Current Affairs: Science/Sports/Environment - Major Issues 16th to 31st May 2010

CAG Weekly
(Current Affairs & GK)
By Om Prakash (goldy sir)

Venus probe launched

• A Japanese rocket blasted off and successfully launched a Venus probe and a kite-shaped “space yacht” designed to float through the cosmos using only the power of the sun.
• The launch vehicle, the H—IIA rocket, took off from the Tanegashima space centre in southern Japan, three days after its original launch was postponed by bad weather.

Flying dinosaur of the Sahara found

• Scientists have discovered a giant flying dinosaur with a wingspan of six metres that lived in the Sahara region of Africa, when it was a lush green paradise, some 95 million years ago.
• The pterosaur, which had a lance-shaped lower jaw that made it look like a huge heron, was found by a team from the University College Dublin, the University of Portsmouth and the University Hassan II in Casablanca
• The scientists believe the newly identified pterosaur to be the earliest example of its kind that lived in the African region, the Daily Mail reported.
• The reptile was named Alanqa saharica, which means phoenix — a mythological flying creature that dies in a fire and is reborn from its ashes.
• The team also discovered rare dinosaur footprints, including some that record several animals walking along the same trail. Besides finding hundreds of dinosaur teeth, they also unearthed bits of giant crocodiles and some new species of fish.

Fighting bull cloned in Spain for the first time

• Spain has cloned a fighting bull for the first time, the team of scientists behind the achievement said on Wednesday.
• The bull, named Got, which means glass in the Catalan language, was born on Tuesday near the town of Palencia in northern Spain.
• Got is identical to his father, named Vasito, which means “small glass” in Spanish, a fighting bull who died in March after life as a stud.
• A second clone of Vasito is expected to be born in the coming days.
• Fighting bulls are raised for bullfights. Most die in the ring but some spend their lives as studs.
• The head of the team of veterinarians and biologists, Vicente Torrent, said their success “highlights a technique that could be used to help species under threat of extinction.”
• He said he had at first considered cloning an Iberian lynx, the world's most threatened feline species, but decided to start with a bull.

Fulfilment at last

• After spending 35 years in pursuit of a world title, England found fulfilment in Barbados. And Paul Collingwood's men did it with a vitality of style not always associated with English sides of the past, dominating Australia in the final of the World Twenty20 and winning their maiden global limited-overs tournament.
• England's triumph was a testament to the benefits of brave, forceful cricket. Consider that seven members of England's victorious team appeared in last year's World Twenty20 in which the side played with the safety-first attitude so characteristic of it in major tournaments, and you get a sense of the remarkable transformation coach Andy Flower has wrought. The result of hundreds of hours of smart, directed training behind the scenes was a cohesive squad that had balance and variety in batting and bowling and a previously unattained level of athleticism in fielding.
• As Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara said during the Super Eights, England was not only a deeper and more powerful batting unit but also a well-rounded bowling attack with no obvious weakness. Collingwood led with uncommon assurance and the team responded to its captain's attacking instincts by playing without the fear of failure — such an important part of courting success on the big stage.

Oceans' fish stocks could vanish by 2050

• More than 20 million people employed in the fishing industry may need to be retrained for other work over the next 40 years if the final collapse of fish stocks in the world's oceans is to be avoided, the U.N. warned.
• The U.N.'s environment branch, UNEP, gave a preview of its green economy report that will be published in October. It said if the world remained on its path of overfishing, by 2050 fish stocks could become uneconomic to exploit, or extinct.

Agni-II missile test-fired successfully

• After two successive setbacks, Agni-II surface-to-surface ballistic was successfully flight-tested from the Wheeler Island off the Orissa coast.
• The intermediate range missile can carry nuclear weapons and has a range of more than 2000 km.
• It was fired from a rail mobile launcher by personnel of the Strategic Forces Command at 9.18 a.m., as part of user training exercise.
• After a flight of about 660 seconds, the missile splashed down near the pre-designated target in the Bay of Bengal and met all the mission objectives, Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) officials said.

Tar sands oil extraction ‘spreading rapidly'

• The successful development of Canada's tar sands has triggered a rush by Shell and other oil companies to set up similar operations in Russia, Congo and even Madagascar, a new report reveals.
• Soaring crude prices and a growing shortage of drilling sites have encouraged the energy industry to look at a series of “unconventional” hydrocarbon deposits threatening vulnerable environment and communities in places such as Jordan, Morocco as well as the U.S., Friends of the Earth says in a review called Tar Sands: Fuelling The Climate Crisis.
• The revelations came a day before Shell's annual general meeting and on the day Ceres, a coalition of a investors and environmentalists, launched its survey warning that Canadian tar sands extraction could pose an even bigger risk to an oil company share price than the U.S. rig disaster, which knocked $30bn off the value of BP.
• Tar sands and oil shale are considered by green groups to be more damaging than normal oil operations because extraction is highly carbon and water-intensive.
• “Tar sands — bitumen that is extracted and upgraded to produce synthetic crude — has been heavily criticised for its poor environmental and social outcomes, locally and globally. Canada is currently the only major centre of production but investment is expanding, including by European oil companies such as BP, Shell, Total and ENI,” the Friends of the Earth report says.

India, Korea declared joint winners

• India and Korea were declared joint champions after the cup final was abandoned a little over six minutes after start in the Sultan Azlan Shah hockey tournament on Sunday. India, the defending champion, leads the pool with a tally of 13 points.
• Heavy rain forced the Tournament Committee to arrive at this unprecedented decision. This is the first time that the teams have been declared joint winners in this tournament since its inception in 1983.

Webber wins Monaco Grand Prix

• Mark Webber leapt into serious contention for this year's drivers' World championship on Sunday when he drove to an imperious victory ahead of his precocious young teammate Sebastian Vettel in the Monaco Grand Prix.
• The 33-year-old Australian led from start to finish and made light of four interruptions for the introduction of the Safety Car on his way to a second comprehensive win in succession, having won equally impressively in Spain last weekend.

Green India Mission to double afforestation efforts by 2020

• The Green India Mission, part of India's plan to fight climate change, proposed to double the area being taken up for afforestation and eco-restoration over the next decade.
• According The first draft of the Mission, released , projects an ambitious target of 20 million hectares by 2020, at a cost of Rs. 44,000 crore. Public consultations will be undertaken across the country from June 11, following which the draft will be finalised.
• Earlier, the Prime Minister had spoken of undertaking afforestation in 6 million hectares of degraded forest land as part of the Mission, which is one of the eight Missions of the National Action Plan on Climate Change. (About 10 million hectares would anyway be treated by the Forest department and others without the Mission's interventions).
• The more ambitious target in this draft, however, emphasises a holistic approach to greening, making it clear that the project will not just be limited to trees and plantations, but would focus on restoring diverse ecosystems. It would not only strive to restore degraded forests, but also protect and enhance relatively dense forests.
• The nine sub-missions include, separate targets for moderately dense forests, degraded forests, degraded scrub and grasslands, mangroves, wetlands, urban forest lands and institutional areas with tree cover, degraded and fallow agricultural land, wildlife corridors, more efficient stoves and alternative energy devices for better fuel wood use, and enhanced livelihoods for communities dependent on biomass and non-timber forest produce.
• The Mission envisages a key role for local communities and includes a four-level monitoring framework.
• The new and restored forest areas will act as a carbon sink. They are expected to absorb an additional 43 million tonnes of green house gases every year. This means that India's forests will be able to absorb 6.35 per cent of the country's annual emissions by 2020. The draft is rather vague on the source of funding, merely saying that the “resources will be mobilised as additionality from the Planning Commission.” It adds that “the deficit, if any, will be taken care of by developing projects for seeking assistance from international funding agencies, UN organisation, etc.”
• Last month, Union Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh had indicated that the government was hunting for funds for the Mission, as “the money collected under the compensatory afforestation scheme would now be transferred to the States and so would not be available.”

GST rollout: Centre willing to pay more to States

• The rollout of the new GST (Goods and Services Tax) regime has moved a step closer to agreement on its implementation with the Centre indicating its willingness to hike the compensation package to States beyond the Rs.50,000 crore suggested by the Thirteenth Finance Commission (TFC).
• The compensation package is to be extended to the States for any revenue loss that they may incur on implementation of the proposed GST regime in lieu of a host of indirect taxes. As an added incentive, the TFC, it may be recalled, had recommended a Rs.50,000-crore compensation corpus by way of a ‘grand bargain' to induce the State governments to switch over to the unified indirect tax regime.
• The compensation package offer, however, is subject to the condition that the States agree to introduce the new levy at a single rate before 2013.

World Bank seeks details on unused tsunami funds

• Bottlenecks in the implementation of the Emergency Tsunami Reconstruction Project has prompted the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) to write to the State government seeking details of the exact amount of credit that will be unutilised.
• According to a senior State government official, “The deadline for the projects is December 2011, but some of them in Chennai are yet to take off on account of the unwillingness of the beneficiaries. Around 50 per cent of the projects in Chennai are not likely to take off as vested interests are creating problems by mobilising the beneficiaries against the projects.”

Tata Steel not happy with progress of Greenfield projects in two states

• Tata Steel is not happy with the progress of its greenfield projects, Managing Director H. M. Nerurkar has said. He said that the irresponsible behaviour of business organisations has created scepticism among the people and there was a need to address this issue while setting up large projects.
• Tata Steel is trying to set up a greenfield capacity each in Jharkhand, Orissa and Kalinganagar.

GSM operators move TDSAT

• Three leading mobile operators have pre-empted a policy change by approaching the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) against the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) recommendations on 2G spectrum, including a one-time fee for holding radio waves beyond 6.2 Mhz.
• The operators who have approached the telecom tribunal are: Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea.
• However, one of the operators said they could not comment on the details of the challenge as the matter was ‘sub-judice'.

Scrap Posco steel project: fact-finding team

• A fact-finding team, which visited several villages at the site selected for the controversial megasteel plant of Posco India Private Limited in Orissa's Jagatsinghpur district, has demanded the immediate scrapping of the project.
• Addressing a press conference on the team's return here from Jagatsinghpur, the former Bombay High Court judge, Justice H. Suresh said the proposed land acquisition for Posco was violative of the constitutional rights of the locals.
• Justice Suresh — who led the team that looked into human rights violations in the wake of the May 15 police attack on villagers opposing the steel project in their locality — also demanded the withdrawal of all “forged cases” against the villagers and anti-Posco movement leaders.

A new headway at power project

• A state-of-the-art boiler drum weighing 211 tonnes has been installed at a height of 75.55 metres in the first unit of 600 MW at the Kalisindh Super Thermal Power Project under construction in Jhalawar district. It is described as a significant addition to the project work.
• State Energy Minister Jitendra Singh said here that two units of 600 MW each are being established in the project's first phase, while the target has been set for starting power production from October 2011 in the first unit and January 2012 in the second unit.
• The estimated cost of the super thermal power plant is Rs.5,500 crore. After the boiler drum lifting, the work relating to installation of the remaining pressure parts is being taken up. According to Rajasthan Vidyut Utpadan Nigam CMD S. K. Kalla, a 10-km-long railway line from Jhalawar to the project site is being laid to facilitate movement of components and material to the plant.

The spectrum bonanza

• The auction of spectrum for the third generation (3G) mobile telephone services has been remarkable in many ways. The most obvious is the sum of money the government will get from the seven successful bidders and the two public sector entities, which will pay the auction-set price for spectrum preferentially assigned to them many months ago.
• The figure of Rs. 67,718 crore is well above the most optimistic of estimates either the government or industry had made — and it just goes to show why the auction is the best method of determining who should be granted a licence to use a public good such as the airwaves and at what price.
• This is virtually ten times the amount for which the government granted two years ago the licences for the second generation (2G) services on a ‘first-come-first-served' basis. Opponents of that exercise will now feel strongly vindicated.
• The second interesting aspect of the exercise is the wide regional disparity in the winning bids: New Delhi and Mumbai circles are worth a hundred times as much as Jammu and Kashmir or the North East circles.
• The assessment of the bidders may have been coloured by the unstable political conditions in those two regions, but the wide skew in economic potential across various other parts of the country, as reflected in the bid amounts, is a matter of concern.
• While no single company has won in all circles, it has come as no surprise that the well-entrenched among the current service providers weighed in with the biggest bids and won in a majority of the circles.

Bank of Rajasthan to merge with ICICI Bank

• Bank of Rajasthan, one of the oldest private sector banks in the country, on Tuesday announced that it would merge with the largest private sector bank, ICICI Bank.
• The board of ICICI Bank, which met later in the day, also agreed to give in-principle approval for merger of Bank of Rajasthan with it “subject to due diligence and valuation by an independent valuer jointly appointed by both banks.”

Gujarat plans to create “eco-sensitive zones”

• The Gujarat Government is planning to create “eco-sensitive zones” around all the 22 wildlife and bird sanctuaries in the state banning construction activities, mining and use of any explosive materials.
• State Principal Secretary of the Forest and Environment Department S. K. Nanda said a proposal to this effect had already been send to the Centre for approval.
• He said the proposal would help to create a conducive atmosphere around the wildlife and bird sanctuaries necessary for their wellbeing and growth.
• It envisaged creating and developing such environment friendly zones stretching from two to 10 kilometres around the periphery of sanctuaries.

RIL, Russian firm sign MoU on butyl rubber production

• Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and SIBUR, Russia's leading petrochemical company, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to set up a joint venture in India to produce butyl rubber.
• As per the agreement, butyl rubber will be produced at Reliance's integrated petrochemical site in Jamnagar.
• SIBUR will provide proprietary technology for butyl rubber polymerisation and its finishing, while RIL will supply monomers and provide the infrastructure and utilities.

Ratan Tata honoured

• Tata Group Chairman Ratan N. Tata received the 2010 CIF Chanchlani Global Indian Award for his outstanding global leadership, vision and professional excellence.
• The award, carrying an $2,25,000 (Rs. 1 crore) cash prize and a citation, was presented at the Annual Award Gala of the Canada India Foundation held in Vancouver, Gala Chair and Co-Chair of Canada India Foundation Barj Dhahan said.