on the body of the bus.
The company has got the permission to set up 100 fuel pumps. The first pump will come up at Ultadanga.
The fuel will also increase the commercial life of the vehicle.
“A Union ministry notification states that commercial vehicles which are more than 15 years old and are already banned, can continue to ply on roads, if the owners switch the diesel-engines of the vehicles to bio-fuel engines. It means, all the 12 new biogas buses we are manufacturing can run on roads forever,” said Das.
Phoenix has set up a biogas plant in Dubrajpur of Birbhum district, about 204 km north of Kolkata. Right now it can produce 1,000 kg of gas.
The importance of cow, a holy animal of the Hindus, has increased after BJP assumed power at the Centre in 2014, and more so, in Uttar Pradesh on March 18 this year.
Hindu organisations associated with BJP have been promoting several utilities of the animal, including the healing power of its urine, besides enforcing cow slaughter ban, which has affected the meat industry in UP and other north Indian states.
El Hiero is the smallest island in the Canary Islands, with a population of just 10,000. A few years ago, they have started the initiative to let go of fossil fuels. Now, this one of the countries that have successfully bid goodbye to dirty energy source and became more dependent on clean energy.
Like El Hiero, other small countries such as Costa Rica and Bonaire, have also succeeded in achieving this goal. They have proven that when people clamor for change, it can be done. Unlike other countries, these island countries understand the significance of protecting the environment.
They are the first in line when the huge impact of global warming occurs. They can see the changes in the environment in real time. Other countries are irresponsible because they have not really felt the devastating effects of global warming.
The truth is that we are all interconnected. If we remain dependent in fossil fuel, there will be bigger consequences. You may be a victim in the future.
If we want to stop the harmful effects of fossil fuel, let us support researches that harness natural energy sources. There should be more funding that goes towards the use of clean energy. People should have incentives to shift to cleaner energy source like solar panels.
If these small countries have shown it can be done, there is no reason for other countries not to do the same. The infographic below lists the other countries that became successful in letting go of fossil fuels.
The Darvaza gas crater, also known as 'The Door to Hell' and
'The Crater of Fire', is a jaw-dropping man-made natural phenomenon in
the Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan.
"Man-made natural phenomenon" might sound like a contradiction, but hear us out.
As explained in a new video from YouTube channel SciShow, in 1971 Soviet scientists began explored the Karakum desert search of oil and gas.
No
one really knows what followed, there have been no official public
reports on the matter, but it is currently thought that the enthusiastic
scientists, having found oil and gas, began to drill immediately.
They had stumbled on a cavern and created a sinkhole more than 60 metres in diameter and 20 metres deep.
This released a lot of methane, which the scientists presumably decided to burn off, thinking it would only take a few weeks.
It is still alight to this day, and has a terrible eggy smell because of the hydrogen sulphide in the ground.
It's a popular tourist spot these days, because, well, it's a big burning crater of fire.
Nanjing's vertical forest will consist of two buildings whose construction will incorporate 1,100 trees and over 2,500 shrubs and plants in the hopes of improving the city's air quality.
If successful, this innovative solution could be replicated throughout China and other pollution-stricken nations, bringing a better quality of air to people worldwide.
China is looking toward more innovative — and in this case, breathtaking — solutions to its pollution problem.
More than eight million people live in Nanjing, the second largest city in the East China region, so there’s hardly any room to plant new trees to combat the city’s pollution. As an alternative, Nanjing is building a vertical forest by constructing living, breathing buildings that can serve to absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen at the same time.
Credit: Boeri Studio
This vertical forrest is essentially two buildings whose construction will incorporate 1,100 trees and over 2,500 shrubs and plants. The buildings will stand at 107 and 199 meters (354 and 656 feet) tall, respectively, and they will be functional additions to Nanjing’s cityscape. The shorter tower is being eyed to become a Hyatt hotel, while the taller structure will house a museum, offices, and an architectural school.
Once construction is completed in 2018, the structures will be able to absorb enough carbon dioxide to produce 132 pounds (60 kilograms) of oxygen.
Credit: Boeri Studio
On the standard air quality index, which pegs 60 as “moderate” and anything above 100 as “unhealthy,” Nanjing’s 167 is well above ideal. The city is hoping that the creation of the Nanjing Vertical Forest will improve its air quality.
Two other vertical forests are already in place, one in Italy and one in Switzerland, but this is the first to be constructed in Asia, with additional ones expected to follow in Chongqing, Shijiazhuang, Liuzhou, Guizhou, and Shanghai.
Credit: Boeri Studio 
Credit: Boeri Studio 
