Air pollution set to rise drastically in Indian cities: Report
- NEW DELHI: If current trends of vehicle population, fuel and emission standards persist in India, PM 2.5 (particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers) emissions will increase three times and NOx (nitrogen oxide) will rise five times in the coming years, a new report revealed on Tuesday.
Compiled by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the report "Options to reduce road transport pollution in India" said that the transport sector contributes about 15 to 50 percent of PM 2.5 emissions in cities, and is a dominant contributor to NOx emissions.
"Vehicular emissions contribute to PM 2.5 and NOx. PM 2.5 is the dominant contributor to premature deaths and numerous other illnesses, followed by NOx, and these are the major contributors to agricultural impacts," said the report.
According to CARB chairman Mary Nichols: "In 1991, there were 20 million vehicles in India. The number had skyrocketed to 140 million in 2011, and by 2030, vehicle population is expected to reach a staggering 400 million."
TERI director general RK Pachauri said: "We should go beyond technological transfers and evolve pathways for pollution control as there are co-benefits of reducing greenhouse gases and reducing the health burden."
ASEAN and the East Asia summits
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Naypyidaw, the capital of Myanmar, on Tuesday to attend the ASEAN and the East Asia summits on the first leg of his three-nation tour that will also take him to Australia and Fiji.
Mr. Modi arrived by a special Air India plane, starting his 10—day tour during which he will also attend the G—20 meet in Brisbane, Australia.
Asserting that ASEAN is at the core of India’s ‘Act East’ policy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday headed to Myanmar to attend the Summit with the 10-nation grouping and the East Asia Summit.
“ASEAN is at the core of our Act East Policy and at the centre of our dream of an Asian century, characterised by cooperation and integration,” the Prime Minister said before his departure.
Mr. Modi said he was looking forward to discussing with ASEAN leaders how to take “our relationship to a new level, which will supplement our deepening bilateral ties with each member.”
Indian named on Gaza UN probe panel
- K. C. Reddy, a former UN security advisor for Syria, has been named on a UN inquiry panel set up by UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki—moon to probe the presence of arms on UN premises in the Gaza strip and the damage to its facilities during the conflict between Israel and Palestinian factions.
Mr. Reddy has been named to the internal and independent United Nations Headquarters Board of Inquiry that will be chaired by Patrick Cammaert of The Netherlands.
The formation of the inquiry board by Mr. Ban is aimed at reviewing “certain incidents that occurred in the Gaza Strip between July 8 and August 26,” Mr. Ban’s deputy spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters.
The board would include Maria Vicien—Milburn of Argentina, Lee O’Brien of the United States and Pierre Lemelin of Canada. The board would review and investigate a number of specific incidents in which death or injuries occurred at and damage was done to United Nations premises.
Space debris: ISRO chief raises concern over satellites' safety
- ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan today raised concern over the safety of satellites due to space debris and batted for a comprehensive space policy for the country.
At a time when space assets are becoming part and parcel of daily life, its safety must be ensured, said Radhakrishnan, who is also the secretary of the Department of Space.
"There are so many thousands communication satellites and less than 100 various other types of satellites. What happens to those elements after their work is over. This is a new area of study.
"Are we able to catalogue them? Are we able to predict their movement? Are we able to see whether our actual satellites are safe from them?... How do we move them to safety? If we can tackle that or if we can identify arrival of debris, a spacecraft can itself move out of the place," Radhakrishnan said.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman was delivering a lecture on 'Contribution of India's Space Programme in Nation Building' at Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis here.
He added that there are nearly 15,000-16,000 space debris scattered in the space.
SC allows women to work as make-up artists
- Putting an end to the 60-year-old practice of barring women from becoming make-up artists in the Mumbai film industry, the Supreme Court on Monday allowed qualified women to be appointed for this job.
A Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Uday Lalit in its order on Monday directed deletion of the provisions in the Cine Costume Make-up Artists and Hair Dressers Association (CCMAA) preventing women from joining the association.
The bench rejected the association's stand that the discriminatory clause was intended to ensure that men were not deprived of their employment. The Bench also quashed the provision that only a person domiciled in Maharashtra for five years could take up the job of hair dressers or make up artiste.
10-point charter for effective governance
- NEW DELHI: Seeking innovative ideas and new initiatives from bureaucrats, Union minister Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday chalked out a ten-point charter for them for enabling effective governance.
Naidu urged the senior officials of Urban development and housing and the urban poverty alleviation ministry, to reorient their attitudes and approaches and enable the government to fulfill the mandate of rapid and inclusive economic growth given to them by people in the last general elections.
Naidu addressed over 130 under secretaries, deputy secretaries, directors, joint secretaries and secretaries, according to a senior urban development ministry official.
Life in Earth's primordial sea was starved for sulfate
- The Earth's ancient oceans held much lower concentrations of sulfate--a key biological nutrient--than previously recognized, according to research published this week in Science.
The findings paint a new portrait of our planet's early biosphere and primitive marine life. Organisms require sulfur as a nutrient, and it plays a central role in regulating atmospheric chemistry and global climate.
"Our findings are a fraction of previous estimates, and thousands of time lower than current seawater levels," says Sean Crowe, a lead author of the study and an assistant professor in the Departments of Microbiology and Immunology, and Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia.
A Century of Turmoil in Western Asia: Some Pitfalls of Nationalism
- “I deem it a privilege to be invited to deliver the 43rd Maulana Azad Memorial Lecture of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. This institution, founded by our first Education Minister, is dedicated to the promotion of cultural relations with other countries and cultures. Its wider objective is a continuing cultural dialogue.
Some in this audience may know that Mohiuddin Ahmad, better known as Abul Kalam Azad, was himself a man of many cultures. He was born in Makkah of an Indian father and an Arab mother and throughout his life remained familiar with the languages, culture and political developments in western Asia, a region in our proximate neighbourhood. Happenings there in the past, as now, were and remain of interest and relevance to India and Indians. For this reason, it is essential to view them from an Indian perspective.
Google signs 60-year, NASA lease
- Google signs 60-year, NASA lease of a historic Navy air base, where it plans to renovate three massive hangars and use them for projects involving aviation, space exploration and robotics.
The giant Internet company will pay $ 1.16 billion in rent over 60 years for the property, which also includes a working air field, golf course and other buildings. The 1,000-acre (400-hectare) site is part of the former Moffett Field Naval Air Station on the San Francisco Peninsula.
Google plans to invest more than $200 million to refurbish the hangars and add other improvements, including a museum or educational facility that will showcase the history of Moffett and Silicon Valley, according to a NASA statement.
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