The Indian Weekender, 12 March 2021

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14 INDIA Friday, March 12, 2021 The Indian Weekender NEWS in BRIEF India's disease screening programme grabs S-A nations' attention India's Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) screening programme, facilitated by Tata Trusts and Dell, has now grabbed the attention of several South Asian countries, officials said here on Tuesday. While Bangladesh, Bhutan and Myanmar are interested in replicating the NCD screening, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has presented it to the 11 member-countries of its South-East Asian Region for populationbased screening and its large-scale utility by field-level health workers. Launched in 2017, the programme has so far enrolled around 7 crore people (80 million) across 29 states and UTs and has screened around 30 million (3 crore) for diseases like diabetes, hypertension and certain types of cancers. Of these, around 60 lakh have been referred for further medical consultations out of whom around 15 lakh have been treated till date, said the official. The programme, one of the modules in Ayushman Bharat's Comprehensive Primary Healthcare (CPHC) Initiative, is currently deployed in 503 districts across the country and will be able to track health trends across the country. India’s largest floating solar power plant to be commissioned by NTPC in May India’s largest floating solar power plant of 100 MW capacity, belonging to the National Thermal Power Corporation, is expected to be commissioned at Ramagundam in May this year, NTPC southern region executive director CV Anand said. Addressing a virtual press conference in Hyderabad, Anand said the floating solar photo-voltaic project would be spread over 450 acres on the water surface of Sri Ram Sagar Project reservoir. This will be the largest floating solar plant in the country in a single location as of now. The total cost of the project would be 423 crore, including GST, he said. “NTPC is utilising the water bodies and huge reservoirs to set up these floating solar units, because it requires huge expenditure for groundmounted plant. For setting up one MW solar photo-voltaic plant on ground, we require five acres,” he said. The NTPC has successfully completed pilot projects at Kayamkulam (100 KWH) capacity and Kawas (1 MW). “Now, we are implementing large floating solar plants,” the executive director said. The NTPC southern region has taken up setting up of solar power plants of the total capacity of 450 MW. Of this, 217 MW plants would be floating on water bodies. Apart from the 100 MW plant at Ramagundam, the corporation is setting up 92 MW floating unit at Kayamkulam gas plant in Kerala and a 25 MW unit at Simhadri power plant in Visakhapatnam. US defence secretary Lloyd Austin to visit India soon, Indo-Pacific on agenda Military-to-military cooperation, defence trade, the Indo-Pacific region and the situation in Afghanistan are expected to be on the agenda during US defence secretary Lloyd Austin’s three-day visit to India next week. This will be the first visit to India by a senior member of the Biden administration, which is looking to ramp up the relationship with India, both bilaterally and within the framework of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad, against the backdrop of China’s assertive actions in the region. On his India visit during March 19-21, Austin will meet defence minister Rajnath Singh and other senior government officials, the defence ministry said in a statement. “Both sides are expected to discuss ways to further strengthen bilateral defence cooperation and exchange views on regional security challenges and common interests in maintaining a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific region,” the statement said. “Discussions regarding defence cooperation would also focus on how both countries could consolidate military-tomilitary cooperation and defence trade and industry cooperation,” the statement added. Idea of climate action should not be to move climate ambition goal post to 2050 India has said that the idea of climate action should not be to move the goal post to 2050 and countries must fulfil their pre-2020 commitments, calling on the global community to view climate change as a “wake-up call” to strengthen multilateralism and seek equitable solutions for a sustainable world. Minister for Environment, Forests and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar on Tuesday said the delivery on the commitment by developed countries to jointly mobilise USD 100 billion per year by 2020 in support of climate action in developing countries has been elusive. He was speaking at the UN Security Council’s open debate on ‘Maintenance of international peace and security: Addressing climaterelated risks to international peace and security'. COVID-19: India’s hunt for 'worrying' coronavirus variants Like all viruses, the coronavirus that has caused the deadly pandemic keeps changing in small ways as it passes from one person to another. The vast majority of these mutations are inconsequential, and don't alter the way the virus behaves. But some mutations trigger changes in the spike protein that the virus uses to latch on to and enter human cells - these variants could potentially be more infectious, cause more severe disease or evade vaccines. Such variants have been its instruction manual - and begin reason for the spike. already identified in UK, South tracking the mutations. India says it has found 242 cases Africa and Brazil, and have now India was the fifth country in of the three foreign variants - mostly spread to dozens of countries. the world to sequence the genome the UK one - in the population so Last week, a top US health official of the novel coronavirus, isolated far. Scientists say they are unlikely warned that the spread of highly from its first recorded cases in the to be linked to the recent spike in contagious variants was threatening southern state of Kerala in January infection, which is being largely to fuel a "potential fourth surge of last year. Since then the country has attributed to people dropping cases" in the country. The Brazil variant appears more contagious and may evade immunity provided by past infection, scientists say. The British variant is responsible for a chunk of new infections in US and Europe. Genome detectives around the world are hunting down these worrying mutations. Scientists are able to detect changes by sequencing the genome of the virus after taking a swab from an infected patient. They crack the genetic code of the virus - essentially prising open recorded more than 11 million cases - just behind the US - and more than 150,000 deaths from the disease. But only now India is beginning to beef up what was a limited surveillance system to track the genetic histories of local samples of the Sars-CoV-2 virus, that causes Covid-19. The timing is crucial: a clutch of states have reported an uptick in infections even as caseloads have fallen sharply in the country. Naturally, there have been fears that new variants of the virus might be the their guard following the steep decline in cases. But genome scientists are also "investigating" two variants found in samples in states like Maharashtra and Telangana which have seen a surge in infection rates. "We are collecting more samples from the field to investigate whether the two variants have any link with the surge. "We cannot be complacent," Dr Sujeet Kumar Singh, director of India's National Centre for Disease Control, said. Nepal bans pics, videos & filming 'of others' on Mt Everest Nepals Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation has put a ban on taking and circulating pictures, videos and filming of other climbers or members of expedition teams on Mt Everest other than of oneself starting this season. Issuing a notice, the Department of Tourism put the ban, saying that each climber can take, share and make images and videos of their group or of oneself but they will face action if they take, make and share photos of other climbers without the department's consent. In the wake of a picture that went viral on May 20i9 about the "traffic jam" on Mt Everest taken by one record holder climber, Nirmal Purja, Nepali officials have been facing other similar kinds of criticism by the international media over threat to the Himalayan eco-system. The mountaineering community and some international media have criticized the hollow management of the Nepal government in managing the expedition on Mt Everest after the photo, "traffic jam in Everest" went viral. Later, several other climbers took pictures of other climbers, filming at the top of Mt Everest and circulated them on the Internet. Officials said some other attempts were made to defame Mt Everest's tourism management by circulating the pictures like piling of garbage at Everest base camp, an avalanche in Everest during the earthquake in 2015. "Such activities have given negative publicity about the Everest so we decided to put a ban on taking pictures, movie and filming in the Everest by others," Mira Acharya, an official at Nepal's Tourism Department told the Nepali media, "to stop these kinds of negative publicity, we have come up with the new guideline that includes other mountains in the country as well". Nepal has eight mountains whose heights are higher than 8,000 metres and Nepal witnesses a huge rush of mountaineers during the climbing season that generally falls in mid-May. Similarly, the new guideline also stated that any climber should have appropriate medical and health conditions for climbing the mountains. In the past, due to some climbers, who did not have the appropriate health and medical conditions to climb the mountains, emergency rescue operations had to be mounted. "We honour the personal freedom of climbers but that does not mean they can post images and videos of others without their consent. Either through commercial cameras or mobile sets, all such activities have been banned," Acharya told the Nepali media. "We honour the personal freedom of climbers but that does not mean they can post images and videos of others without their consent. If anyone intends to disseminate still photographs and videos of people, avalanches and even dead bodies on the mountain among other things, they must secure consent from the Department of Tourism, the government agency that issues Everest climbing permits, the Kathmandu Post quoted the official.
The Indian Weekender Friday, March 12, 2021 WORLD 15 FUKUSHIMA DISASTER: What happened at the nuclear plant? Ten years ago, on a Friday afternoon in March, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan struck off the country's eastern coast. The 9.0-magnitude quake was so forceful it shifted the Earth off its axis. It triggered a tsunami which swept over the main island of Honshu, killing more than 18,000 people and wiping entire towns off the map. At the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the gigantic wave surged over defences and flooded the reactors, sparking a major disaster. Authorities set up an exclusion zone which grew larger and larger as radiation leaked from the plant, forcing more than 150,000 people to evacuate from the area. A decade later, that zone remains in place and many residents have not returned. Authorities believe it will take up to 40 years to finish the work, which has already cost Japan trillions off yen. Where is the plant? The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is in the town of Okuma, in Fukushima Prefecture. It sits on the country's east coast, about 220km (137 miles) north-east of the capital Tokyo. On 11 March 2011 at 14:46 local time (05:46 GMT) the earthquake - known as the Great East Japan Earthquake, or the 2011 Tohoku earthquake - struck east of the city of Sendai, 97km north of the plant. Residents had just 10 minutes warning before the tsunami hit the coast. Overall almost half-a-million people were forced to leave their homes as a result of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident. What happened at Fukushima? Systems at the nuclear plant detected the earthquake and automatically shut down the nuclear reactors. Emergency diesel generators turned on to keep coolant pumping around the cores, which remain incredibly hot even after reactions stop. But soon after a wave over 14 metres (46ft) high hit Fukushima. The water overwhelmed the defensive sea wall, flooding the plant and knocking out the emergency generators. Workers rushed to restore power, but in the days that followed the nuclear fuel in three of the reactors overheated and partly melted the cores - something known as a nuclear meltdown. The plant also suffered a number of chemical explosions which badly damaged the buildings. Radioactive material began leaking into the atmosphere and the Pacific Ocean, prompting the evacuations and an ever-widening exclusion zone. How many people were hurt? There were no deaths immediately during the nuclear disaster. At least 16 workers were injured in the explosions, while dozens more were exposed to radiation as they worked to cool the reactors and stabilise the plant. Three people were reportedly taken to hospital after high-level exposure. Long-term effects of the radiation are a matter of debate. The World Health Organization (WHO) released a report in 2013 that said the disaster will not cause any observable increase in cancer rates in the region. Scientists both inside and outside Japan believe that aside from the region immediately around the plant, the risks of radiation remain relatively low. • Fukushima exclusion worse than radiation? • Fukushima's long road to recovery • Growing crops in the shadow of Fukushima But many believe the dangers are far greater, and residents remain wary. Though officials have lifted restrictions in many areas most people have not returned to their homes. In 2018, the Japanese government announced that one worker had died after exposure to radiation and agreed his family should be compensated. A number of people are however confirmed to have died in the evacuation, including dozens of hospital patients who had to be moved due to fears of radiation. The Fukushima Disaster is classified as a level seven event by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the highest such event and only the second disaster to meet this classification after Chernobyl. • Chernobyl: What happened thirty years ago? • Chernobyl: The end of a three-decade experiment Who was at fault? Critics blamed the lack of preparedness for the event, as well as a muddled response from both the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) and the government. An independent investigation set up by Japan's parliament concluded that Fukushima was "a profoundly man-made disaster", blaming the energy company for failing to meet safety requirements or to plan for such an event. However, in 2019 a Japanese court cleared three former Tepco executives of negligence in what was the only criminal case to come out of the disaster. In 2012, Japan's then prime minister Yoshihiko Noda said the state shared the blame for the disaster. A court ruled in 2019 that the government bore partial responsibility and should pay compensation to evacuees. How is the clean up going? Ten years later, several towns in northeastern Japan remain off limits. Authorities are working to clean up the area so residents can return. • Fukushima: Is fear of radiation the real killer? • Japan nuclear disaster residents return • A school frozen in time after tsunami Major challenges remain. Tens of thousands of workers will be needed over the next 30 to 40 years to safely remove nuclear waste, fuel rods and more than one million tons of radioactive water still kept at the site. But some residents have decided never to return because they fear radiation, have built new lives elsewhere or don't want to go back to where the disaster hit. Media reports in 2020 said the government could start to release the water - filtered to reduce radioactivity - into the Pacific Ocean as early as next year. Some scientists believe the huge ocean would dilute the water and that it would pose a low risk to human and animal health. Environmental group Greenpeace however said that the water contains materials that could potentially damage human DNA. Officials have said no final decision has been taken about what to do with the liquid. NEWS in BRIEF Michelle Obama to be inducted into Women's Hall of Fame Former US First Lady Michelle Obama will be inducted into the National Womens Hall of Fame in October, according to the organisation. In a statement, the National Women's Hall of Fame said that it named Obama as one of the members of its 'Class of 2021', reports The Hill news website. "Both in and out of the White House, Michelle Obama has accomplished her initiatives and so much more becoming an advocate for healthy families, service members and their families, higher education, international adolescent girls' education, and serving as a role model for women and young girls everywhere," it said in the statement. National Women's Hall of Fame described the former First Lady as "one of the most influential and iconic women of the 21st century". The other 'Class of 2021' include Indian- American Indra Nooyi, who was the former CEO of PepsiCo, and retired professional football player Mia Hamm. Moderna, Pfizer less effective against S. Africa Covid variant, claims study Covid-19 vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer- BioNTech significantly appear less effective against the Covid variant that first emerged in South Africa, finds a new study. The study, published in the journal Nature, indicated that the percentage of protective antibodies that neutralised the variant -- B.1.351 -- was 12.4 times lower for Moderna's Covid-19 shot, while Pfizer's vaccine was found to be 10.3 times lower. According to the researchers, including Manoj S Nair from Columbia University Irving Medical Center in the US, multiple vaccine constructs have shown promise, including two with 95 per cent protective efficacy against Covid-19. However, these interventions were directed toward the initial SARS-CoV-2 that emerged in 2019. Congress OKs $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill in win for Biden, Democrats A Congress riven along party lines approved a landmark $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, as President Joe Biden and Democrats claimed a triumph on a bill that marshals the government’s spending might against twin pandemic and economic crises that have upended a nation. The House gave final congressional approval to the sweeping package by a near party line 220-211 vote precisely seven weeks after Biden entered the White House and four days after the Senate passed the bill without a single Republican vote. GOP lawmakers opposed the package as bloated, crammed with liberal policies and heedless of signs the crises are easing. Most noticeable to many Americans are provisions to provide up to $1,400 direct payments this year to most adults and extend $300 per week emergency unemployment benefits into early September. But the legislation goes far beyond that. Deeper ties, Indo-Pacific on the agenda of US defence secy visit Washington The United States will seek to deepen the “Major Defense Partnership” with India during Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s visit and advance cooperation in the Indo-Pacific and the western Indian Ocean region, which is an emerging area of interest for coordinated action by the two countries Washington The United States will seek to deepen the “Major Defense Partnership” with India during Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s visit and advance cooperation in the Indo-Pacific and the western Indian Ocean region, which is an emerging area of interest for coordinated action by the two countries. Austin will reach India next week after visiting Japan and South Korea. This will be his first trip overseas after taking office and, notably, it is to the Indo-Pacific, reflecting the importance the Biden administration is according to the region. He will begin the tour on March 13 with a visit to the US Indo-Pacific command headquarters in Hawaii.
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The Indian Weekender, 12 March 2021

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