With a belch of acrid, greasy smoke and a jolt that shakes its moorings, the pump on Yemeni water farmer Jad al-Adhrani's plot of land roars to life, and the race to squeeze the last drop of water out of Yemen's parched earth resumes.

Gesturing across his dusty patch of ground in Hamal, on the outskirts of the capital Sanaa, he counts himself lucky to still be drawing water after having dug down only 500 metres, but knows that it cannot last.

"When it runs out," he says, "I'll dig again."

India has the worst air pollution in the entire world, beating China, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, according to a study released during this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos.

Of 132 countries whose environments were surveyed, India ranks dead last in the ‘Air (effects on human health)’ ranking. The annual study, the Environmental Performance Index, is conducted and written by environmental research centers at Yale and Columbia universities with assistance from dozens of outside scientists. The study uses satellite data to measure air pollution concentrations.

GANDHINAGAR: Gujarat's dream of becoming the 'gas gateway' to North India received strong financial backing worth Rs 4,500 crore from a dozen-odd nationalized banks on Monday, when state-sector company, Gujarat State Petronet Ltd (GSPL), signed up an agreement with the consortium led by Bank of India to fund the 2,200-km-long gas pipeline project from Mehsana to Jammu, via Bathinda in Punjab. The project will take three years to complete.

The ambitious $10-billion project to connect Gulf nations through a modern rail network, stretching over 2,000 km, is expected to become operational by 2018, with authorities working to ensure that construction starts on it by 2014.

Authorities across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) want the project to provide cost-effective means to transport goods and services in the region and plans are also afoot to ultimately link the railway network to Yemen via Muscat.

Ethiopia has announced plans to construct two dams along its share of the Nile, six months after embarking on a 5,250 MW power plant that rankled Egypt over concerns it might affect the flow of the river.

The Horn of Africa nation aims to produce 20,000 megawatts (MW) of power within the next 10 years, part of a plan to spend $12 billion over 25 years to raise power generating capability.

Officials estimate the hydropower potential of the nation -- blessed with cascading rivers flowing through rugged mountains -- is around 45,000 MW.

Leading aid and development charity Oxfam said 36 per cent of Pakistanis were undernourished, listing Pakistan among the 21 nations of the world which were found to be undernourished according to an interactive map published on Wednesday.

Pakistan was adjudged to be more undernourished than Tanzania (35 per cent), Niger (28 per cent) and Yemen (32 per cent) where nearly every third person was feared to be malnourished. The map showed how poor communities across the world were being adversely affected by high and volatile food prices.

Sarah El Deeb

A doctor would have recognised the signs of chronic malnutrition immediately in the seven-month-old girl, the swollen stomach, the constant cough. Her mother, though, had only traditional healers to turn to in her Yemeni mountain village, and they told her to stop feeding the girl.

The mother's feed had spoiled, they said.

The rhinoceros is under threat yet againCONTRARY to widespread belief in China and South-East Asia, the rhinoceros horn has no proven medicinal or aphrodisiac qualities. Its effect, some scientists say, is the same as chewing your fingernails. It is made of the same stuff, agglutinated hair. Yet rhino horn is currently worth more than gold, selling for up to $60,000 a kilo.

Dust storms scour Iraq. Freak floods wreak havoc in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Rising sea levels erode Egypt's coast. Hotter, drier weather worsens water scarcity in the Middle East, already the world's most water-short region.

The Arab world is already suffering impacts consistent with climate change predictions.

Hugh Macleod

Millions of Yemenis are starving while the international community focuses on security issues and tackling Al Qaeda, according to the United Nations. Vital deliveries of food deliveries and assistance is being cut because of a near-total absence of funding.