Tag: odishanews

India to address the issue of land degradation  ,desertification and drought,at a conference in UN   in October. A press release of   UNCCD said, Participants from 197 Parties to the UNCCD at the Vigyan Bhavan  in New Delhi will have access, for the first time, to a wealth of vital new scientific data.

Pilgrims at Kumbh mela narrowly escaped an accident on Tuesday night after Pontoon bridge was damaged. However the traffic through the bridge was seized after the incident and the repair work was on full swing. According to executive engineer, increased in water flow such incidents are normal. The normal traffic will be started till today night, he added.

Scientists of IIITM-K successfully integrated CSM on cloud platform  In a boon to farmers, a team of researchers led by scientists of the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management –Kerala (IIITM-K) has successfully integrated Crop Simulation Model (CSM) on a cloud platform.
CSMs are decision-making frameworks that provide plot-level advisory to cultivators and take into consideration the dynamics in factors that affect crop productivity.
The model, named as MONICA (Model for Nitrogen and Carbon in Agro-Ecosystems), becomes the first ever CSM to be integrated on the Cloud. This can be articulated to provide real-time guidance to farmers. Based on the recommendations provided by the model, farmers will now be able to take remedial actions, if required.
The feat was accomplished by the Consortium of Researchers for Disruptive Technologies in Agriculture (CDTA). The Indian members of CDTA include Dr R. Jaishanker, Professor, IIITM-K; Prof. A.S. Nain, Professor, GBPUAT, Pantnagar, Dr R.R. Nidamanuri (IIST); Mr Subin John Mathew, Researcher, IIITM-K; Mr S.C. Rajan, Researcher, IIITM-K; and Mr Pawan Mall, Researcher, G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology- GBPUAT). 

(UNI) Wind Energy Major, Inox Wind Limited said on Wednesday it has received a Letter of Intent (LOI) from Adani Green Energy, a part of the Adani group and India’s leading Independent Power
Producer (IPP) to supply, erect and commission 501.6 MW of wind power projects, across projects won under SECI auctions.
The project is scheduled to be executed over the next 15 months at Kutch District in the state of Gujarat, company said in a filing with BSE.
Inox Wind will supply, erect and commission its latest 3.3 MW Wind Turbine Generators (WTGs) with 145 metre rotor dia and 100/120 metre hub height. These turbines will be amongst the highest rated turbines with the largest rotor dia to be made available in the Indian market.

(UNI) On the occasion of 93rd birth anniversary of Shiv Sena founder Balasaheb Thackeray on Wednesday, his 8 x 8 feet portrait with 33,000 rudraksha beads is grabbing the attention of Mumbaikars at Shiv Sena Bhavan at Dadar here.
Shivsena is organising a grand event at the city mayor’s bungalow on the occasion.
The event is expected to be attended by state Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and Mayor Vishwanath Mahadeshwar.
Artist Chetan Raut said ”He made the portrait as Balasaheb Thackeray had a special relationship with rudraksha”.

(UNI) Apprehensive about merger of Jet Airways and Indian Airlines, former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Omar Abdullah on Wednesday said similar bailout in the past has killed Kingfisher and could now risk Jet Airways.
Reacting to tweet that “Marriage of Jet Airways with Air India might save both sinking airlines”.

In a significant move aimed at improving the party’s prospects in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha elections, Congress on Wednesday appointed Priyanka Gandhi Vadra as the AICC general secretary in-charge of east Uttar Pradesh.

Ms Vadra will take charge from the first week of February, a Congress release said here.

In other developments, Mr K C Venugopal has been appointed as party chief’s general secretary.

Mr Jyotiraditya Scindia has been made AICC general secretary in-charge for Uttar Pradesh (West).

Senior party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad, who is presently General secretary in-charge of Uttar Pradesh, has now been made the AICC general secretary in-charge of Haryana.

According to the release by Congress National General Secretary and in-charge of organisation and training, Mr Ashok Gehlot, ‘Congress president Rahul Gandhi has appointed Mr K C Venugopal as the AICC general secretary in-charge (organisation) with immediate effect. He will continue in his role as AICC general secretary in-charge for Karnataka.’

(UNI) India on Tuesday shared the coordinates of the zero point of the Kartarpur corridor along the international border with Pakistan and invited officials from Islamabad for further discussions.

This was done in “pursuant” to the decision taken by the Government of India on November 22, 2018 to expeditiously realise the long pending proposal to establish Kartarpur Corridor, an MEA release said here.

India has also proposed two set of dates, February 26 and March 7, 2019, for the visit of Pakistan delegation to New Delhi to discuss and finalise the modalities so that the Indian pilgrims can visit the holy Gurudwara Kartarpur Sahib using the corridor at the earliest, the statement said.

Continuing to take up the issue of farmers in the run up to the Lok Sabha elections, the Congress has sent a memorandum to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging immediate action on issues pertaining to farmers.

In a letter to the PM, president of the All India Kisan Congress Nana Patole, reminded the government of its promises to the farmers and urged it to “concentrate on these promises immediately”.

Among the issues raised in the memorandum were total farm loan waiver, fixing a price for milk products, coming up with a “big” scheme to tackle flooding and droughts and the effect on farmers due to them; the establishment of a ‘Kisan Aayog’ and a pension scheme for farmers, among others.

The memorandum, sent to PM Modi on January 21, also asked the government to ensure that landless farmers get the benefit of government schemes and demands correction to Fasal Bima Yojana, the Centre’s crop insurance scheme.

The Congress leader warned that unless the NDA Govenrmet takes ‘immediate’ action on these issue, the Kisan Congress would launch a nationwide movement.(UNI)

(UNI) FundsIndia, the country’s largest retail investment platform,today announced launching of FundsIndia SmartSIP, in association with Franklin Templeton AMC, for its customers.
This first-of-its-kind service combines the discipline of SIP along with dynamically managing the monthly SIP allocation to each fund based on market conditions, according to company sources.
SmartSIP invests in an equity fund and a debt fund, from the Franklin India stable, every month. By default, the equity fund’s allocation would be 70 per cent and the debt fund would receive 30 per cent. However, allocation to the equity fund and the debt fund will dynamically change every month based on both market fundamentals and momentum factors.
FundsIndia’s co-founder and COO Srikanth Meenakshi said, ‘We have been listening to what our investors are seeking for a decade now. This product grew out of understanding these requirements. With SmartSIP, an investor can make smart allocations between equity and debt every month based on the signals we receive from a well-proven quantitative model.
‘This adjustment does not disturb the investor’s monthly savings. There’s no need to increase SIP amount or reduce it in order to benefit from dynamic allocation. This ensures that savings are disciplined and there is no compromise on reaching the desired goal,’ he said.

(UNI) Michael Møller, head of the UN in Geneva, has warned delegates to the Conference on Disarmament that cyber-security challenges, and the existence of new weapons systems and technologies, are not being sufficiently addressed or reflected in current arms control regimes.

Mr Møller, who acts as the Secretary-General of the Conference, was speaking at the opening of the first 2019 meeting of the Geneva-based Conference, which, although it is the only multilateral forum for disarmament negotiations, has been deadlocked for over 20 years, the last arms control agreement successfully negotiated by the body was the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, in 1996.

The UN Geneva chief said that the realities of today make a compelling case for a renewed sense of urgency, and a collective commitment and determination in pursuing disarmament. He warned that the nuclear threat remains high: nuclear programmes continue to be pursued, and nuclear arsenals enhanced, and that military and security expenditures have reached record levels. Despite these, and other risks, multilateralism is “under fire at the time we need it most,” and “meaningful dialogue on the right approach to a host of disarmament issues continues to elude us.

2019 marks the 40th anniversary of the Conference on Disarmament, described by Mr Møller as an occasion to “recall why these mechanisms, with their regulations and rules of procedures and (spoken and unspoken) codes of conduct, were established.” They are important, he continued, because they provide a neutral place for dialogue, where different positions can be acknowledged and transcended.

Civilian Welfare Foundation, a non profit organisation working with Gender , Disability and Child Education is collaborating with Five Mad Men, a one of a kind gastro play pub to launch a series of programmes supporting Bengal Paralympics.
The para athletes have always faced obstacles in their social and personal frontiers. Even the RPWD Act, 2017 along with its all possible attributed clauses did not change an inch or made any difference in the scene of paralympic affairs.
In 2018 para-Asian games, India para-athletes won 72 medals with a relatively smaller contingent of 190 compared to 570 athletes to the Asian Games 2018 that won 69 medals.
In order to help the Bengal para-athletes to overcome the economic hurdles, Five Mad Men will offer their guests the opportunity to pay a minimal amount of rupees ten with their bill which will go for supporting regional para-athletes. The establishment will also offer a flat 30 per cent discount at Five Mad Men for all national level para athletes.(UNI)

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad Researcher Dr Aalok Khandekar is coordinating an ‘Air Pollution Governance Across Cities Study’ (known as the 6+ Cities Study) to characterize how coordination between ‘understanding’ and ‘governing’ air pollution is happening in different cities.
It also supports comparative insight and cross-city dialogue.

Originally, there were six cities in the study with research groups in Beijing, Bangalore, Houston, Philadelphia, New York City, and Albany, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, a US Government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering.

The study has now been expanded to include four more Indian cities including Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune besides Los Angeles as well. Research in India is being funded by the Azim Premji Foundation, India, a IIT-Hyderabad statement here said on Tuesday.

Research groups based in each city – as well as researchers focused on themes across cities – are coordinated out of the University of California Irvine, Department of Anthropology by Professors Kim Fortun and Mike Fortun. Dr Aalok Khandekar, Assistant Professor of Anthropology/Sociology, Department of Liberal Arts, IIT Hyderabad, is coordinating the Research in India.

Speaking about the importance of this study and its outcomes, Dr Aalok said, “We want to understand how actors in different communities identify problems, produce and use relevant data, interpret and think creatively about that data, and are moved to action.”

Further, Dr Aalok added, “We hope to characterize a city’s air pollution governance style as an effect of the ways different communities involved in the city (local and beyond, including city, state and national government actors, residents, environmental activists, scientists in different disciplines) come together, prioritizing some things while discounting others. Our hope is that comparative perspective on air pollution governance styles will advance both fundamental understanding of environmental governance and practical work on the ground.”

The ‘6+ Cities Study’ aims to characterize distinctive styles of environmental health and risk governance at the city scale. Through interviews, observation of public events, and analysis of media, government, non-governmental organisations and scientific reports, the study team is examining different stakeholder roles and perspectives, links between policy domains (especially environment, transportation, health, and education), and links across scale (urban, state, national, and international). (UNI)

(UNI) Calling on governments to take human rights obligations into account when designing economic reforms, an independent United Nations rights expert said that human rights impact assessments are key to the process.
Highlighting the vital role of human rights on policymaking, the independent expert on foreign debt and human rights, Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, published the Guiding Principles on Human Rights Impact Assessments of Economic Reforms to assist states, international financial institutions, creditors, civil society and others, to ensure that economic policies are embedded in human rights.
“The thrust of the Guiding Principles is that states cannot shy away from their human rights obligations in economic policymaking, even in times of economic crisis” said Mr Bohoslavsky in a statement, issued on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Terming the claims by the Indian Journalists’ Association (Europe), at an event held in London, that the 2014 Lok Sabha polls as well as the 2018 five-state polls were rigged, as a validation of its doubts on the working of the EVMs, the Congress on Monday demanded that at least 50 per cent of the VVPATs should be verified with the paper trails.

Talking to reporters here, AICC spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said,”the event at London only validates the concerns of the Congress on the working of the EVMs. It adds wight to the argument of the Congress that the EC should switch to paper ballots.

But we recognize that in such a short time, with just a few months to go for the elections, we cannot switch to paper ballots. That is why we have been arguing for safeguards in use of the EVMs like the use of VVPATs. For several years, the Election commission has been saying that we do not have the money. However, following a plea to the EC, the commission has said that VVPATs will be used in 100 per cent constituencies in the Lok Sabha elections. However, after making use of VVPATs, if you verify the paper trails in case of just one or two per cent of cases what is the point of indulging in the exercise. We have demanded that in 50 per cent of the cases the EVM vote be verified with the paper trails.’’ (UNI)

A professor of Jadavpur university allegedly insisted a student to take bathe with him in any river. The student revealed that the professor Kanak Sarkar asked her for that while she was on her way for a presentation. University has divested Sarkar of his duties.

UK members of parliament rejected a deal by the prime minister Theresa May with the EU on the terms of Britain’s exit from the bloc.May had sustained heaviest parliamentary defeat of any British PM in the era of democratic after the deal was rejected by 230.