Couldn’t cancel Durga Puja carnival due to foreign guests, was monitoring North Bengal: Mamata Banerjee

IANS | October 7, 2025 7:50 PM

Kolkata, Oct 7 (IANS) West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Tuesday that the Durga Puja carnival could not be cancelled due to the presence of the foreign delegations, and her own presence at the event was a necessity, that is why she was unable to travel to North Bengal, but was in constant touch with the officials seeking ground reports about the flood situation.

In run up to COP30, Stockholm Paper blames China's expansion, resource extraction for Tibet's extreme ecological stress

IANS | October 6, 2025 5:32 PM

New Delhi/Stockholm, Oct 6 (IANS) A report by the Stockholm Centre for South Asian and Indo-Pacific Affairs (SCSA‑IPA) at the Institute for Security and Development Policy (ISDP), has urged governments, research institutions, and civil society to place the Tibetan Plateau at the core of international climate policy and has come down heavily on China’s state‑centric model of infrastructure expansion, militarisation, and resource extraction, which it states has transformed one of the world’s most fragile environments into a zone of extreme ecological stress.