At least 160 dead and hundreds missing after floods strike Nepal-China border Monsoon rains from June to September regularly trigger deadly floods and landslides across South Asia. Euronews · Aug 26
Beyond Tigers: How the Sundarbans' Tidal Mangrove Web Keeps Asia's Largest Forest Alive The Mud Is the EngineThe Sundarbans sits across roughly 10,000 square kilometres of the Bengal delta, where the Ganga, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers meet the Bay of Bengal. Twice a day, tidal water floods the forest floor and retreats, depositing silt and carrying nutrients. This cycle, not the trees, not… Times Life · Aug 26
How Diclofenac Nearly Drove India's Vultures to Extinction, and What the Recovery Programme Has Actually Achieved The drug that emptied the skyThrough the 1990s, vulture populations across South Asia fell off a cliff so steeply that ornithologists initially suspected a new disease. The Gyps vulture, the genus that includes the white-rumped, long-billed, and slender-billed species, had been among the most numerous large raptors on earth. Surveys… Times Life · Aug 20
Why Living in a Joint Family Is One of the Smartest Financial Decisions Indians Can Make The Rent Equation Nobody Writes DownA single-bedroom flat in Bengaluru's Koramangala costs anywhere between ₹20,000 and ₹35,000 a month in rent alone. Add maintenance, electricity, gas, and groceries bought in small quantities at retail price, and a young professional earning ₹60,000 a month is spending close to half of it… Times Life · Aug 19
What Folate Deficiency Does to the Brain and Body of Indian Women Before Pregnancy The damage starts before the pregnancy test turns positiveThe neural tube, the embryonic structure that becomes the brain and spinal cord, closes between days 21 and 28 after conception. Most women do not confirm a pregnancy until week 5 or 6. That gap is the clinical problem with folate deficiency.… Times Life · Aug 19
How Zinc Deficiency Quietly Damages Immunity and Fertility in Indian Adults, and What to Eat What Zinc Is Actually Doing Inside YouZinc is not a single-purpose mineral. It is a cofactor in more than 300 enzymatic reactions, wound healing, cell division, protein synthesis, and the production of white blood cells that form the first line of immune defence. When zinc drops below optimal levels, the… Times Life · Aug 18
8 Warning Signs of Vitamin B12 Deficiency Every Vegetarian Indian Should Recognise Why Vegetarians Are at Particular RiskB12 exists almost exclusively in animal-derived foods: meat, fish, eggs, and dairy. A 2017 study published in the Journal of Nutritional Science found that vegetarians in South Asia had a B12 deficiency prevalence of up to 73%, compared with under 20% in omnivores from the… Times Life · Aug 18
Seaplanes in India get an electrifying push with SkyHop Aviation's new deal SkyHop Aviation, India’s seaplane operator, is exploring electric seaplane deployment with Noemi Aerospace across India and South Asia. SkyHop plans up to 40 aircraft by FY2030, with electric and hybrid seaplanes potentially accounting for 20-25%. The company will initially connect Lakshadweep and mainland India, while evaluating Noemi aircraft for future… The Economic Times · Aug 17
A new ‘NATO of the East?’ Why the Mecca pact isn’t quite what it seems Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan have signed the Mecca Joint Defence Pact, a new collective defence arrangement that connects the Middle East with South Asia. The Conversation · Aug 16
How Gen Z and India’s Cockroach Janata Party are successfully challenging Narendra Modi Gen Z protesters have taken to the streets in mass numbers in South Asia in recent years — particularly in Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, leading to regime change in those countries. These protests are part of a broader, global Gen Z movement. The Conversation · Aug 12
How Kidney Stone Formation Begins in Your Renal System and How to Stop It Early What Actually Happens Inside the KidneyYour kidney filters roughly 200 litres of blood every day, pulling out waste and excess minerals and sending them out in urine. Most of those minerals stay dissolved. A stone begins when one of them stops dissolving and starts crystallising instead.The most common type is… Times Life · Aug 12
India's Rarest Wildcat, the Caracal, Is Quietly Surviving in Places Nobody Predicted A Cat That Refused to DisappearThe last confirmed caracal sighting in many Indian states happened so long ago that field biologists stopped budgeting for them. Then camera traps started catching something unexpected: a medium-sized feline with tufted black ears and a tawny, unmarked coat moving through the rocky scrublands of… Times Life · Aug 11
The Invisible Labour Indian Working Mothers Carry That Never Earns a Single Word of Thanks The shift that starts when the other one endsThe alarm goes at 5:45. Not because you want to be up. Because someone has to soak the dal, check the school bag, sign the permission slip that came home yesterday crumpled in a pocket. By the time your husband's alarm rings… Times Life · Aug 11
India's Most Secretive Feline: What Science Has Actually Documented About the Clouded Leopard A Cat That Rewrote the Anatomy of ClimbingThe clouded leopard's canine teeth are the longest, relative to skull size, of any living cat on earth. That single biological fact has been confirmed, measured, and published, and it is one of the few things about this animal that science can state… Times Life · Aug 10
Times Life · Aug 7 Smoky Eye for Indian Eye Shapes: Liner, Shadow and Pigment Techniques That Actually Work Why Most Smoky Eye Guides Fail Indian EyesThe standard smoky eye tutorial places the darkest shadow in the outer V, blends upward toward the brow bone, and lines the waterline in black. On a deep-set Western eye with a visible lid, that formula reads as dramatic and defined. On a…
Times Life · Aug 5 Lesser vs Greater Flamingo: Why India's Sewage Ponds Have Become a Pink Sanctuary Two birds, one glance, and where the differences actually areStand at the edge of Thane Creek on a winter morning and you will see tens of thousands of flamingos turning the water pink. What you almost certainly won't do, without a field guide and some patience, is correctly sort them…
Times Life · Aug 5 5 Caves in India That Go Deeper Underground Than Expected and Reward Every Kilometre of Spelunking Krem Liat Prah, Meghalaya, The Longest Cave in the Indian SubcontinentAt 31 kilometres of surveyed passage, Krem Liat Prah in the East Jaintia Hills is the longest cave in South Asia. Tourists who arrive at the entrance expecting a short walk with a guide come out two hours later having…
Times Life · Aug 5 Meghalaya's Underground River Caves Hold a World Record Most Indians Have Never Heard Of The Record That Sits Quietly in Meghalaya's HillsKrem Puri, located in the Siju-Rewak area of South Garo Hills, was mapped by the Meghalaya Adventurers Association and a team of international cavers in 2018 and measured at 24.583 kilometres, making it the longest sandstone cave in the world. Not the longest…
The Times of India · Aug 4 How rose-ringed parakeets went from escaped pets to one of Britain's most recognisable birds Bright green, loud and unmistakable, rose-ringed parakeets have become one of the most recognisable birds in London's parks and gardens, despite having no natural historical presence anywhere in Britain. The species, native to parts of Africa and South Asia, was first confirmed breeding in the wild in Britain in 1969,…
Times Life · Aug 4 Belum Caves: Inside Andhra Pradesh's Underground World That Most Indian Tourists Have Never Heard Of What Belum Actually IsBelum Caves sit near Tadipatri in Kurnool district, carved by the Chitravati river over millions of years through limestone bedrock. The total mapped length runs to 3,229 metres, with a visitor circuit of roughly 1.5 kilometres open to the public. That makes Belum the longest cave system…
The Times of India · Aug 2 Hasina may make her first public appearance this week since ouster Exactly two years after her ouster from office, former Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina may make her first public appearance this week. Hasina is likely to virtually address an event at the foreign correspondents’ club of South Asia in New Delhi on Aug 5.
Times Life · Aug 2 Why Crocodiles Are India's Most Ancient Survivors of Every Mass Extinction on Earth Five Extinctions, Zero RedesignsThe asteroid that ended the dinosaurs 66 million years ago killed roughly 75 percent of all species on Earth. Crocodilians watched it happen and kept going. They had already survived the Permian extinction 252 million years ago, the worst die-off in Earth's history, which erased an estimated…
The Economic Times · Jul 28 Everyone in South Asia knows who is stymieing cooperation under SAARC: India India stated Pakistan is responsible for hindering SAARC cooperation efforts. New Delhi favors strong regional cooperation and has worked towards it for decades. Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu called for resolving differences through dialogue. The SAARC grouping has been ineffective since 2016 due to stalled summits. India has focused on BIMSTEC…
Times Life · Jul 28 Cats Were Domesticated Thousands of Years After Dogs, and the Difference Still Shapes Their Behavior Two Animals, Two Completely Different BargainsDogs crossed into human company somewhere between 15,000 and 40,000 years ago, the range is wide because the genetic and archaeological evidence keeps pushing the date back. What is clear is why it happened: humans needed something. They needed an animal that could track prey,…
The Economic Times · Jul 26 India among top five growth markets, centre of global strategy for Red Hat India is currently at the centre of the company's global strategy, both as a critical market and a hub for engineering excellence, Navtej Singh Bal, Vice President and General Manager, India and South Asia, Red Hat, noted.