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The Indian Space Research Organisation boosted its reputation further when it successfully launched a record 104 satellites in one mission from Sriharikota on Wednesday by relying on its workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket. An earth observation Cartosat-2 series satellite and two other nano satellites were the only Indian satellites launched: the remaining were from the United States, Israel, the UAE, the Netherlands, Kazakhstan and Switzerland. Of the 101 foreign satellites launched, 96 were from the U.S. and one each from the other five countries. Till now Russia held the record of launching 37 satellites in a single mission, in 2014, while the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the U.S. launched 29 satellites in one go in 2013. Last June, ISRO had come close to NASA’s record by launching 20 satellites in one mission. But ISRO views the launch not as a mission to set a world record but as an opportunity to make full use of the capacity of the launch vehicle...

If all the 315 coal plants in Europe complete their natural lifespan, the EU nations will overshoot their carbon emissions target for coal by 85 per cent, according to a report by Climate Analytics—a Berlin-based think tank. The report urges the EU to stop using coal for power generation by 2030. Currently, the use of coal is declining by about one per cent a year in Europe. However, it still generates 25 per cent of the continent’s power, contributing one-fifth of greenhouse gas emissions. “Not only would existing coal plants exceed the EU’s emissions budget, but the 11 planned and announced plants would raise EU emissions to almost twice the levels required to keep warming to the Paris agreement’s long-term temperature goal,” said Michiel Schaeffer, Climate Analytics science director. There’s already a concern over diesel cars in the EU producing emissions about five times higher than the permissible limit. This report will be a part of the review document on EU’s Paris targ...

In a historic feat, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched a record 104 satellites today (February 15) from the spaceport of Sriharikota of Andhra Pradesh. With this, India surpassed Russia, which previously held the record for the most satellites launched in a single mission (37), and became the first country to launch 104 satellites in a single rocket. The ISRO also outdid itself by a huge margin as the highest number of satellites it had previously launched was 20. However, it used the same rocket this time—XL version of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). View image on Twitter View image on Twitter  Follow  ISRO ✔ @isro PSLV-C37 Successfully launched Cartosat-2 Series Satellite along with 103 co-passenger satelliteshttp://www.isro.gov.in/pslv-c37-cartosat-2-series-satellite … 10:23 AM - 15 Feb 2017   6,006 6,006 Retweets   9,046 9,046 likes Announcing the success of the programme, ISRO chariman AS Kiran Kumar said, “This was a v...

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill has spelt doom for dolphins in Barataria Bay in the Gulf of Mexico. A study conducted by the UK-based University of St Andrews says dolphins are struggling to survive in the gulf. The spill, which occurred in 2010 in the Mexican gulf, killed thousands of marine mammals and its negative effects are still being felt seven years after the incident. In what can be termed as one of the worst environmental disasters, an explosion in the Deepwater Horizon rig spilled 134 million gallons of oil into the sea. The study coordinated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that the dolphin population in Barataria Bay will have reduced by 50 per cent within the decade following the spill and that full population recovery will take 40 years. In addition, scientists found that 25 per cent of the current population of dolphins is underweight and 17 per cent are in poor condition. The chemicals present in oil and petroleum products can affect ...

Towards the end of 2016, the Commerce Ministry sent a note to the Cabinet proposing a blanket ban on foreign direct investment (FDI) in the tobacco sector. Although India banned FDI in tobacco manufacturing in 2010, foreign tobacco companies are allowed to invest through technology collaboration, licensing agreements and by forming a trading company. The Commerce Ministry’s proposal, which NITI Aayog has opposed, would put an end to all kinds of participation of foreign companies in the tobacco sector. The government cites the World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) as the reason for this step. As per this convention, India is under an obligation to reduce high consumption of tobacco products which pose a grave public health danger. However, this proposal has not gone down well with the American tobacco giant, Philip Morris International (PMI), which has invested in the Indian tobacco market through a licensing agreement with Godfrey Phillips I...

In a reasoned and realistic Budget, the Finance Minister missed a couple of tricks while reducing the income tax rate for the first slab and the corporate tax rate for small companies Several commentators have remarked that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s budget for 2017-18 lacks much fizz. But everything has to be viewed in perspective. This year’s Budget was presented at a time when there are several storm clouds hanging over the economy. We are still reeling from the effects of demonetisation, which must have earned a prominent place in the record books as one of the biggest policy induced disasters of all time. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates the effect of demonetisation to be a 1% reduction in the GDP growth rate. Even the Economic Survey admits some adverse effect on the economy, but naturally claims that it will be much lower. To make matters worse, the introduction of the uniform Goods and Services Tax (GST), as well as advancing the date of the presentation ...

Greater focus is required to reverse both inadequate budgetary allocation for the Ministry of Environment and its under-utilisation The Union Budget presented this month has made a broad-brushed allocation of ₹2,675.42 crore to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), an apparent increase by 18.88% from last year. Worryingly, the devil is in the finer details that mirror casual indifference shown to specific issues of wildlife conservation, pollution abatement and related areas demanding immediate policy interventions by the state. Prima facie the budgetary approach to environmental protection appears to be as fragmented and flawed as the legal approach. Even as the issues of forest management, resource conservation, pollution control and wildlife protection are manifest to be increasingly interconnected, they are treated in isolation with attention paid only at the macro-level. Often proactive measures for environment are disproportionately counter-balance...

President Donald Trump suffered a big political blow on Monday, barely a month into office, when his National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned over his Russia contacts. Mr. Flynn, a close aide of Mr. Trump, admitted that he had “inadvertently” briefed Vice-President Mike Pence with “incomplete information” about his phone conversation with the Russian ambassador in Washington, Sergey Kislyak. The allegation is that Mr. Flynn discussed American sanctions on Russia with Mr. Kislyak in the waning days of the Obama presidency and told him that Russia should wait till Mr. Trump’s inauguration. He later denied speaking of the sanctions, and based on his brief, Mr. Pence publicly defended him. But after the media reported that they had sources vouching that Mr. Flynn had discussed the sanctions with the envoy, it became impossible for the White House to defend him. Technically, Mr. Flynn’s calls with the Russian ambassador before he became part of the government are a breach of an 1...

In a decision that will benefit thousands of people in the country, the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) has finally put a ceiling on prices of cardiac stent—a small mesh tube that's used to treat narrow or weak arteries. Cardiac stents are often used as part of a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), a procedure that restores blood flow through narrow or blocked arteries. In a notification published on Tuesday, the authority set the price of bare metal stent to Rs 7,260 and drug eluting stents (DES) including metallic DES and bioresorbable vascular scaffold (BVS)/ biodegradable stents to Rs 29,600. Earlier, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had notified the inclusion of stents in the list of essential medicine on July 19, 2016. This decision came after the Delhi High Court asked the government to take action responding to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by advocate Birendra Sangwan. The PIL was seeking price control of stents. The whooping pri...

It takes less than 20 milligrams of rhino horn to prosecute poachers. This is all scientists need to discover a rhinoceros’ unique DNA pattern, a sort of genetic fingerprint investigators can use to link criminals involved in poaching and trading of rhino horn to individual mutilated or killed rhinos. This technique might sound like it came out of a forensic crime TV series, but it was developed and implemented by researchers in South Africa, and will soon be used in India as well, with the state of Assam playing a lead role. South Africa currently is at the epicenter of a poaching epidemic driven by East Asian demand for rhino horn as a status symbol or a traditional medical treatment. Between 2007 and 2015, rhino poaching in South Africa increased almost 90-fold, from 13 rhinos killed in 2007 to 1,175 in 2015, according to United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) data. In comparison, poaching of Asian rhinos currently occurs on a much smaller scale. In India’s Assam state, wh...

In a latest push to make Hepatitis C drugs affordable to millions of patients, civil society groups filed five new challenges to patents in India and Argentina. These challenges were meant to alleviate the production and distribution of affordable generic versions of direct-acting antiviral (DAA) medicines, including sofosbuvir, daclatasvir and velpatasvir. In India, the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK) together with the Delhi Network of Positive People (DNP+) and supported by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), filed four cases: two patent challenges on daclatasvir, one on velpatasvir and a further challenge on sofosbuvir. Separately, in Argentina, Fundación Grupo Efecto Positivo (FGEP) filed a patent opposition on sofosbuvir with support from I-MAK. Petitioners argue that these efforts are aimed to overturn the abusive strategies of pharmaceutical corporations like Gilead who exploit flaws in the patent system to obtain unjustified patents that block gen...

Even the bottom of the ocean is not safe from human pollution. A joint study by the researchers at the James Hutton Institute and University of Aberdeen found “extraordinary” levels of contamination in the form of Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in two of the deepest trenches in the ocean—Mariana Trench in the North Pacific and Kermadec Trench in the South Pacific The PCBs, which are created by electrical equipment and during waste incineration, were banned in 1979 as these ‘tough chemicals’ had increased cancer risk and other health issues. These persistent organic pollutants (POPs) have not only resisted degradation but also spread far and wide, reaching the Arctic and Antarctic. During two expeditions in 2014, a team of researchers collected wildlife from these trenches. On analysing shrimplike crustaceans, called amphipods, many kinds of PCBs were detected. The most contaminated samples from the Mariana Trench—which is nearly 11 kilometres deep—had PCB concentrations 50 times...

If the words ‘feminism’ and ‘feminist’ have a negative connotation, it is precisely because we are operating in a deeply patriarchal society Being a feminist today is as bad as being a fan of Shah Rukh Khan in the year Ra.One was released. Constant mockery is replaced by exasperated sighs, followed by collective rolling of eyes. And finally people just pretend you’re invisible. But the analogy ends right there. (Un)Funnily enough, Shah Rukh Khan recently said he doesn’t want to be considered “pro-feminist”. God forbid. People steer clear of this label, not because they are Foucauldians but for two reasons. One, that they don’t seem to believe in gender equality, and two, because they are afraid of how people would react. About five years ago, during my college days as a coordinator of the women’s development cell, I had helped organise a ‘Reclaim the Night Walk’, and I am still called ‘Triple M’ (short for Mahila Mukti Morcha) by my cousins. One peep about how my cousin-sister s...

Donald Trump’s victory is the assault of finance capital on not just social capital but also on industrial capital Imagine a mythical planet not visited by the Little Prince. This is a planet divided up into a thousand and one sections with walls between them. There are doors in the walls, and windows of course. But there is no roof to the planet. Everyone on the planet is affected by storms that cross the skies, sometimes devastating this section, sometimes that. Sometimes the storms afflict all the sections, but in different ways: flood in one place and hail in another; cyclone on one, landslide in another. A man-made storm The denizens of this planet are peculiar: they are mostly unable to look up. As such, many of them cannot see signs of a gathering storm. The few who can are helpless. What can they do about storms? This is also true of the various presidents, prime ministers, monarchs and dictators who govern the different sections of this planet. Many of these leaders eve...

Hundreds of whales died overnight on a New Zealand beach due to the largest mass stranding in decades. The Department of Conservation (DOC) found 416 pilot whales had beached themselves at Farewell Spit in Golden Bay at the top of the South Island. In fact, more than 70 per cent perished before sunrise on February 10.  Another pod of more than 200 whales stranded on February 11. Hundreds of rescuers managed to save around 400 pilot whales on the South Island beach over the weekend. According to Peter Wiles, one of the volunteers who reached Farewell Spit to save the remaining whales, the white bellies of whale corpses were lined up on the sand. “It is one of the saddest things I have seen, that many sentient creatures just wasted on the beach,” he said. Golden Bay is conducive to stranding because its shallow muddy waters confuse whales’ sonar, making it difficult for them to swim out once they enter. On Friday morning, the locals cancelled all their commitments to help the ...