Ten of the largest rivers in the world are dying. Amongst these are the Ganga, Indus, Nile, Yangtze, Mekong and Danube that are the lifeline of millions of people. These rivers are not merely water sources but repositories of history, myths and cultural memories. And, the greatest threat to these and many other rivers is industrial pollution apart from natural sewage channels.

When Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, was asked to ponder the future of the world before an audience of powerful businessmen and politicians, at a meeting in Switzerland earlier this year, he could have chosen any topic he liked. What he focused on was both a hoary old favourite, and a newly popular preoccupation, of debates on world affairs: the rising risk of wars over fresh water, as populations increase and the world gets drier.

The river Amazon, not the Nile, is the world's longest river, claims a group of Brazilian scientists. Scientists from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics have recently traced the

>> China has rejected a recent report of the International Energy Agency that had said the country would overtake the US as the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitter by 2008 (see

Ten African nations show how a river can be shared peacefully

The West Nile disease is showing no sign of abating in the us. After claiming 71 human lives and wiping out colonies of birds, the virus killed hundreds of horses. Its latest victims are dogs and

After two decades, the rhinoceros is on the comeback trail in Uganda. Two southern white rhinos have arrived at the Entebbe wildlife education centre as part of a project financed by the World Bank

A US scientist says that the Aswan dam would lead to an ice age in the Northern hemisphere