The Sikh holy city of Amritsar was the hottest place in Punjab with the temperature at a sizzling 44.5 degrees Celsius. Karnal in Haryana recorded 43 degrees while Ambala was lower at 39.8. Ludhiana and Patiala in Punjab recorded 42.8 degrees and 4?.5, respectively. Power cuts at most places in both the states made life miserable for people.

In the Indian capital, the mercury touched 44.5 degrees Celsius Sunday for the second straight day, forcing people to stay indoors to avoid the harsh, hot weather. A low-pressure area developing in southeast Uttar Pradesh could bring some respite in the form of thunderstorms in New Delhi Monday evening, said a weather official. "As of now, we do not expect any major change in the weather condition. The temperatures would remain 42-44 degrees Celsius for two days," the official said. He said the rise in temperature was normal for this part of the year.

B. Lal, director general of the India Meteorological Department (IMD), said the temperature in north India would remain three-five degrees above normal for the next 48 hours. While temperatures in much of Uttar Pradesh touched 40 degrees and above, in Agra, the city of the Taj, it was 45 degrees Celsius, seriously affecting tourist traffic. In the rocky southern part known as Bundelkhand, of which Jhansi is the main city, the mercury rose to 43 degrees. Orissa too recorded 40 degrees and above in many parts. However, capital city Bhubaneswar was better with 38 degrees. Four towns of Jharsuguda, Balasore, Chandbali and Hirakud recorded a maximum of 40 degrees and above Saturday.

Jharsuguda had last month recorded the highest temperature of this summer at 44.3 degrees Celsius. According to environmentalists, high temperatures used to be followed by heavy rain. But this has not been the case in the past decade. Andhra Pradesh too recorded over 40 degrees Celsius temperature in many parts of the state as heat wave conditions continued. The maximum temperature in Hyderabad and parts of Telangana and Rayalseema regions crossed 40 degrees Celsius Sunday. The mercury in Medak in Telangana region was 43 degrees. The Hyderabad Meteorological office said dry conditions would continue in most parts of the state. The temperature in Jaipur was 44.8 degrees Celsius, in Lucknow 40.2 and in Chandigarh 43 degrees. In the hills too the weather was hot. Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, recorded 32.4 degrees Celsius, 10 degrees above normal. Dehradun, in Uttaranchal, touched 37.6 degrees, three degrees above normal.

All ‘piyau’s’ or water points in major cities and towns were crowded with people quenching their parched throats. In Rajasthan, unofficial sources put the death toll due to the heat wave at six, but officials maintain there have been no heat-related deaths in the state so far. Orissa recorded nine deaths over a month, but none in the past week. Officials in Uttar Pradesh have denied any deaths due to the heat that was being reported by television channels. "We have not received any such information from any part of the state," an official spokesman of the home department said.

A deep-sea trawl by marine scientists has come up with hundreds of species of zooplankton – from tiny shrimp-like creatures and swimming worms to flying snails and pulsing jellyfish.

They added that the vast environmental changes brought about by the process will increase droughts and sandstorms over the rest of the country, and devastate many of the world’s greatest rivers, in what experts warn will be an "ecological catastrophe".

The plateau, says the academy, has a staggering 46,298 glaciers, covering almost 60,000 square miles. At an average height of 13,000 feet above sea level, they make up the largest area of ice outside the polar regions, nearly a sixth of the world’s total.

The glaciers have been receding over the past four decades, as the world has gradually warmed up, but the process has now accelerated alarmi?gly. Average temperatures in Tibet have risen by 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 20 years, causing the glaciers to shrink by 7 per cent a year, which means that they will halve every 10 years.

Prof Dong Guangrong, speaking for the academy – after a study analysing data from 680 weather stations scattered across the country – said that the rising temperatures would thaw out the tundra of the plateau, turning it into desert.

He added: "The melting glaciers will ultimately trigger more droughts, expand desertification and increase sand storms." The water running off the plateau is increasing soil erosion and so allowing the deserts to spread.

Sandstorms, blowing in from the degraded land, are already plaguing the country. So far this year, 13 of them have hit northern China, including Beijing. Three weeks ago one storm swept across an eighth of the vast country and even reached Korea and Japan. On the way, it dumped a mind-boggling 336,000 tons of dust on the capital, causing dangerous air pollution.

The rising temperatures are also endangering the newly built world’s highest railway, which is due to go into operation this summer. They threaten to melt the permafrost under the tracks of the £1.7bn Tibetan railway, constructed to link the area with China’s northwestern Qinghai province.

Perhaps worst of all, the melting threatens to disrupt water supplies over much of Asia. Many of the continent’s greatest rivers – including the Yangtze, the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong and the Yellow River – rise on the plateau.

In China alone, 300 million people depend on water from the glaciers for their survival. Yet the plateau is drying up, threatening to escalate an already dire situation across the country. Already 400 cities are short of water; in 100 of them – including Beijing – the shortages are becoming critical.

Even hopes that the melting glaciers might provide a temporary respite, by increasing the amount of water flowing off the plateau – have been dashed. For most of the water is evaporating before it reaches the people that need it – again because of the rising temperatures brought by global warning.

Yao Tandong, head of the academy’s Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Research Institute, summed it up. "The full-scale glacier shrinkage in the plateau regions will eventually lead to an ecological catastrophe," he said.

The evidence – which is being taken seriously by national and international bodies and authorities – suggests that almost everyone is being exposed to a new form of pollution with countless sources in daily use in every home.

Two official Department of Health reports on the smog are to be presented to ministers next month, and the Health Protection Agency (HPA) has recently held the first meeting of an expert group charged with developing advice to the public on the threat.

The UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO) calls the electronic smog "one of the most common and fastest growing environmental influences" and stresses that it "takes seriously" concerns about the health effects. It adds that "everyone in the world" is exposed to it and that "levels will continue to increase as technology advances".

Wiring creates electrical fields, one component of the smog, even when nothing is turned on. And all electrical equipment – from TVs to toasters – give off another one, magnetic fields. The fields rapidly decrease with distance but appliances such as hair dryers and electric shavers, used close to the head, can give high exposures. Electric blankets and clock radios near to beds produce even higher doses because people are exposed to them for many hours while sleeping.

Radio frequency fields – yet another component – are emitted by microwave ovens, TV and radio transmitters, mobile phone masts and phones themselves, also used close to the head.

The WHO says that the smog could interfere with the tiny natural electrical currents that help to drive the human body. Nerves relay signals by transmitting electric impulses, for example, while the use of electrocardiograms testify to the electrical activity of the heart.

Campaigners have long been worried about exposure to fields from lines carried by electric pylons but, until recently, their concerns were dismissed, even ridiculed, by the authorities.

But last year a study by the official National Radiological Protection Board concluded that children living close to the lines are more likely to get leukaemia, and ministers are considering whether to stop any more homes being built near them. The discovery is causing a large-scale reappraisal of the hazards of the smog.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer – part of the WHO and the leading international organisation on the disease – classes the smog as a "possible human carcinogen". And Professor David Carpenter, dean of the School of Public Health at the State University of New York, told The Independent on Sunday last week that it was likely t? cause up to 30 per cent of all childhood cancers. A report by the California Health Department concludes that it is also likely to cause adult leukaemia, brain cancers and possibly breast cancer and could be responsible for a 10th of all miscarriages.

Professor Denis Henshaw, professor of human radiation effects at Bristol University, says that "a huge and substantive body of evidence indicates a range of adverse health effects". He estimates that the smog causes some 9,000 cases of depression.

Perhaps strangest of all, there is increasing evidence that the smog causes some people to become allergic to electricity, leading to nausea, pain, dizziness, depression and difficulties in sleeping and concentrating when they use electrical appliances or go near mobile phone masts. Some are so badly affected that they have to change their lifestyles.

While not yet certain how it is caused, both the WHO and the HPA accept that the condition exists, and the UN body estimates that up to three in every 100 people are affected by it.

Case History: ‘I felt I was going into meltdown’

Until a year ago, Sarah Dacre reckoned she had a "blessed life". Running her own company, and living in an expensive north London home, the high-earning divorcee described herself as "fab, fit and 40s". Then suddenly the sight in her right eye failed: she first noticed it when she was unable to read an A-Z map. Soon she was getting pains and numbness in her joints. She could not sleep and spent nights "pacing about like a caged lion". Her short-term memory failed and if she took notes to remind her, she would forget she had made them.

The symptoms got worse whenever she was exposed to electricity. She could not use a computer for more than five minutes without becoming nauseous. Even using a telephone landline gave her a buzzing in the ear and made her feel she was "going into meltdown".

Invisible "smog", created by the electricity that powers our civilisation, is giving children cancer, causing miscarriages and suicides and making some people allergic to modern life, new scientific evidence reveals.

The evidence – which is being taken seriously by national and international bodies and authorities – suggests that almost everyone is being exposed to a new form of pollution with countless sources in daily use in every home.

Two official Department of Health reports on the smog are to be presented to ministers next month, and the Health Protection Agency (HPA) has recently held the first meeting of an expert group charged with developing advice to the public on the threat.

The UN’s World Health Organisation (WHO) calls the electronic smog "one of the most common and fastest growing environmental influences" and stresses that it "takes seriously" concerns about the health effects. It adds that "everyone in the world" is exposed to it and that "levels will continue to increase as technology advances".

Wiring creates electrical fields, one component of the smog, even when nothing is turned on. And all electrical equipment – from TVs to toasters – give off another one, magnetic fields. The fields rapidly decrease with distance but appliances such as hair dryers and electric shavers, used close to the head, can give high exposures. Electric blankets and clock radios near to beds produce even higher doses because people are exposed to them for many hours while sleeping.

Radio frequency fields – yet another component – are emitted by microwave ovens, TV and radio transmitters, mobile phone masts and phones themselves, also used close to the head.

The WHO says that the smog could interfere with the tiny natural electrical currents that help to drive the human body. Nerves relay signals by transmitting electric impulses, for example, while the use of electrocardiograms testify to the electrical activity of the heart.

Campaigners have long been worried about exposure to fields from lines carried by electric pylons but, until recently, their concerns were dismissed,?even ridiculed, by the authorities.

But last year a study by the official National Radiological Protection Board concluded that children living close to the lines are more likely to get leukaemia, and ministers are considering whether to stop any more homes being built near them. The discovery is causing a large-scale reappraisal of the hazards of the smog.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer – part of the WHO and the leading international organisation on the disease – classes the smog as a "possible human carcinogen". And Professor David Carpenter, dean of the School of Public Health at the State University of New York, told The Independent on Sunday last week that it was likely to cause up to 30 per cent of all childhood cancers. A report by the California Health Department concludes that it is also likely to cause adult leukaemia, brain cancers and possibly breast cancer and could be responsible for a 10th of all miscarriages.

Professor Denis Henshaw, professor of human radiation effects at Bristol University, says that "a huge and substantive body of evidence indicates a range of adverse health effects". He estimates that the smog causes some 9,000 cases of depression.

Perhaps strangest of all, there is increasing evidence that the smog causes some people to become allergic to electricity, leading to nausea, pain, dizziness, depression and difficulties in sleeping and concentrating when they use electrical appliances or go near mobile phone masts. Some are so badly affected that they have to change their lifestyles.

While not yet certain how it is caused, both the WHO and the HPA accept that the condition exists, and the UN body estimates that up to three in every 100 people are affected by it.

Case History: ‘I felt I was going into meltdown’

Until a year ago, Sarah Dacre reckoned she had a "blessed life". Running her own company, and living in an expensive north London home, the high-earning divorcee described herself as "fab, fit and 40s". Then suddenly the sight in her right eye failed: she first noticed it when she was unable to read an A-Z map. Soon she was getting pains and numbness in her joints. She could not sleep and spent nights "pacing about like a caged lion". Her short-term memory failed and if she took notes to remind her, she would forget she had made them.

The symptoms got worse whenever she was exposed to electricity. She could not use a computer for more than five minutes without becoming nauseous. Even using a telephone landline gave her a buzzing in the ear and made her feel she was "going into meltdown".

Seeing it disappearing into the bamboo forest, Liu Bin, the 28-year-old keeper, had tears in his eyes. "Xiang Xiang is just like my child, who has grown up and will leave the family to live a life independently," said Liu, "I hate to part with Xiang Xiang but I hope it can survive on its own and will not forget me."

Born in 2001, Xiang Xiang, whose mother was ar?ificially inseminated, has spent the last three years in a 200,000-square-metre wildness training compound. With three years’ training, Xiang Xiang has learned how to build a den, forage for food and mark its territory, and it has also developed defensive skills by howling and biting just as a wild giant panda would do, said Zhang Hemin, head of the China giant panda protection centre here.

Experts from the centre performed Xiang Xiang’s last physical check-up and gave it a number of inoculations, before releasing. Xiang Xiang has been released at the height of the bamboo shoot season, making it easier for it to find food, informed Zhang. "The release of Xiang Xiang marks a significant change in ways of saving the endangered species by training the pandas to live in the wild before releasing them, which would top the agenda of China’s efforts to that effect," said Zhao Xuemin, deputy head of the State Forestry Administration.

Chinese scientists have given priority to artificial breeding and protection of the hairy creatures before releasing them to nature, Zhao said, adding that the release also marks the start of China’s efforts to carry out wildness training on other endangered species. According to Zhao, China also plans to release Chinese alligators, David deer, wild horses and red ibis, among others, into the wild after wildness training.

The admission came after warnings about such trees from ministers from over 100 countries at a UN conference in Curitiba, Brazil. They urged a "precautionary approach" towards them after hearing that they could "wreak ecological havoc throughout the world’s forests".

Some 16 countries around the world are developing GM trees, and more than a million have already been planted in China. At least 24 species, from papaya to silver birch, from olive to teak, have already been modified; the most commonly treated are poplar, pine and eucalyptus.

The process can speed growth: GM poplars can grow four times faster than traditional softwood trees used for timber and paper. It has also reduced their content of lignin, which strengthens trees but make the wood harder to pulp and whiten for paper.

Other modifications enable them to produce their own pesticides to fight off insects, to resist diseases and to enable them to endure heavy doses of herbicides so that plantations can be drenched to kill weeds without harming the trees.

A GM orange tree, developed in Sp?in, bears fruit after only one year of life, instead of six. Danish scientists have worked on modified Christmas trees, with a view to developing specimens whose needles do not fall off. And in the boldest suggestion yet, an American professor has suggested that trees could be modified to make the moon habitable by growing "huge greenhouses over their heads".

But the ministers in Brazil were concerned that genes from the modified trees could spread great distances on the wind and across national boundaries. Tree pollen can travel up to 2,000 km. And, because trees can live for centuries, modified examples pose a long-term threat to the world’s forests.

Contamination by genes conferring fast growth, for example, could make some forest trees crowd out other species; genes that produce insecticides could decimate rainforest ecosystems, the richest on earth; and genes that reduce lignin could make trees more vulnerable to pests.

The Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs denied late last week that GM trees had ever been grown in the open in Britain, until given details by The Independent on Sunday.

All the plantations have either been destroyed by protesters or cut down at the end of the experiments. Britain’s only GM trees are now elms, resistant to Dutch elm disease and being grown in "a controlled environment" somewhere in Dundee.

The scientists developing them say they will not plant any outside because they fear "terrorism" by protesters. They will not disclose precisely where they are or give details of the numbers, but confirm that there are "more than a hundred" of them.

Elm

Being grown at a secret indoor location by Abertay University scientists and modified to be resistant to Dutch elm disease. The scientists hope the trees will in time replace the 20 million taken from the British landscape by the disease.

Poplar

Grown at Jealotts Hill Research Station at Bracknell, Berks, and modified so that the wood is whiter for making paper. Most, grown by the biotech firm Zeneca, were destroyed by protesters, but a few were successfully harvested.

Eucalyptus

Grown by Shell Research Ltd at Sittingbourne and West Malling, both in Kent. The tree was modified to resist the use of herbicides, as in most current GM crops. The experiment is now over.

Apple

Greensleeves and Jonagold apple trees, modified to resist insect pests and fungal diseases, were grown by the University of Derby, but destroyed by protesters.

Governments worldwide have issued an unprecedented warning about the greatest biotech hazards so far: GM trees. Trees modified to grow faster, yield better wood, produce whiter paper, resist pests and disease and tolerate herbicides are increasingly being cultivated.

Elms resistant to Dutch elm disease are being grown in Dundee, Scotland. But the scientists involved will not say precisely where they are, or even exactly how many of them are being grown.

The Government was forced to admit for the first time last week that GM poplar, apple and eucalyptus trees have been cultivated outdoors in Berkshire, Derbyshire and Kent.

The admission came after warnings about such trees from ministers from over 100 countries at a UN conference in Curitiba, Brazil. They urged a "precautionary approach" towards them after hearing that they could "wreak ecological havoc throughout the world’s forests".

Some 16 countries around the world are developing GM trees, and more than a million have already been planted in China. At least 24 species, from papaya to silver birch, from olive to teak, have already been modified; the most commonly treated are poplar, pine and eucalyptus.

The process can speed growth: GM poplars can grow four times faster than traditional softwood trees used for timber and paper. It has also reduced their content of lignin, which strengthens trees but make the wood harder to pulp and whiten for paper.

Other modifications enable them to produce their own pesticid?s to fight off insects, to resist diseases and to enable them to endure heavy doses of herbicides so that plantations can be drenched to kill weeds without harming the trees.

A GM orange tree, developed in Spain, bears fruit after only one year of life, instead of six. Danish scientists have worked on modified Christmas trees, with a view to developing specimens whose needles do not fall off. And in the boldest suggestion yet, an American professor has suggested that trees could be modified to make the moon habitable by growing "huge greenhouses over their heads".

But the ministers in Brazil were concerned that genes from the modified trees could spread great distances on the wind and across national boundaries. Tree pollen can travel up to 2,000 km. And, because trees can live for centuries, modified examples pose a long-term threat to the world’s forests.
Contamination by genes conferring fast growth, for example, could make some forest trees crowd out other species; genes that produce insecticides could decimate rainforest ecosystems, the richest on earth; and genes that reduce lignin could make trees more vulnerable to pests.

The Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs denied late last week that GM trees had ever been grown in the open in Britain, until given details by The Independent on Sunday.

All the plantations have either been destroyed by protesters or cut down at the end of the experiments. Britain’s only GM trees are now elms, resistant to Dutch elm disease and being grown in "a controlled environment" somewhere in Dundee.

The scientists developing them say they will not plant any outside because they fear "terrorism" by protesters. They will not disclose precisely where they are or give details of the numbers, but confirm that there are "more than a hundred" of them.

Elm

Being grown at a secret indoor location by Abertay University scientists and modified to be resistant to Dutch elm disease. The scientists hope the trees will in time replace the 20 million taken from the British landscape by the disease.

Poplar

Grown at Jealotts Hill Research Station at Bracknell, Berks, and modified so that the wood is whiter for making paper. Most, grown by the biotech firm Zeneca, were destroyed by protesters, but a few were successfully harvested.

Eucalyptus

Grown by Shell Research Ltd at Sittingbourne and West Malling, both in Kent. The tree was modified to resist the use of herbicides, as in most current GM crops. The experiment is now over.

Apple

Greensleeves and Jonagold apple trees, modified to resist insect pests and fungal diseases, were grown by the University of Derby, but destroyed by protesters.

Acting under advice from the government’s wildlife agency, English Nature, 11 local authorities in Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire have frozen all new housing planning applications since October last year inside a vast cordon around the birds’ breeding habitats, patches of heather-covered lowland heath dotted across the area. In doing so they have put future plans for up to 20,000 houses on indefinite hold and caused anguish among local building firms, some of which say they have had to sack staff. The Home Builders’ Federation wants the Government to step in as a matter of urgency.

Yet the situation can be resolved, says English Nature, if the local councils adopt a radical plan and provide new public open space to accompany all new development, which would absorb the extra pressure from visitors that might otherwise put the birds’ nesting success at risk.

The councils are at present considering the plan, while an audit is carried out of all the land in the area that might be available to provide new open space.

In the meantime, the Government is seriously alarmed at the head-on collision between the very different imperatives of housing provision and nature protection. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) strongly supports English Nature’s position; but John Prescott’s Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), which looks after housing, is commissioning new research which might see the agency’s position undermined.

In the little publicity previously afforded to the issue, the ban has been presented as ridiculous: all those houses held up for a few little birds. But in truth it is serious and has been waiting to happen,?as the colossal development of England’s overcrowded South-east – into which the Government wants to put another 580,000 houses over the next 20 years – rolls on unchecked. Sooner or later the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut was bound to hit a barrier of some sort. Now it has.

At issue is not just the fate of the birds, but the protection of the lowland heath on which nightjars, woodlarks and Dartford warblers make their nests, one of England’s most attractive and wildlife-rich but fastest-disappearing habitats.

Recent research has convinced English Nature that public access to heaths – especially people walking dogs – is a much greater threat to the breeding success of all three species that had previously been realised. With the group of heathlands nearest to London, the agency is now formally objecting to any further residential development within five kilometres.

In doing so, it insists it is simply carrying out its obligations to implement EU law.

There are 13 major stretches of lowland heath due west of London, such as Chobham Common in Surrey. Individually, they are already Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) under British legislation, because of the richness of their wildlife. But they have been further designated, collectively, as the Thames Basin Heaths Special Protection Area (SPA) under the EU’s 1979 birds directive, expressly to safeguard the nightjars, woodlarks and Dartford warblers that nest on them.

The directive, transposed into English law as the Habitats Regulations 1994, is extremely tough, and forbids anything likely to have a "significant effect" on the species for which an area was selected. In the past, English Nature concentrated its protection efforts on the management of the heaths themselves, but several studies over the past four years have convinced staff that success in bird breeding is correlated with visitor pressure – the more visitors, the fewer successful nests. Both nightjar and woodlark nest on the ground, while the Dartford warbler nests low down in gorse bushes, and all three are likely to be flushed from the nest by visitors’ dogs, leaving eggs and chicks at the mercy of predators. Although the agency has long insisted on a 400-metre building exclusion zone around protected heathlands, it now believes that people who use the heaths come from farther away than was generally appreciated and a much wider residential building exclusion zone is now necessary.

Since October last year the agency has formally objected to any housing application within five kilometres of the SPA. These 5km zones link together to form an oval area 30 miles across at its widest point and 15 miles deep, taking in such towns as Guildford, Woking, Camberley, Bracknell and Ascot – the very heartland of booming south-east England, "Britain’s California" – where demand for new housing development is immense.

The 11 local councils concerned, following legal advice, are now refusing every housing application for the area. It is impossible to give a precise figure for new houses put on hold, but local builders estimate that plans for more than 3,000 new homes have already been stalled. But if the issue is not resolved, that total is certain to rise steeply. The new housing allocation for the 11 councils is 40,000, of which about 35,000 fall inside the affected area – that is, within five kilometres of one of the heaths. Some of these have been built so a figure of 20,000 new homes likely to be held up is probably nearer the true picture.

The scheme that English Nature is putting forward to solve the problem, labelled the Thames Basin Heaths Delivery Plan, is an entirely new approach to spatial planning, because it would mean that individual housing applications would not necessarily have to be assessed individually for their impact on the SPA.

Instead, land "in mitigation" – alternative open space to soak up added public pressure expected from the new homes – could be provided strategically for the whole area.

The main objection ?rom housebuilders to English Nature’s position is that the 5km exclusion zone around the SPA is too wide.

However, the agency’s chief executive, Dr Andy Brown, said: "All the evidence we can put together suggests that anything within that sort of radius, in terms of new development, is going to have some effect on the bird populations of the sites.

"But we know how to offset that effect – by creating additional green space. So it is possible to have housing in the area if developers and local authorities can work together with the delivery plan."

Untamed England

Heathland, the home of the three bird species which have halted a building boom, is the last truly wild part of the countryside of southern England.

The nightjars, woodlarks and Dartford warblers of the Thames Basin Heaths are characteristic creatures of a special place. While the intimate pattern of small woods and fields that make up most of the South is charming, it is undeniably domesticated.

Lowland heath is quite different. These tracts of dark heather, interspersed with gorse and silver birch, feel untamed, like an entirely different landscape, a different country almost. Bagshot Heath, on the borders of Surrey and Berkshire, feels like it could be in Russia. They are wonderful places to walk.

And, because they are untouched by agriculture, the heaths of the South are rich in wildlife. Chobham Common, near the junction of the M25 and M3 motorways, has recorded 350 species of wild flower, 100 species of bird and 23 species of mammal.

But these heathlands are mere mini-remnants of the huge stretches that once covered much of southern England. Now more than three-quarters of them are gone, and only three major chunks remain: the Dorset Heaths, the Wealden Greensand Heaths in Sussex, and the Thames Basin Heaths west of London.

All plans for new housebuilding have been frozen over a massive area of the Home Counties to protect three species of rare birds in the most remarkable clash yet between environment and development in Britain.

Concerns about the welfare of the nightjar, the woodlark and the Dartford warbler have halted schemes for building thousands of homes over an expanse of nearly 300 square miles, stretching from the M25, west of London, almost to Reading. The unprecedented moratorium has come about because the hitherto-irresistible force of the housing boom in the South-east has run into the immovable object of European Union wildlife protection law, which safeguards the three bird species in a formidable way.

Acting under advice from the government’s wildlife agency, English Nature, 11 local authorities in Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire have frozen all new housing planning applications since October last year inside a vast cordon around the birds’ breeding habitats, patches of heather-covered lowland heath dotted across the area. In doing so they have put future plans for up to 20,000 houses on indefinite hold and caused anguish among local building firms, some of which say they have had to sack staff. The Home Builders’ Federation wants the Government to step in as a matter of urgency.

Yet the situation can be resolved, says English Nature, if the local councils adopt a radical plan and provide new public open space to accompany all new development, which would absorb the extra pressure from visitors that might otherwise put the birds’ nesting success at risk.

The councils are at present considering the plan, while an audit is carried out of all the land in the area that might be available to provide new open space.

In the meantime, the Government is seriously alarmed at the head-on collision between the very different imperatives of housing provision and nature protection. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) strongly supports English Nature’s position; but John Prescott’s Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), which looks after housing, is commissioning new research which might see the agency’s position ?ndermined.

In the little publicity previously afforded to the issue, the ban has been presented as ridiculous: all those houses held up for a few little birds. But in truth it is serious and has been waiting to happen, as the colossal development of England’s overcrowded South-east – into which the Government wants to put another 580,000 houses over the next 20 years – rolls on unchecked. Sooner or later the seemingly unstoppable juggernaut was bound to hit a barrier of some sort. Now it has.

At issue is not just the fate of the birds, but the protection of the lowland heath on which nightjars, woodlarks and Dartford warblers make their nests, one of England’s most attractive and wildlife-rich but fastest-disappearing habitats.

Recent research has convinced English Nature that public access to heaths – especially people walking dogs – is a much greater threat to the breeding success of all three species that had previously been realised. With the group of heathlands nearest to London, the agency is now formally objecting to any further residential development within five kilometres.

In doing so, it insists it is simply carrying out its obligations to implement EU law.

There are 13 major stretches of lowland heath due west of London, such as Chobham Common in Surrey. Individually, they are already Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) under British legislation, because of the richness of their wildlife. But they have been further designated, collectively, as the Thames Basin Heaths Special Protection Area (SPA) under the EU’s 1979 birds directive, expressly to safeguard the nightjars, woodlarks and Dartford warblers that nest on them.

The directive, transposed into English law as the Habitats Regulations 1994, is extremely tough, and forbids anything likely to have a "significant effect" on the species for which an area was selected. In the past, English Nature concentrated its protection efforts on the management of the heaths themselves, but several studies over the past four years have convinced staff that success in bird breeding is correlated with visitor pressure – the more visitors, the fewer successful nests. Both nightjar and woodlark nest on the ground, while the Dartford warbler nests low down in gorse bushes, and all three are likely to be flushed from the nest by visitors’ dogs, leaving eggs and chicks at the mercy of predators. Although the agency has long insisted on a 400-metre building exclusion zone around protected heathlands, it now believes that people who use the heaths come from farther away than was generally appreciated and a much wider residential building exclusion zone is now necessary.
Since October last year the agency has formally objected to any housing application within five kilometres of the SPA. These 5km zones link together to form an oval area 30 miles across at its widest point and 15 miles deep, taking in such towns as Guildford, Woking, Camberley, Bracknell and Ascot – the very heartland of booming south-east England, "Britain’s California" – where demand for new housing development is immense.

The 11 local councils concerned, following legal advice, are now refusing every housing application for the area. It is impossible to give a precise figure for new houses put on hold, but local builders estimate that plans for more than 3,000 new homes have already been stalled. But if the issue is not resolved, that total is certain to rise steeply. The new housing allocation for the 11 councils is 40,000, of which about 35,000 fall inside the affected area – that is, within five kilometres of one of the heaths. Some of these have been built so a figure of 20,000 new homes likely to be held up is probably nearer the true picture.

The scheme that English Nature is putting forward to solve the problem, labelled the Thames Basin Heaths Delivery Plan, is an entirely new approach to spatial planning, because it would mean that individual housing applications would not necessarily have to be assessed individually for their ?mpact on the SPA.

Instead, land "in mitigation" – alternative open space to soak up added public pressure expected from the new homes – could be provided strategically for the whole area.

The main objection from housebuilders to English Nature’s position is that the 5km exclusion zone around the SPA is too wide.

However, the agency’s chief executive, Dr Andy Brown, said: "All the evidence we can put together suggests that anything within that sort of radius, in terms of new development, is going to have some effect on the bird populations of the sites.

"But we know how to offset that effect – by creating additional green space. So it is possible to have housing in the area if developers and local authorities can work together with the delivery plan."

Untamed England

Heathland, the home of the three bird species which have halted a building boom, is the last truly wild part of the countryside of southern England.

The nightjars, woodlarks and Dartford warblers of the Thames Basin Heaths are characteristic creatures of a special place. While the intimate pattern of small woods and fields that make up most of the South is charming, it is undeniably domesticated.

Lowland heath is quite different. These tracts of dark heather, interspersed with gorse and silver birch, feel untamed, like an entirely different landscape, a different country almost. Bagshot Heath, on the borders of Surrey and Berkshire, feels like it could be in Russia. They are wonderful places to walk.

And, because they are untouched by agriculture, the heaths of the South are rich in wildlife. Chobham Common, near the junction of the M25 and M3 motorways, has recorded 350 species of wild flower, 100 species of bird and 23 species of mammal.

But these heathlands are mere mini-remnants of the huge stretches that once covered much of southern England. Now more than three-quarters of them are gone, and only three major chunks remain: the Dorset Heaths, the Wealden Greensand Heaths in Sussex, and the Thames Basin Heaths west of London.

For the past 15 months, Mr Livingstone revealed to The Independent, no one in his household has flushed the toilet after urinating.

The capital’s first citizen has, he explains, been conducting an experiment based on the old adage "if it’s yellow, let it mellow". It has worked so well that he now hopes all Londoners will follow his example.

Polling evidence commissioned by the Mayor’s office says that climate change ranks almost equal with crime and the cost of living among Londoners’ top concerns. Yet London is a wasteful city, expending millions of gallons of purified water washing cars, spraying lawns, or flushing urine away. The Mayor sees his pioneering experiment as a chance to persuade Londoners to change their wasteful habits.

"There is quite a bit that you can do by changing building design, and so on but the really big gains come from changing lifestyles. If people drive a little less, cycle a little more, flush their toilets less, make sure they have got light bulbs that are energy efficient, and a whole range of changes like that, it will make a whole lot of difference."

He added: "If we continue to waste the amount that we do, London will run out of water. We use about 30 per cent more water than French and German people. Londoners use more water than anyone else in Britain and mainly, we just waste it. A third of all the water you use you flush down the loo, and actually there is no earthly reason that you need to flush the loo if you have merely urinated. That’s a huge saving of water.

"The experiment in my own home, which is now into its second year, has been a success. We continued with it right through the summer, and never once did a great bluebottle come in the bathroom. After all, why would a bluebottle wish to slurp up a little bit of nitrogenous waste? It has no nutritional value at all. It’s just that a lot of people have a perception that their urine is some sort of liquid form of their excreta. A lot of gardeners put their urine in a bucket and actually use it. Plant roots love it."

Ken Livingstone was once the bad boy of the Labour Party. Tony Blair’s supporters prevented him being adopted as Labour candidate in the 2000 London mayoral election. When he stood as an independent, he was expelled from the party and it was ruled that it would be at least five years before he was allowed back. But he was soon forgiven, and is now negotiating with the Government about extending his powers.

He wants to be able to overrule the boroughs on major planning decisions. If Labour loses control of more London boroughs inThursday’s election, he is likely to be pushing at an open door.

Meanwhile, he has his eye on one minor planning decision. Mr Livingstone has had solar panels installed in his home, and they will soon be fitted into the roof of his City Hall headquarters. He has heard about David Cameron’s plan to have a wind turbine fitted on his Notting Hill home.

That will require a planning permit from Kensington and Chelsea council, but if they cause any trouble, Mr Livingstone promised: "I’ll turn up as a character witness, in his defence."

How to save water in the home

?By Louise Jury

* Divert water from the roof or the shower into a rain harvester (like a water butt) and use it to flush the lavatory.

* Install a "Hippo" (many water companies supply these free of charge) in the loo to reduce the amount of water in each flush. A brick or plastic bottle will also serve this purpose.

* Don’t leave taps running while brushing teeth or shaving.

* Wash vegetables in a bowl and save the run-off to water plants. Water that contains washing-up liquid can kill aphids on roses.

* Chill a bottle filled with tap water in the fridge – this saves running the tap until the water is cold.

* Wait until you have a full load before using a washing machine or dishwasher. Use the minimum amount of water in kettles and saucepans.

* Maintain your plumbing system; replace faulty washers to avoid leaking taps and avoid burst pipes by installing adequate insulation.

David Cameron cycles to work, followed by a chauffeur-driven car that carries his briefcase and work shoes. Sir Menzies Campbell has bidden a tearful farewell to his gas-guzzling Jaguar. Tony Blair had the lamp outside 10 Downing Street’s famous front door fitted with a low-energy bulb. But Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, has taken the battle for the environment to an entirely new level.

For the past 15 months, Mr Livingstone revealed to The Independent, no one in his household has flushed the toilet after urinating.

The capital’s first citizen has, he explains, been conducting an experiment based on the old adage "if it’s yellow, let it mellow". It has worked so well that he now hopes all Londoners will follow his example.

Polling evidence commissioned by the Mayor’s office says that climate change ranks almost equal with crime and the cost of living among Londoners’ top concerns. Yet London is a wasteful city, expending millions of gallons of purified water washing cars, spraying lawns, or flushing urine away. The Mayor sees his pioneering experiment as a chance to persuade Londoners to change their wasteful habits.

"There is quite a bit that you can do by changing building design, and so on but the really big gains come from changing lifestyles. If people drive a little less, cycle a little more, flush their toilets less, make sure they have got light bulbs that are energy efficient, and a whole range of changes like that, it will make a whole lot of difference."

He added: "If we continue to waste the amount that we do, London will run out of water. We use about 30 per cent more water than French and German people. Londoners use more water than anyone else in Britain and mainly, we just waste it. A third of all the water you use you flush down the loo, and actually there is no earthly reason that you need to flush the loo if you have merely urinated. That’s a huge saving of water.

"The experiment in my own home, which is now into its second year, has been a success. We continued with it right through the summer, and never once did a great bluebottle come in the bathroom. After all, why would a bluebottle wish to slurp up a little bit of nitrogenous waste? It has no nutritional value at all. It’s just that a lot of people have a perception that their urine is some sort of liquid form of their excreta. A lot of gardeners put their urine in a bucket and actually use it. Plant roots love it."
Ken Livingstone was once the bad boy of the Labour Party. Tony Blair’s supporters prevented him being adopted as Labour candidate in the 2000 London mayoral election. When he stood as an independent, he was expelled from the party and it was ruled that it would be at least five years before he was allowed back. But he was soon forgiven, and is now negotiating with the Government about extending his powers.

He wants to be able to overrule the boroughs on major planning decisions. If Labour loses control of more London boroughs inThursday’s election, he is likely to be pushing at an open door.

Meanwhile, he has his eye on one minor plan?ing decision. Mr Livingstone has had solar panels installed in his home, and they will soon be fitted into the roof of his City Hall headquarters. He has heard about David Cameron’s plan to have a wind turbine fitted on his Notting Hill home.

That will require a planning permit from Kensington and Chelsea council, but if they cause any trouble, Mr Livingstone promised: "I’ll turn up as a character witness, in his defence."

How to save water in the home

By Louise Jury

* Divert water from the roof or the shower into a rain harvester (like a water butt) and use it to flush the lavatory.

* Install a "Hippo" (many water companies supply these free of charge) in the loo to reduce the amount of water in each flush. A brick or plastic bottle will also serve this purpose.

* Don’t leave taps running while brushing teeth or shaving.

* Wash vegetables in a bowl and save the run-off to water plants. Water that contains washing-up liquid can kill aphids on roses.

* Chill a bottle filled with tap water in the fridge – this saves running the tap until the water is cold.

* Wait until you have a full load before using a washing machine or dishwasher. Use the minimum amount of water in kettles and saucepans.

* Maintain your plumbing system; replace faulty washers to avoid leaking taps and avoid burst pipes by installing adequate insulation.

Meanwhile, the participating students have started working on the proposed projects to be completed and reported on their results before the end of the current school year. The company has set aside a special budget to finance a number of environmental researches and projects to be selected by the secretariat that includes representatives of ministry, GPIC and a number of environmental specialists.

The Secretariat has received 85 projects from all schools. GPIC general manager Abdul Rahman Jawahery congratulated the winning students and praised their good selection of the proposed projects.

He also thanked ministry officials, led by Education Minister Dr Majid Al Nuaimi, for their support to the company’s environmental programmes. The selected proje?ts cover four main environmental topics include management of domestic waste, water and power supply, recycling and re-use, and protection of marine life and wildlife.

Such topics have been chosen primarily for their significances to the Bahrain environment and secondly due to their close relationship with the daily lives of the targeted group of students, said GPIC maintenance manager and environment committee chairman Fadhel Al Ansari. Such topics allow the students’ creative abilities to be demonstrated and enable them to have broader understanding of the details of such environmental problems, he added.

The tremor was felt in an area located 50.82 degrees in longitude and 31.70 degrees in latitude, the report added.

There have been no reports of any casualty or damage to property caused by the quake.

Iran is often hit by quakes of varying magnitudes as it sits on some of the world’s most active seismic faultlines.