Rescuers Save 2,400 Migrants In

Mediterranean, Recover 14 Bodies

World | Reuters | Updated: October 23, 2016 12:15 IST

The migrants were on rubber boats and other small vessels. (Representational image)

MILAN: Rescuers pulled 2,400 boat migrants to safety on Saturday, the Italian
coastguard said, adding 14 dead bodies had been recovered in the past two days.
The migrants were on rubber boats and other small vessels, it said in a statement.
Some 20 operations were carried out on Saturday alone, including rescues involving an
Irish naval ship and boats from humanitarian groups Doctors Without Borders and Sea
Watch.
Doctors Without Borders said in a tweet on Saturday it believed 12 people had died
during rescue operations, four of them children.
More than 3,100 migrants have gone missing or died this year while trying to use the
route from north Africa to Europe by boat, the International Organization for Migration
estimates.
Thomson Reuters 2016

1 Killed, 2 Injured In Japan Park Blasts:

Fire Department

World | Agence France-Presse | Updated: October 23, 2016 12:15 IST

One person was killed and at least two injured by two near-simultaneous blasts in a Japanese
park.

TOKYO: One person was killed and at least two injured by two nearsimultaneous blasts in a Japanese park on Sunday, the local fire department
said.
The explosions occurred at a park in Utsunomiya, some 100 kilometres (60
miles) north of Tokyo, shortly after 11:30 am (0230 GMT), a fire department
spokesman said. It was not immediately clear what caused the blasts.
"One person was found dead," the fire department spokesman told AFP,
without elaborating further.
Public broadcaster NHK said a body badly damaged in the blast was found at
a bicycle parking space for the park.
"The sex and ages of the three are not known yet," another local fire
department official said, adding one blast hit a car parking lot for the park.
NHK footage showed a car completely charred, as fire fighters poured water
on it.
A man told NHK that he "smelled gunpowder in the area" after the
explosions.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a
syndicated feed.)

Ill-Effects Of Air Pollution May Be

Transgenerational: Experts
Health | Press Trust of India | Updated: October 23, 2016 12:52 IST

Adverse effects of air pollution, described as the world's biggest environmental risk by WHO.

NEW DELHI: Adverse effects of air pollution, described as the world's biggest
environmental risk by WHO, may linger on in Delhi for generations to come,
experts warn.
New studies in this area, indicating that its impact may be
'transgenerational', have unsettled pollution experts and doctors here.
TK Joshi, Director, Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health, told PTI
that a study by the US-based National Institute of Environmental Health
Sciences (NIEHS) has uncovered this fact.
"New research that has shaken all of us says that if a fetus is exposed to air
pollution, she has change in her genes, and these changes are such that
they don't remain confined to her only.
"The impact is transgenerational. That means her children, her grand
children will be affected. And you cannot undo a change in gene. If we don't
control this then we are creating lot of diseases to which we do not have any
cure, like asthma, cancer, stroke," Joshi said.
While the phenomenon holds true for people cutting across the world, it will
be more so for residents of cities like Delhi, known for notoriously high levels
of pollution.
It also turn on its head the conventional wisdom that pollution affects only
certain vulnerable categories such as children, the elderly, people with
respiratory diseases and expecting mothers.
Joshi rued that indoor air pollution was an area that has seen the "least
amount" of work. Its potential impact on health is a riddle that needs to
solved.
"That is what is sorely needed, to find its short and long term impact, serious

or mild effects. Itching of eyes, sneezing are mild effects, but if you say
cancer it's very serious. So the riddle is yet to be solved," Joshi said.
Echoing these views, Prof Mukesh Khare of IIT Delhi said the latest findings
make indoor air pollution more significant, as people, especially expecting
mothers, spend more time inside.
"Urban indoor air quality is an area that is not well- researched. The Central
Pollution Control Board had put a draft of indoor air quality monitoring
guidelines on its website in 2014 but there has no forward movement since.
We need to have prescribed standards like for outdoor air," he said.
Air pollution is killing nearly eight lakh people annually in the South East
Asian Region with India alone accounting for over 75 per cent of the
casualties caused by cardiovascular diseases and lung cancer, according to
WHO.
Delhi also happens to be the 11th most polluted city in the world (based on
data collected between 2008-13), according to the latest rankings released
by the UN agency, while four other Indian cities - Gwalior (2), Allahabad (3),
Patna (6) and Raipur (7) - figure in the top seven.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a
syndicated feed.)

September 2016 Hottest On Record, Says NASA

World | Press Trust of India | Updated: October 18, 2016 13:19 IST

The late reports lowered the June 2016 anomaly by 0.05 degrees Celsius to 0.75.

WASHINGTON: Last month was the warmest September in 136 years of

record-keeping, meaning 11 of the past 12 consecutive months dating back
to October last year have set new monthly high-temperature records, NASA
said.

According to a monthly analysis of global temperatures by scientists at

NASA's Goddard
Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in the US, September 2016's temperature
was a razor-thin 0.004 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous warmest
September in 2014.
The margin is so narrow those two months are in a statistical tie. Last month
was 0.91 degrees Celsius warmer than the mean September temperature
from 1951-1980.
The record-warm September means 11 of the past 12 consecutive months
dating back to October 2015 have set new monthly high-temperature
records.
Updates to the input data have meant that June 2016, previously reported to
have been the warmest June on record, is, in GISS's updated analysis, the
third warmest June behind 2015 and 1998 after receiving additional
temperature readings from Antarctica.

The late reports lowered the June 2016 anomaly by 0.05 degrees Celsius to
0.75.
"Monthly rankings are sensitive to updates in the record, and our latest
update to mid-winter readings from the South Pole has changed the ranking
for June," said GISS director Gavin Schmidt.
"We continue to stress that while monthly rankings are newsworthy, they are
not nearly as important as long-term trends," said Schmidt.

The monthly analysis by the GISS team is assembled from publicly available
data acquired by about 6,300 meteorological stations around the world, shipand buoy-based instruments measuring sea surface temperature, and
Antarctic research stations.
The global temperature record begins around 1880 because previous
observations did not cover enough of the planet. Monthly analyses are
updated when additional data become available, and the results are subject
to change, NASA said.