ARCHAEOLOGY
ARCHAEOLOGISTS DISCOVER 12,000 YEARS OLD PAINTINGS IN BETUL
The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has
discovered prehistoric caves with rock paintings
dating back to 12,000 years on the Satpura mountain range
near Betul on the Maharashtra Madhya Pradesh border. A
team of archaeologists, carrying out explorations on
the Satpura ranges in Gawilgarh Hills, stumbled on these
ancient paintings, dispelling the myth that Vidarbha
and its neighbouring region is bereft of such artistic
treasures from past. About 71 rock shelters harbouring
paintings and engravings have been found.
CLUSTERS OF 2000 YEARS OLD PYRAMIDS FOUND IN SUDAN
Around 35 small ancient pyramids, alongwith
graves, dating back 2,000 years have been discovered
clustered closely together at a site in Sudan,
archaeologists say. The biggest pyramids discovered in Sedeinga are 22 feet wide at
base with the smallest example, likely constructed
for the burial of a child, being only 30 inches long. "The density of the
pyramids is huge", said Vincent Francigny, a
research associate with the American Museum of
Natural History in New York.
PROJECTS
ENVIRONMENT MINISTRY GIVES APPROVAL FOR TAWANG HYDEL
PROJECT
Within days of China announcing three new
hydroelectric projects on the Brahmputra river and
catching India by surprise, the Centre has set the ball
rolling to build the strategic Tawang hydroelectric
project in Arunachal Pradesh.
The 800 MV power project proposed to be built
on the Tawang Chu river has got the forest
clearance, with the Environment ministry waiving the
cumulative impact assessment for stage-I clearance that it was
earlier insisting. While the
project proposal had been discussed at two meetings of
the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) in April and
September last year, it was felt that a comprehensive
study was needed to assess the cumulative impact of the
projects planned in the Tawang basin before the projects
are considered for clearance.
The FAC has also cleared the Along-Kaying-Tato
road in West Siang district, noting the strategic importance of the road for the Indian Army and its need to ease
communication for the local population.
With both the State Government and the Centre
now raising the pitch in favour of the projects,
the FAC cleared the project at a meeting on January 21-22.
Power Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia had also met Environment
Minister Jayanthi Natarajan on the issue and had
suggested that the cumulative study on the Tawang basin be delinked from stage-I forest clearance, a proposal backed by the State Government as well.
The
National Hydroelectric Power
Corporation (NHPC) that will be setting up the hydel
project has submitted before the FAC that the State
Government has already identified the organisation that will
carry out the basin study and a MoU will soon be signed.
NHPC has also informed the FAC that the issue
of environmental flow has also been addressed
through the commitment it has made in its environment
management plan to assure minimum flow of 10 cumcc in the
lean season.
Considering the 'reasonable progress' made by
the State Government and user agency and the
demands made by the Government of India, the FAC has
said that "there is every likelihood that
scientific inputs will be available for taking
decisions about final approval of projects as
well as for considering other projects proposed in the
river basin".
It has accordingly decided to 'relax' its
recommendations of completion of cumulative impact
assessment study prior to stage-I clearance and
recommended the proposal. The Committee has, however,
clarified that any subsequent hydro-electric project in the
Tawang basin shall be considered only after the cumulative
assessment report and its recommendations, according to
minutes of the FAC meetings.
The Tawang hydroelectric project will require diversion of 116 hectares of forest land including 19.6 hectares for underground use.
While there is no violation of the Forest
Conservation Act involved in the diversion, 62 families
will be affected by the project and a rehabilitation programme
has been prepared for the same. The nearest protected
area is the Eagle Nest Wildlife Sanctuary that is about 27
km away from the barrage site and 32 km away from the
Power-House. The project is a run-of-the-river
scheme and a pondage of 6.19 ha. including the riverbed
will be created by 28 m high barrage.
DISASTER
METEOR HITS RUSSIA TOWN, 750 INJURED
[Sonic boom caused by meteor's fall shattered windows in Chelyabinsk]
A meteor streaked through the sky and exploded
on February 15, 2013 over Russia's Ural Mountains
with the power of an atomic bomb, its sonic blasts shattering countless windows
and injuring more than 750 people. The spectacle deeply frightened thousands,
with some elderly women declaring the world was coming to an end. The meteor
estimated to be about 10 tons entered the earth’s atmosphere at a hypersonic
speed of at least 54000 kmph and shattered about 30-35 km above the ground, the
Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement. It released the energy of
several kilotons above the Chelyabinsk region, the academy said.
Amateur video broadcast on Russian television showed an object speeding across the sky about 920 am local time, just after sunrise, leaving a thick white
contrail and an intense flash.
Small pieces of space debris-usually parts of
comets or asteroids-that are on a collision course
with the Earth are called meteoroids. They become meteors
when they enter the Earth's atmosphere. Most meteors
burn up in the atmosphere but if they survive the
frictional heating and strike the surface of the Earth they are
called meteorites.
Meteors typically cause sizeable sonic booms
when they enter the atmosphere because they are
travelling much faster than the speed of sound. Injuries
on the scale reported on February 2013, however, are
extraordinarily rare.
Space
NASA SPACECRAFT FINDS A MONSTER COMET
A NASA space craft that had been ‘put to
sleep’ has photographed a comet with a 64000 km long tail hurtling towards the
sun. Deep Impact, the spacecraft, acquired the first images of Comet C/2012 S1
(ISON). The images were taken by the spacecraft's
medium-resolution imager over a 36-hour period on January 17 and
18, 2013. At that time Deep Impact was 793 million
kilometre away from the comet, a Nasa statement said. ISON is
lurking just inside of Jupiter at present. In
November, it will come to within 1.6 million kilometre of the Sun,
according to NASA.
NASA Curiosity Collects Historic Sample on Mars For the first time,
NASA's curiosity rover has used its on-board
drill to collect a sample of Martian bedrock that might offer evidence of a wet environment which may have once hosted life on the red planet. This is the first
time any robot has drilled into a rock to
collect a sample on Mars, the US space agency said. The fresh
hole, about 0.63 inch wide and 2.5 inches deep in a patch
of fine grained sedimentary bedrock, can be seen in
latest images and other data curiosity beamed to Earth. The
rock is believed to hold evidence about long-gone wet
environments.
PLACES IN THE
NEWS
MAENAM WILDLIFE SANCTUARY, SIKKIM
The first wildlife skywalk of India will be
coming up in Maenam wildlife sanctuary, Sikkim. The
State Government of Sikkim proposed to construct 22 km
rope-way from Maenam sanctuary to skywalk which would
be built on edge of Bhalleydhunga steep face. This will
also have rain shelter as well as public conveniences.
Maenam wildlife sanctuary in Sikkim is 65 km south
from Gangtok, the capital of the state. It is a popular
tourist destination as well.
The environment ministry too has approved the proposal of Sikkim government for the first wildlife skywalk of India proposal that would cost Rs. 500 crore.
This skywalk would be like the one in Grand
Canyon in
North America. The skywalk in Grand Canyon in
North America gets more than 300000 visitors every
year, inspite of opposition from the wild-lifers.
KISHANGANGA PROJECT
The Court of Arbitration at The Hague on
February 18, 2013 allowed India to go ahead with the
Construction of the Kishanganga hydro-electric project in
Gurez valley near Bandipura in North Kashmir, the court
rejected the plea of Pakistan that the construction was a
violation of 1960 Indus Water Treaty.
The Court of Arbitration, chaired by Stephen
M. Schwebel in its orders stated that India can
move ahead with the diversion of water plans of
Kishanganga that is a tributary of Jhelum, for generation of
hydro-electric power. But it restrained India from adoption
of the draw down technique of flushing for clearing the
sedimentation of the run-of-the river project that had been
designed and asked it to adopt a different technique for
generation of 330 MW power facilities. The Court had also
demanded the environmental flows statistics of the
project. Bhaswati Mukherjee, Indian Ambassador and her Pakistani counterpart Fauzia Mazhar Sana received the
Judgement of the Court at The Hague. Pakistan initiated the arbitration against India with a charge that India violated the provisions of the Water Treaty between the two countries. But India denied the
charges forced on to it by explain that the
country reserved
its rights to divert the water from one of the
tributaries of Jhelum to another.
HYDERABAD
Two bomb-blasts took place in Dilsukhnagar,
the busy shopping area of Hyderabad, the Capital
City of Andhra Pradesh on February 21, 2013. 14 people
were reported dead and 119 were critically injured
in the serial blasts that rocked the city around 6: 50 pm. Investigations were ordered by both the Central
Government and the State Government to find
out the group involved in the blast. The State
Government of Andhra Pradesh appointed a probe team into the
matter. The blasts were triggered using the Improvised
Explosive Devices (IED), which were placed on two different bicycles at a distance of 100 metres from each other near Konark and Venkatadri theatres. The area of blasts lie on the Hyderabad-Vijaywada National Highway within Cyberabad police limits.
GWADAR FORT
Pakistan finally took the decision of handing
over the
strategically vital Gwadar port the Chinain in
February
2013. The government on February 19, 2013
formally awarded a multi-billion dollars contract for
construction and operation of Gwadar Port to China with the
hope that the port's development would open up new
vistas of progress in Pakistan, particularly
Balochistan.
Located at the top of Arabian sea and mouth of
Gulf near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, Gwadar
port is at the apex of busy trading and oil shipping
route and surrounded by a region that houses around
two-thirds of the world's oil reserves. Besides Pakistan and
China, its natural beneficiaries will be the landlocked, but energyrich, Central Asian Republics and Afghanistan, for whom it is the nearest warm-water sea port.
It is located at the mouth of the Persian
Gulf, approximately 460 km (290 mi) west of Karachi,
75 km (47 mi) east of Pakistan's border with Iran and
380 km (240 mi) km northeast of the nearest point in Oman
across the
Arabian Sea. It is situated on the eastern bay
of a natural hammerhead-shaped Peninsula protruding into
the Arabian sea from the coastline.
BALRAMPUR
Chhattisgarh has signed an agreement with the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) to set up the country's first geothermal power plant in its newlyformed Balrampur district.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for the project was signed in February 2013 between the NTPC and the Chhattisgarh Renewable Energy Development Agency (CREDA). The plant will come up at Tata Pani in Balrampur, a district located in extreme northern region of the state.
