A sudden breakout of jaundice in Delhi in the 1950s had claimed over 300 lives. Investigations revealed that ‘infected' water from the Najafgarh drain had got mixed up with the Yamuna's water feeding the water works at Wazirabad and hence the tragedy. Promptly a barrage was built over the river at Wazirabad to prevent such fatal mixing in future. Little did the city authorities then realise that the real culprit was not the river that needed ‘fixing' but the Najafgarh drain and the measure would eventually kill the river downstream of Wazirabad by exhausting all its waters held upstream by the barrage. That the Najafgarh drain continued to pour poison into what was now left as an apology of a river in the city, which some with disdain and frustration call a ‘sewage canal', remained no one's concern. And the river, notwithstanding massive funds injected for infrastructure development under the Yamuna Action Plans I and II, continued to go from bad to worse.

On Sunday, the New York Times published an extensive front-page expose on hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. Times reporter Ian Urbina culled his account from thousands of internal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) documents leaked to the paper, together with similar material the Times obtained from state regulators and drillers. The most frightening takeaway: Natural gas companies are dumping radioactive wastewater from fracking into rivers and streams that serve as the main drinking water supply for millions of people -- and "dangers to the environment and health" arising from this practice are "greater than previously understood."

Environmental advocacy group Greenpeace said on Tuesday that an investigation it had conducted found tea bags sold in China by Unilever's Lipton brand contained unsafe levels of pesticide residue, though Unilever said the product was safe and to standard.

George W. Bush said even knowledge could spark the west into launching World War III, "I told people if you are interested in avoiding World War Three, it seems you ought to be interested in preventing them [IRAN] from having the KNOWLEDGE necessary to make a nuclear weapon." - White House, October 2007.

If things continue the way they are in Gandhidham, India's salt capital, the country may soon have to do without the most basic spice in any food.Over thousands of acres of Gandhidham's saltpans are facing extinction and the snowhite of salt fields have turned black.