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Saturday, August 6, 2011

Residents demand:ECR-OMR connectivity

Commuters have harrowing time to cross the narrow causeway between Saraswathi Nagar in Neelankarai and Thuraipakkam on OMR — DC:

The lack of connectivity between the two critical eastern gateways of the city, East Coast Road (ECR) and Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR), that run parallel, causes great hardship to thousands of residents living on either side.
At present, cars, school vans and buses from ECR take a circuitous route either through Tiruvanmiyur or Sholinganallur to join OMR.
“Though OMR is less than a km away, we need to drive over 15 km to reach Thuraipakkam from Neelankarai,” said van operator Ranganathan.
By travelling in a roundabout manner, school students and office-goers lose precious time and sometimes even fail to make it to the destination on time, remarked Ms Jaya, a software professional and mother of two residing in Tiruvanmiyur.
At least six narrow causeways across the Buckingham canal are the only relief for two-wheeler riders. Car drivers are scared to take the route due to the bottlenecks and scratching their vehicle while crossing the narrow causeways.
The local bodies have failed to remove the encroachments on the connecting roads.
Neither the highways department nor the toll-collecting IT corridor authorities bother to enhance the link between the two important roads.
PWD sources said they have commenced replacing the six causeways with bridges at a cost of Rs 60 lakh each.
However, there is no tangible progress on-field. The proposed bridges would not help the commuters in a big way since the width of these bridges cannot accommodate heavy vehicles.
None of the senior officials understands the need for better connectivity of these two major roads.
With exploding growth on the IT corridor, people from ECR are increasingly using the corridor.
“Crossing the causeways is tough due to the stench from the canal and garbage heaps on the approach roads. I don’t know why the authorities keep neglecting these stretches,” complained daily wage earner Ganesan of Saraswathi nagar, in Neelangarai.
Between Tiruvanmiyur and Sholinganallur, the authorities should widen at least two bridges and the approach roads.
“Our problem will be solved only if senior authorities of greater Chennai corporation or highways step in,” said Mr Manikandan, an office-goer of Injambakkam.

Taximen to create awareness about AIDS by goa tourist guides:

In a bid to make tourists visiting Goa aware about the dangers of AIDS, the state government has started training tourist guides as well as taxi drivers, who can establish a direct communication with them.
State-promoted Goa State AIDS Control Society (GSACS) has been holding series of lectures for the tourist guides on AIDS across the state. Director of Tourism in Goa Swapnil Naik said the guides are an important component of the tourism trade as they are directly linked to the tourists.
"This is also a part of safe and honourable tourism code adopted by Union Tourism Ministry across the country," Naik said, adding that making Goa a pleasurable and safe experience is the duty of the government. Naik said the other stakeholders like tourist taxi drivers are also being made aware about AIDS by GSACS through workshops. Goa, which is fighting back its image as a sex-tourism spot reported first case of AIDS in the year 1987. From that time till June 2011, the state reported 13,806 cases of AIDS.
As per the GSACS statistics, AIDS is more prevalent in the coastal talukas of the state, which are considered as tourist hotspots. They attribute for almost 60 per cent of the total AIDS cases.
The taluka of Salcette has highest 17.1 per cent cases followed by Mormugao with 16.5 per cent. Bardez has 15.5 per cent and Tiswadi has 11.5 per cent of AIDS patients.

Mushroom mine in Western Ghats is a goldmine:

The Western Ghats is a goldmine of macro fungi or what in common parlance are called mushrooms which store in them an economical potential that is yet to be tapped.
Their recent documentation, the first of its kind, has shown that there are 550-odd species in the Ghats of which nearly 100 are edible, nutritious and have medicinal value. These are revealed in the findings documented recently by Mr C Mohanan, a scientist with the Kerala Forest Research Institute till retirement last month.
“It has been three-and-a-half-decade-long research across Western Ghats hunting for fungi without which there would not have been any life around,” says Mr Mohanan.
Some of these are very highly priced and can be cultured outside the forests. He points to the case of the specie ganoderma and its umpteen varieties that are considered good for treating cancer. “Processing is so simple that the fungus just needs to be dried,” he adds.
There are some varieties that stick to the roots of plants and trees and transport nutrients like phosphorous and minerals to plants. Several of these mutualistic fungi are highly nutritious and edible and priced very high in the global market.
There are around 18 varieties of fungi found in termite nests that are all edible. Among the fungi found in abundance are aphrodisiacs too like cordyceps which grow from insect larvae. Even the globally acclaimed golden chantheralla has been sighted in several forests in the Ghats, says Mr Mohanan.
Fungi like amanita masceria, found extensively across the Ghats, are hallucinating ones and highly priced abroad. In several countries, the toxin from these are extracted and used for drugs. Only around five of the edible fungi are commercially exploited in the country.
A controlled collection, avoiding indiscriminate exploitation of this forest wealth and culturing them can mean not just huge revenue but also supply of healthy diet.

Doctors misled ICMR by downplaying effects:Endosulfan

If the Indian Council of Medical Research was ambivalent about the ill effects of endosulfan in Kasargod, there was ample reason for it.
The health experts its scientists interacted with during the field visit on May 25 this year spoke in different voices.
Dr Ravindran, a physician in the area, said there were no differences in the profile of affected and unaffected areas. He told the team that liver conditions, cancer of the head and neck were common conditions in the region.
Dr Janardhanan Naik, senior medical officer at Kasargod General Hospital, said most of the cases had multifactoral etiology such as thyroid deficiencies which were present in other areas too.
The Kasargod General Hospital’s ENT Surgeon, Dr K.K. Thomas, said he had observed high levels of oral cancer but added that most of the victims were also betel chewers.
Likewise, Dr Vasanthi who had been working in the area for the last five years observed that endosulfan-related associations were on the decline.
Similarly, Dr Manoj, a physiotherapist, said that many cases normally associated with endosulfan were actually caused by other factors.
And Dr Shafir, an officer on mobile medical unit, said that most of the cases were over 15 years old, hinting they were endemic even before the aerial spraying of endosulfan.

Brahminical ploy behind arrests:DMK president M. Karunanidhi

Alleging that a group of pro-rich ‘Brahminical’ people was now out to uproot the DMK for its pro-poor work, DMK president M. Karunanidhi has re-iterated that none could wipe out the Dravidian party.
“Is Tamil Nadu a state or a jungle?” roared the ex-chief minister that the government was foisting ‘false’ cases on the DMK workers.
He was addressing a public rally here on Saturday to condemn the recent arrests for alleged land-grabbing by DMK members.
Mr Karunanidhi alleged that the party’s Tiruvarur district secretary was arrested on a false complaint for the only reason that he accompanied DMK treasurer M.K. Stalin in his van.
MK says Media blowing up issues:
Taking a strong exception to the detention of functionary Poondi Kalaivanan under the Goondas Act, DMK chief Mr Karunanidhi said Kalaivanan was not a goonda.
This government should use law as a last resort. The truth was that he was detained under the Goondas Act only to intimidate other DMK workers, Mr Karunanidhi said at a rally organized here to condemn the arrests for alleged land-grabbing by DMK members.
Former minister Veerapandi Arumugam and south Chennai district secretary J. Anbazhagan were also arrested on false complaints, he added.
With the AIADMK government thus wreaking vengeance on his party, people (read DMK cadre) were now “going to bed with the fear as to whose face they would see on waking up in the morning”, the DMK chief said.
He recalled that his government had arrested the AIADMK leader Ms Jayalalithaa only due to a court directive. “There was no other go”.
Mr Karunanidhi also took a dig at the media for “blowing out of proportion anything connected with the DMK”.
Also, the media was keeping mum at the faults of Ms Jayalalithaa “only because she was born in an upper caste”.
No newspaper was willing to report that her disproportionate wealth case being heard in a Bangalore court got adjourned 130 times, he said.
Earlier, the DMK leader paid homage at the tomb of his mother Anjugam Ammaiyar in Kattur village near Tiruvarur.
 





Dravid says no more ODIs after England series,Recalled to team after two years

As Rahul Dravid enjoyed his lavish English breakfast spread at Northampton on Saturday morning, the only thought on his mind was how to negate the swinging red ball that has caused much distress to Team India on the England tour. At around the same time, the national selectors back in Chennai decided to give Dravid more food for thought by adding the white leather of the shorter formats to his practice schedule.
But by the time it was supper in England, Dravid had announced his retirement from limited-overs cricket. The one-off T20 game and the five one-day internationals against England that succeeds the ongoing Test series will officially be his last in the respective formats.
“I am announcing my retirement from ODIs and T20s following the series against England. Thereafter, I will focus only on Test cricket,” said Dravid, following the end of the two-day tour game against Northamptomshire that he didn’t play. “In the short term it (his selection) is excitement for sure... (but) I was honestly surprised,” Dravid added.

30 U.S. troops killed by Afghan insurgents shoot down helicopter,

Insurgents shot down a U.S. military helicopter during fighting in eastern Afghanistan, killing 30 Americans, most of them belonging to the same elite unit as the Navy SEALs who killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, as well as seven Afghan commandos, U.S. officials said on Saturday. It was the deadliest single loss for American forces in the decade-old war against the Taliban.
The downing was a stinging blow to the lauded, tight-knit SEAL Team 6, months after its crowning achievement. It was also a heavy setback for the U.S.-led coalition as it begins to draw down thousands of combat troops fighting what has become an increasingly costly and unpopular war.
None of the 22 SEAL personnel killed in the crash were part of the team that killed bin Laden in a May raid in Pakistan, but they belonged to the same unit. Their deployment in the raid in which the helicopter crashed would suggest that the target was a high-ranking insurgent figure.
Special operations forces, including the SEALs and others, have been at the forefront in the stepped up strategy of taking out key insurgent leaders in targeted raids, and they will be relied on even more as regular troops pull out.
The strike is also likely to boost the morale of the Taliban in a key province that controls a strategic approach to the capital Kabul. The Taliban claimed they downed the helicopter with a rocket while it was taking part in a raid on a house where insurgents were gathered in the province of Wardak overnight. Wreckage of the craft was strewn across the crash site, a Taliban spokesman said.
A senior U.S. administration official in Washington said it appeared the craft had been shot down. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the crash is still being investigated.
The U.S.—led coalition said in a statement that 30 American service members, a civilian interpreter and seven Afghan commandos were killed when their CH-47 Chinook crashed in the early hours on Saturday. A current U.S. official and a former U.S. official said the Americans included 22 SEALs, three Air Force air controllers and a dog handler. The two spoke on condition of anonymity because military officials were still notifying the families of the dead.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced the number of people killed in the crash and offered his condolences to the American and Afghan troops.
The deaths bring to 365 the number of coalition troops killed this year in Afghanistan and 42 this month.
The overnight raid took place in the Tangi Joy Zarin area of Wardak’s Sayd Abad district, about 60 miles (97 kilometres) southwest of Kabul. Forested peaks in the region give the insurgency good cover and the Taliban have continued to use it as a base despite repeated NATO assaults.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement that the helicopter was involved in an assault on a house where insurgent fighters were gathering. During the battle, the fighters shot down the helicopter with a rocket, he said.