Her local radio station gave her the job after she rang and offered advice to a woman caller who had been dumped. Elainas tip go bowling with pals and drink a mug of milk was so good she got a weekly slot and now advises thousands of adult listeners. The littler adviser tackles problems ranging from how to dump boyfriends and how to cope with relationship breakdown to dealing with smelly brothers. When one listener wrote to Elaina asking how to get a man, she replied: Shake your booty on the dance floor and listen to High School Musical. Another caller asked how to get her man back, Elaina told her: Hes not worth the heartache. Lifes too short to be upset with a boy. |
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Nuclear project in konkan
The mining and industrialization in our area is really causing disaster. The politicians and industrialists are using the region only for their own benefits. Not a single native is employed by these organizations in their industries which are reaping the region of its resources and destroying the ecosystems.
In our village Kelshi, the mining for bauxite has destroyed the ecosystem. Some of my relatives in Raigad district have lost fertility of their rice fields due to chemicals released in Savitri River by Reliance Petrochemical project at Nagothane – which had ruined thousands of hectors of cultivable land.
I encourage all Konkani brothers to read this article on line and post their comments.
http://www.outlookindia.com/
ECOLOGY: KONKAN
The Rape Of Eden
Konkan’s entry on India’s infrastructure map foretells doom
Endangered Landscape
District-wise breakdown of the major projects
Thane
- Ancillary development of Navi Mumbai airport, green areas released for housing and commercial exploitation
Raigad
- Navi Mumbai airport MahaMumbai SEZ. Area: Thrice that of Mumbai Five thermal power plants 10 km from one another Chemical industries hub
Ratnagiri
- Madban: Location of the Jaitapur nuclear power plant (6 reactors)
- Gholap: Port to come up
- Across the region: 9 coal-fired plants and mining on 950 ha
Sindhudurg
- Dongerpal: Iron ore mine on anvil
- Asniye, Galel, Kalne villages: Mining permits
- Devgad, Dhakore-Vengurla: NTPC’s 2 thermal power projects
***
Konkan, the idyllic stretch nestled between the Arabian Sea on its west and the Sahyadris on its east, is often touted as Maharashtra’s answer to Goa. In fact, the Konkanis believe the sands and water, rice and fish, mangoes and cashews, peace and tranquility here are a notch above Goa’s as Konkan is not on the international tourist map yet. The 720-km stretch from the northeastern corner of Mumbai down to Goa is, however, finding itself on India’s infrastructure map: with a vengeance.
From Panvel in Raigad district, across Madban in Ratnagiri, to Sawantwadi in Sindhudurg, a slew of big-ticket projects are planned. They threaten not only Konkan’s idyllic setting but also its economy and culture. Leading the charge is the 9,900-MW Jaitapur nuclear power project, the largest of its kind in the world, the deal for which was inked earlier this week between the Nuclear Power Corporation of India and French giant Areva. Also on the board are 15 coal-based power projects equalling nearly 25,000 MW, 40-odd medium- and small-size ports, nearly 40 medium and mega SEZs, major mining projects and chemical hubs. “This is the death-knell for Konkan; our lives will be nightmarish,” declared social activist Vaishali Patil, before she was arrested this week.
Madban, the village chosen for the Jaitapur nuclear power plant, mirrors the deep resentment and unrest in the entire Konkan stretch. Some parts have seen agitations for over three years, but events in Madban signify the worst side of India’s infrastructure crusade. Land was acquired in Madban, Niveli and Mithgavane without informing villagers of the nature of the project; protesters saw the ruthlessness of state power. Prohibitory orders were enforced strictly, women walking to their fields were picked up and thrown behind bars, farm equipment was confiscated or thoroughly searched before labourers were allowed to proceed to their farms, key activists in the area were detained so many times that most went underground as the Jaitapur deal was signed. Even so, nearly 800 locals were detained as a few broke window-panes of police vans and gathered to listen to Justice (retd) B.G. Kolse-Patil, who too was arrested and kept in Lanja jail with convicts and undertrials.
“Whenever news is being telecast about the Jaitapur plant, power goes off in the entire area. Whenever an agitation is planned, the mobile network gets jammed. Isn’t it surprising?” asks Vilas Keru Katkar, 39, a Niveli resident. Another resident, Ranjana Manjrekar, laments that “it’s our own police that lathicharges us, while the handful of traitors who’ve given their vehicles to the power plant get police protection”. A third resident, Anant Narayan Katkar, 67, who has been arrested three times so far, remarks: “The government thinks we agitate because our land is being taken. But they don’t realise that, for us, nature is not separate. We are part of the nature which the Jaitapur project will destroy.”
Stretched Idyll Beach houses in Ratnagiri
Economists like Dr Sulabha Brahme in Pune question the need for Konkan to produce close to 33,000-MW power when the region itself requires less than 200 MW. Local physician Dr Vivek Bhide says the economic and cultural change cannot even be mapped fully. “These projects will hit the nearly seven lakh people in Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg who depend on horticulture, mainly mangoes, cashew and coconuts. These two districts were declared a horticulture zone by the state in 1997; farmers were subsidised to invest in mango crops. All that will now come to naught.”
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Equally, a large stretch of the Western Ghats, billed by the international environmental community as one of the top 10 biodiversity spots in the world, is at stake. The Western Ghats or the Sahyadris are home to over 5,000 species of flowering plants, 139 mammal, 508 bird and 179 amphibian species, including 325 globally threatened ones. The ministry of environment and forests is aware of this. Even on the day minister Jairam Ramesh sat next to Maharashtra chief minister Prithivraj Chavan to announce that the Jaitapur project had been given environmental clearance, Jairam expressed his “serious concerns” about the large number of coal-based and mining projects planned in the fragile Konkan stretch.
Jairam is in good company. Dr Madhav Gadgil, well-known ecologist, author and currently a member of the National Advisory Council chaired by Sonia Gandhi, has drawn attention to the reckless sanctioning of mega projects across the Konkan. As chairperson of the MoEF’s ecology expert panel on the Western Ghats, he visited Konkan two months back. Retired schoolteacher Suresh Gavas told him that the area was famous for its cashewnuts, but the environment impact assessment (EIA) report said it was barren. Vaishali Patil, on behalf of the Konkan Vinashkari Prakalp Virodhi Samiti, informed him that two of the four gram panchayats affected by the project got the 1,200-page EIA report in Marathi just eight days before the public hearing.
Joining Gadgil is E.A.S. Sarma, former Union power secretary and currently principal advisor in the Planning Commission. “The Jaitapur project is not the only one, there are many more, and the collective impact on the region has not been studied. The local areas won’t be able to sustain the impact of such large-scale environmental changes,” he said in Pune last month. A Bombay Natural History Society report too says the same.
Konkanis find Jairam’s attitude on this “casual” compared to his stand on Niyamgiri. “If he’s clued in, why is he giving clearances to an N-plant that’s 10 times Chernobyl in a Grade IV seismic zone?” asks lawyer Girish Raut. “The government’s own agencies say a faultline exists and nearly 20 earthquakes have been recorded in the last two years ranging from 2.3 to 5-plus Richter.”
Also incensed and threatened now is Uddhav Thackeray. Konkan has been the bastion of the Shiv Sena. But with activists taking up cudgels against several projects, a chastened Thackeray sent his delegation to Konkan this week. However, one villager in Nate told Uddhav’s representative: “We don’t want another Enron, we want (to be liberated) like Singur.” It shows the resolve across the region. People remind “visitors” that Konkan is more picturesque but also far more volatile than Singur.
By Smruti Koppikar in Raigad and Ratnagiri, Maharashtra with Snigdha Hasan
The Kingdom of Desalination (Must read for the residents of Saudi Arabia)
One of my friends from India went to Ghana on private business nearly two years back. He had to visit remote places in the country with his local partner. The first training he got from his partner was “How to take a bath with one bottle (2 liters) of water”. Sitting in our apartments/villas with non-stop flow of water, we seldom realize the disaster of water crisis the world is facing today.
The residents of Saudi Arabia (Saudis/Non Saudis) must realize is that it is our moral duty to educate our family and friends about the responsible use of water. Remember: “Civilization can survive without oil - not without water”.
The shocking revelations from the following article that follows are:
Ø Saudi Arabia is among the world’s 15 most water-poor countries.
Ø Saudi Arabia has the third highest daily per capita water consumption in the world—about 280 liters—after the United States and Canada.
Ø The underground water supply in Saudi Arabia is nearing depletion.
Ø Saudi Arabia’s water desalination plants eat up about 65 percent of all the oil that Saudi Arabia uses domestically. More desalination facilities means even more petroleum will be used at home, leaving less for export—which means less revenue in the years ahead.
Ø Customers are charged about 1 percent of the actual cost of the water they use, while the government pays the rest, which leaves it with an annual water tab of $4 billion.
Ø The real wild card for political and social unrest in the Middle East over the next 20 years is not war, terrorism, or revolution, “It is water.”
Ø On the whole, relatively little is being done in Saudi Arabia on shaping attitudes and public opinion about the need to use water responsibly.
Ø The Kingdom uses 20 billion cubic meters of nonrenewable groundwater every year for agriculture—the equivalent of almost three months worth of water crashing over Niagara Falls!!! Until 2008, about 88 percent of the water used in the kingdom was for agriculture, even though that sector contributes less than 3 percent to the country’s GDP.
http://www.majalla.com/en/
The Kingdom of Desalination
Saudi Arabia addresses its future water needs
A young man swims in the pool of a hotel, overlooking the arid desert landscape
By Caryle Murphy
Published: Wednesday 05 January 2011 Updated: Wednesday 05 January 2011
Saudi Arabia’s original model of addressing its water poverty is no longer sustainable. Once producing up to 70 percent of the country’s water needs, a growing demand for water is exhausting this solution at a rate that demands a change in the government’s policy and in its citizens’ demands for water.
Saudi Arabia may be rich in oil, but it is poor in one of life’s basic commodities: water.
For decades, the kingdom solved that problem with government-run desalination plants. These supplied 60 to 70 percent of the kingdom’s needs, with the rest met by ancient underground aquifers. In the process, Saudi Arabia became the world’s desalination king, producing more than any other country. But that model is no longer sufficient. A rapidly expanding population, growing urbanization and plans for an increasingly diversified industrial base mean an ever greater demand for water—just as the country’s underground water supply is nearing depletion. Clearly, meeting future water needs is one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest challenges. And to cope with it, the government has launched a major overhaul of its national water system, opening up to private sector participation and restructuring state-run entities.
It also committed around $60 billion to expanding the water supply and distribution network, according to a recent report by National Commercial Bank (NCB), one of the kingdom’s largest banks. Those projects include $14 billion for building 16 more desalination facilities over the next 17 years—about one a year. These new plants will augment the 30 existing ones, some of which will be decommissioned because of age. The goal is to increase desalination water production, currently around 5.7 million cubic meters a day, to at least 10 million cubic meters and, if necessary, to 13 million cubic meters a day by 2020. That is the year when, by some estimates, the kingdom’s 22 million citizens will have increased to 33 million.
“We need to get a lot done fast,” said Paddy Padmanathan, President and CEO of ACWA Power International, a Saudi firm that has become one of the biggest providers of private sector-generated water in the kingdom.
The Saudis are not alone in their water conundrum. A report released 13 December by the Middle East program of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that water is a matter of rising concern across the Middle East, home to 10 of the world’s 15 most water-poor countries. Entitled “Clear Gold,” the report warns that the region “is moving rapidly towards total depletion of its groundwater resources” and predicts that resulting shortages may have political ramifications as water-deprived citizens lose patience with governments.
“The real wild card for political and social unrest in the Middle East over the next 20 years is not war, terrorism, or revolution,” the report said. “It is water.”
Saudi Arabia’s first major move to deal with its water crisis came in 2002, when the Supreme Economic Council, recognizing that the private sector had a role to play in expanding the national water supply, issued new regulations for its participation in the water (and power) arenas. New desalination plants—at Shuaibah, Shuqaiq, Ras Al-Zour and Jubail—were the first to be built under this new regime. The government also restructured its water departments, creating the National Water Company to work in joint ventures with both Saudi and international corporations. In part, the NWC was set up to bypass traditionally slow-moving state bureaucracies and create a more investor-friendly environment.
Another big step came in 2008 when the government announced that it would phase out wheat farming by 2016. This addressed the fact that about 88 percent of the water used in the kingdom was for agriculture, even though that sector contributes less than 3 percent to the country’s GDP. It would make more sense, experts argued, to import wheat.
Nevertheless, “Clear Gold” found that more remains to be done in this area. Groundwater supplies continue to be used “for large-scale agricultural projects—such as the world’s largest dairy farm, where 2,300 gallons of water or more are needed to produce a gallon of milk,” the report stated. “Overall, the kingdom now uses as much as 20 billion cubic meters of nonrenewable groundwater every year for agriculture—the equivalent of almost three months worth of water crashing over Niagara Falls.”
In another key move, the Saudi government recognized the need to change consumer attitudes. The kingdom has the third highest daily per capita water consumption in the world—about 280 liters—after the United States and Canada. Water has traditionally been supplied free, or practically so, to residential and commercial customers, accounting for these high levels of consumption. Customers are charged about 1 percent of the actual cost of the water they use, while the government pays the rest, which leaves it with an annual water tab of $4 billion, according to one estimate. Government officials, preaching the old saying that you don’t appreciate what comes for free, argue that this is about to change. The message is that water tariffs are coming for all consumers. Their phase-in will be gradual, they add, but sooner or later, the government will no longer be picking up the tab.
“In order to cut down water consumption in the Kingdom...it’s about time to restructure the water tariff,” Loay Ahmed Al-Musallam, CEO of the National Water Company, told a public forum on water in October. “And I think this is coming very, very soon.” The Minister for Water and Electricity, Abdullah Al-Hussayen, suggested at the same forum that the government would not be moved on this issue. He pointed out that Saudis who happily pay an average of $53 dollars a month for a cell phone ought not to mind paying a monthly water bill.
Conservation is also a new mantra for the government. In addition to public media campaigns, it is installing faucets and flushes that release limited amounts of water in mosques and government offices. Much more needs to be done, however, to reduce consumption, according to NCB chief economist Jarmo Kotilaine. “In general...the emphasis of the government has been on supply security above all, in order to meet demand,” he said. “Where there’s been much less progress is in demand management… On the whole, relatively little is being done on shaping attitudes and public opinion” about the need to use water responsibly. Finally, the government’s new approach to water also includes more facilities for treating wastewater so that it can be put to industrial and commercial uses.
There is, as always, a downside for the government’s water policies, especially the expanded construction of desalination facilities. These plants need a lot of power: Currently, they eat up about 65 percent of all the oil that Saudi Arabia uses domestically. More desalination facilities means even more petroleum will be used at home, leaving less for export—which means less revenue in the years ahead. As a result, the government has decided to move at a faster rate into solar and nuclear-generated power in order to save as much petroleum as possible for export. Last January, it announced a pilot program testing solar power in desalination plants.
Some improvements from the government’s revised water policies are already evident. Residents of Jeddah, the country’s second largest city, have seen a measurable reduction in long-standing water shortages in recent months after a new desalination project at Shuaibah—built by Acwapower International—began operating earlier this year. Padmanathan said he was optimistic that the kingdom will rise to meet its water challenge. “I’m more confident than I was five years ago,” he said. “All the right policies are being implemented now.”
Caryle Murphy – An independent journalist based in Riyadh and Pulitzer Prize Winner in Journalism in 1991. She is the author of “Passion for Islam.”
Saudi cancer cases 4 times world rate: Contaminated imported goods to blame
· Do not use too much of chemicals in form of soap, shampoo, creams, perfumes, food stuff etc.
· Minimize use of canned food/processed foods: Ketchup, tomato paste, migraine etc.
· Use only branded toffees, chocolates, ice-cream etc.
· Use genuine health products from reputed companies only (shampoos, creams, perfumes etc.)
Saudi cancer cases 4 times world rate: Contaminated imported goods to blame
By GALAL FAKKAR | ARAB NEWS
Published: Jan 12, 2011 00:40 Updated: Jan 12, 2011 00:40
JEDDAH: The rate of cancer cases in Saudi Arabia is four times as much as international levels due to contaminated imported goods, according to the chairman of the Saudi Consumer Protection Society (SCPS) on Tuesday.
“Cancer cases are on the rise and 35 percent of the population have liver diseases because companies and individuals importing foodstuffs do not reveal the possible harm their products may cause,” Dr. Nasser Al-Tuwaim said. He warned that some products imported from China could contain cancerous materials.
“The Chinese commercial attaché told me that the Saudi traders ask only for cheap prices and are not concerned about the quality or safety of the goods they import from China,” he said. Al-Tuwaim said the society would launch a campaign against commercial fraud, including a boycott of goods that are fake or sold at exaggerated profits. “During the campaign, fraudulent companies and individual traders will be named and shamed,” he added.
Al-Tuwaim also said the society would launch a special website for this purpose and will open the door for volunteers to work for it under its motto: “We are all eyes and watchmen.” He said through the website, the society would issue monthly statements about the results of its investigations and asked consumers to contact the society via its toll free hotline.
“The society has started taking steps to uncover traders who fix prices and tamper with products by publishing information on our website,” he said.
Al-Tuwaim accused some Saudi merchants of causing deaths and serious diseases by importing shoddy car parts or goods that do not fulfill health regulations. “We have information that such cheating has extended to include imports of Australian sheep and car spare parts, which are replaced by some dealers who fit counterfeit parts and sell the original ones,” he said. Al-Tuwaim said the society has established a data and studies center to document its findings and said they have teams cooperating with them to supply them with details of clandestine commercial transactions and prices.
According to him, more than 3,000 people have died and more than 10,000 others injured after being sold fake tires and other counterfeit car parts. He said the society would conduct inspection visits and convey their findings to the government in order to apply sanctions against traders who cheat consumers.
Al-Tuwaim said the center has started to collate the prices of Australian sheep and found out that they were sold in Saudi Arabia at very high prices. “The price per head of Australian sheep is between $40 to $50 in Malaysia and Indonesia and about $70 in some neighboring Arab Gulf countries, while it is $200 in the Kingdom,” he said.