Thursday, August 27
The history of our cities has been written in water.In Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Indus valley, the first urban settlements were built around irrigated farmland. Flooded terrace fields for rice, corn and quinoa accompanied the spread of civilization in East Asia and the Americas. Without water, the megacities that will define the 21st century would wither and perish.That's looking like a risk factor in an increasing number of locations. Cape Town and Chennai in recent years endured punishing droughts that left them on the brink of crisis. Similar conditions afflicted the upwardly-mobile Indian cities of Bengaluru and Hyderabad last year. Now Tehran (biggest of all, with about 15 million people) is facing the same emergency.Residents of Iran’s capital are having their taps turned off for
India's merchandise trade deficit declined to five-month low of $24.53 billion in November, driven by a fall in gold, oil and coal imports, while exports to the US picked up, government export and import data released on Monday showed.Indian merchandise exports to the US rose nearly 10% month-on-month to $6.92 billion in November, the data showed.Economists had expected the November trade deficit to be $32 billion, according to a Reuters poll, compared to a record deficit of $41.68 billion in the previous month."India has held fort on the U.S. exports despite tariffs," Rajesh Agrawal, Commerce secretary, said, adding that the decline in imports was due to a fall in gold, oil and coal imports.Overall merchandise exports rose to $38.13 billion in November from $34.38 billion in October, whil
