In the wake of Depsang, India and China look to enhance CBMs 25TH JULY 2013

Cross-border Working Mechanism meet discussed holding flag meetings between first lines of defence
India and China are considering augmenting the existing confidence-building measures in a bid to ensure that incidents like Aprils three-week standoff in Ladakhs Depsang Valley do not recur. Officials attending the third meeting of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs discussed the possibility of holding flag meetings between non-Army border forces mainly the Indo-Tibetan Border Police and its Chinese counterparts. The 18-month-old Working Mechanism consists of multi-ministry representatives headed by a Foreign Office official from each side. The setup was meant to prevent gaps in communication between Ministries on both sides whenever an incident took place on the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
Hirakud Dam (Oriya: ) is built across the Mahanadi River, about 15 km from Sambalpur in the state of Odisha in India. Behind the dam extends a lake, Hirakud Reservoir, 55 km long. Hirakud Dam, built in 1957, is the longest man-made dam in the world, about 16 mi (26 km) in length. It is one of the first major multipurpose river valley projects started after India's independence. The dam with the channel provides an ideal environment for the wildlife. The Debrigarh wildlife sanctuary is located here.[7] Several species of migratory birds visit the reservoir during winter. Nearly 20-25 species of birds are seen in the reservoir and common among them are Common Pochard, Red-crested Pochard, Great Crested Grebe and several others.[8] The dam supports two different hydroelectric power houses. Power House I is located at the base (toe) of the main dam section and contains 3 x 37.5 MWKaplan turbine and 2 x 24 MW Francis turbine generators for an installed capacity of 259.5 MW.

Amitabh Bachchan, 70, was voted by critics, fans and the film fraternity as the greatest Bollywood star in a U.K. survey, 100 Greatest Bollywood Stars, published by British Asian weekly newspaper Eastern Eye Dilip Kumar came second and Shah Rukh Khan third, while Madhuri Dixit was voted the best Bollywood actress.
Dongria Kondhs, a primitive tribal group, have been agitating for nearly a decade opposing mining in the hills which they worship as the abode of traditional deity Niyamraja. bauxite mining in Niyamgiri hills

Niyamraja for several centuries was an infringement of the religious, cultural, individual and community rights of Dongria Kondhs and other traditional forest-dwellers as per laws.

The Centre and the Odisha government are at loggerheads over the implementation of the environmental referendum being conducted in Odisha over bauxite mining in Niyamgiri hills on a directive by the Supreme Court. Scant regard for apex court In the five-page letter, he said: It is also unfortunate that the Courts directions are being treated with scant respect by the Odisha government which intends to hold gram sabhas only in 12 villages. You will appreciate the fact that Dongria Kondhs have a spiritual, emotional and sentimental bonding to Niyamgiri hills, which is part of their cultural tradition and way of life. Insat-3D, the countrys latest satellite put in orbit on a European rocket early on Friday, is expected to sharpen weather observation and forecasting and also enhance land and sea surface monitoring over the sub-continent and the Indian Ocean region scientists will start the first of four orbit manoeuvres on Saturday from the Master Control Facility at Hassan. They will push the spacecrafts initial elliptical orbit into a circular one that will be nearly 36,000 km above the ground at 82 degrees East longitude. We are looking forward to the excellent operational performance of Insat-3D for the next seven years, making a difference for the weather forecasting and disaster warning systems for the country. At 1.24 a.m. IST, the European Ariane-5 launcher VA214 took off from the Guiana Space Centre at Kourou in South America carrying Insat-3D and the 6-tonne European telecommunication satellite Alphasat. In the making for over seven years, the metsat supplements the decade-old and fading Kalpana-1 and Insat-3A with four sophisticated payloads. The six-channel imager takes weather pictures of the Earth with better resolution than its predecessors. The 19-channel sounder is the first such over the region and gives layered vertical profiles of temperature, humidity and integrated ozone. SAR device A search and rescue device picks up and relays distress alert signals from users on sea, land and air to an ISRO centre in Bangalore and enables speedy detection and rescue of such people. For launch company Arianespace which bags over half of the worlds satellite launch orders in a year, this was the 16th Indian spacecraft launched since 1981. This is another milestone in the longstanding relationship between ISRO and Arianespace, Dr. Radhakrishnan said. It was the 214th Ariane vehicle to fly since 1979.

Weather pictures of Earth will now have better resolution 6-channel imager will give layered vertical profiles of temperature, humidity

It will also enhance land and sea surface monitoring over the sub-continent and the Indian Ocean region Shunned by their relatives, five siblings have been living for the past two months by the graves of their parents who died of AIDS, in Jamua village in Pratapgarh district. The siblings will receive free ration as a special case under the Antodaya Anna Yojana, which provides 35 kg of rice at Rs. 3 per kg and 35 kg of wheat at Rs 2 per kg. We have assured them that they will receive as much food as they require, said Mr. Shukla. The eldest of the siblings, Rizwan, will get work under MNREGA as he requested. The youngest, an eight-year-old boy, and a 16-year-old girl have expressed a desire to study in a religious institution. Two others have been admitted to a boarding school . Celebrated biologist Obaid Siddiqi, a scientist nonpareil whose pioneering work shed light on how taste and smell are detected and coded in brain, died on Friday of injuries he sustained in an accident two days ago. Prof. Siddiqi (81), a National Research Professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences here, was taking a stroll near his residence in Vidyaranyapura on Wednesday when his neighbour, a college student riding his moped, knocked him down.

New National Antibiotics Policy on anvil

That policy had recommended a ban on across-the-counter sale of antibiotics and specified that high-end antibiotics could be used only in tertiary care centres. Experts claim that a policy is of vital importance to ensure that further obstinate strains do not develop. Most hospital administrators are concerned about treating a growing percentage of patients with strains of bacteria that are resistant to carbapenem powerful third line antibiotics. This is especially so in corporate and private hospitals, where the use of expensive antibiotics is more common, explains Abdul Ghafur, infectious diseases consultant, Apollo Hospitals. In the three years after the first policy was shelved, resistance rose in hospitals, Dr. Ghafur says. About three years ago, NDM-1 was three per cent in big Indian hospitals, now there is proof that it is between 20 and 50 per cent. Doctors say patients are resistant even to colistin, a drug that could once be used against multi-resistant, gram negative bacteria. Consequently, the mortality is pretty high. In fact, we are heading towards a pre-Fleming situation, the bacteria are seemingly invincible, he says. In 2010, Timothy Walsh, professor of medical microbiology at Cardiff University, Wales, described in an issue of The Lancet , the emergence of a new enzyme that made bacteria resistant to all known antibiotics. The enzyme NDM1 was named after the city in which it was found, Dr. Walsh explained. India has failed to respond to the urgent need to regulate the sale and use of antibiotics, track the incidence of resistance or improve sanitation. The article also attributes this to poor sanitation, unregulated use of antibiotics and an absence of drug resistance monitoring.

Call for national antibiotic resistance surveillance system

 A road map to tackle antimicrobial resistance

India has proposed a total ban on e-cigarettes and regulating proliferation of hookah (water pipes) use to prevent adverse impact on human health. The recommendation made at the regional meeting of WHO-Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO-FCTC) that concluded here on Friday, was backed by all 11 members of South-East Asian region countries with the nations committing themselves to take measures to their use, including imposing a ban. The issue would be taken up at the next meeting of the Conference of Parties. E-cigarettes and hookahs are much in fashion and received promotion following the implementation of stringent anti-smoking laws. Both are unlicensed products and e-cigarettes are being illegally smuggled into India. The meeting was organised by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in collaboration with WHO SEARO and Secretariat of WHO-FCTC, with technical assistance by WHO Country Office.

He transformed molecular biology research in India

Distinguished scientist Obaid Siddiqi, who passed away in Bangalore on Friday, did much to establish molecular biology and neurogenetics research in India. In 1962, at the invitation of Homi Bhabha he set up the Molecular Biology Unit at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai. In the early 1970s, Prof. Siddiqi began to study the genetic basis of behaviour using the fruit fly,Drosophila melanogaster , as model. Working with Seymour Benzer at Caltech, he discovered a set of temperature sensitive paralytic mutants that exhibited defects in the electrical activity of nerves and muscles. This discovery led to a deeper understanding of the mechanistic basis of neuronal function. These discoveries paved the way for the modern understanding of how senses such as taste and smell are detected and encoded in the brain. He was active in this area of research till the end of his life. Prof. Siddiqi established NCBS as an autonomous unit of TIFR in the early 1990s and was its director till February 1997. As a National Research Professor, he maintained an active laboratory there till the very end. He has been honoured with the Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan, Bhatnagar Prize and many other awards.

We hope that the DDA does not decide to beautify and landscape this area in Dwarka which is the last refuge of the Baya in this concrete jungle that we know as Delhi
This is a story of remarkable resilience by a bird that has become such a rarity in Delhi that ornithologists were on the verge of concluding that it was no longer found in Delhi. The fact that this

bird has chosen a nesting site and scores of pairs have been building a colony, year after year on the same plot of land on the same shrubs and trees is a sign not only of the tremendous adaptability of the bird but it is also a sign of hope for other small birds, like the Sparrow, that have begun to stage a tentative come back in this concrete jungle that we know as Delhi. The bird that Akhilesh Pandey has been chasing is the Baya The weaver Bird. The scientific name of the Baya is Ploceusphilippinus. The Baya normally nests in open grass lands and fields, building their nests, shaped like inverted bottles or the snake-charmers flute, on thorny trees like Keekar and Babool or on date palms. They have a particular preference for trees that hang over water since they provide additional protection against predators. It is the Baya male who begins to weave the intricate nest, drawing long strands from grass or datepalm leaves, the male bird keeps rushing to his mate for approval and only when she is happy with the layout that she joins the effort of making a home. If she does not like the architecture she flies off and the male has to begin once again and that is why you would find almost as many unfinished and half built nests in every weaver bird colony as you would find complete ones.