What if the coolest place in a city wasn’t a mall or café, but the street outside your home? Paris is trying to make that happen. To fight rising temperatures and climate change, the city is transforming thousands of parking spaces into shaded green zones called “oasis squares” and planting over 170,000 trees across public spaces. The idea is simple: more trees, less trapped heat. Studies and city plans show trees can cool neighbourhoods naturally by reducing heat absorption and improving air quality. Now imagine this in Indian cities, where summers are getting harsher every year. Should every Indian city have a minimum tree-cover policy for roads, markets, bus stops, schools, and public spaces? Tell us in the comments below! #Paris #UrbanHeat #ClimateAction #SustainableCities #TreeCover [Paris climate plan, urban heat solution]

STORY | Government set to launch HPV vaccination against cancer for girls aged 14; to use single-shot Gardasil In a major step towards eliminating preventable cancers among women, the Union government will soon launch a nationwide human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination programme targeting girls aged 14 years, official sources said on Tuesday. According to sources, the programme will use a single-shot Gardasil, a quadrivalent HPV vaccine, that provides protection against HPV types 16 and 18, which cause cervical cancer, as well as types 6 and 11. The drive would be a special vaccination campaign and not under the government's Universal Immunisation Programme. It is in line with the World Health Organization recommendations, which identify HPV vaccination as a central pillar of the Global Strategy to Eliminate Cervical Cancer. "Strong global and Indian scientific evidence confirms that a single dose provides robust and durable protection when administered to girls in the recommended age group," an official source said. The nationwide programme will target girls aged 14 years, an age at which the HPV vaccine offers maximum preventive benefit, well before potential exposure to the virus. In the open market, quadrivalent Gardasil-4 is a two-dose vaccine – each costing Rs 3,927 – for girls below 15 years. For those above 15 years, three doses of the vaccine are required. The Gardasil-4 vaccine is manufactured by MSD India. READ: ptinews.com/story/national/g…

🔧 New feature: you can now view two maps showing different years side by side! A useful way to look at change over time for an indicator is to view two maps showing different years side by side. Sophia Mersmann, our Senior Data Visualization Engineer, recently upgraded our data viz tool to be able to do this! To view two maps, just click on the timeline at the bottom to add a second time handle. You can then drag that handle left and right on the timeline to change the years shown. To go back to a single map, you can either drag one handle back onto the other, or click “Reset view” at the top (only available on larger screens).

📣 Call for Symposium Submissions! Theme: Innovations in Mental Health 🗓 Deadline: 31 Jan 2026 🔗 More info: iconsofscarf.org #IConS2026 #MentalHealth #Research #SCARF #symposium #mentalhealthsymposium