Statement by Foreign Secretary on 26 February 2019 on the Strike on JeM training camp at BalakotOn 14 February 2019, a suicide terror attack was conducted by a Pak based terrorist organization Jaish-e-Mohammad, leading to the martyrdom of 40 brave jawans of the CRPF. JeM has been active in Pakistan for the last two decades, and is led by MASOOD AZHAR with its headquarters in Bahawalpur.
This organization, which is proscribed by the UN, has been responsible of a series of terrorist attacks including on the Indian Parliament in December 2001 and the Pathankot airbase in January 2016.
Information regarding the location of training camps in Pakistan and PoK has been provided to Pakistan from time to time. Pakistan, however, denies their existence. The existence of such massive training facilities capable of training hundreds of jihadis could not have functioned without the knowledge of Pakistan authorities.
India has been repeatedly urging Pakistan to take action against the JeM to prevent jihadis from being trained and armed inside Pakistan. Pakistan has taken no concrete actions to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism on its soil.
Credible intelligence was received that JeM was attempting another suicide terror attack in various parts of the country, and the fidayeen jihadis were being trained for this purpose. In the face of imminent danger, a preemptive strike became absolutely necessary.
In an intelligence led operation in the early hours of today, India struck the biggest training camp of JeM in Balakot. In this operation, a very large number of JeM terrorists, trainers, senior commanders and groups of jihadis who were being trained for fidayeen action were eliminated. This facility at Balakot was headed by MAULANA YOUSUF AZHAR (alias USTAD GHOURI), the brother-in-law of MASOOD AZHAR, Chief of JeM.
The Government of India is firmly and resolutely committed to taking all necessary measures to fight the menace of terrorism. Hence this non-military preemptive action was specifically targeted at the JeM camp. The selection of the target was also conditioned by our desire to avoid civilian casualties. The facility is located in thick forest on a hilltop far away from any civilian presence. As the strike has taken place only a short while ago, we are awaiting further details.
The Government of Pakistan had made a solemn commitment in January 2004 not to allow its soil or territory under its control to be used for terrorism against India. We expect that Pakistan lives up to its public commitment and takes follow up actions to dismantle all JeM and other camps and hold the terrorists accountable for the actions.

NEW DELHI : The ‘Make in India’ effort of Indian Railways has culminated into India’s first Semi High Speed Train, “Vande Bharat Express”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged off the maiden run of the train on New Delhi-Kanpur-Allahabad-Varanasi route train today morning from the New Delhi Railway Station. 

Union Minister of Railways and Coal, Shri Piyush Goyal lead the team of officials and media persons aboard the train on its inaugural run. It will stop at Kanpur and Allahabad where it will be received by dignitaries and the people.

Vande Bharat Express can run up to a maximum speed of 160 kmph and has travel classes like Shatabdi Train but with better facilities. It aims to provide a totally new travel experience to passengers.

The Train will cover the distance between New Delhi and Varanasi in 8 hours and will run on all days except Mondays and Thursdays.

All coaches are equipped with automatic doors, GPS based audio-visual passenger information system, on-board hotspot Wi-Fi for entertainment purposes, and very comfortable seating. All toilets are bio-vacuum type. The lighting is dual mode, viz. diffused for general illumination and personal for every seat. Every coach has a pantry with facility to serve hot meals, hot and cold beverages. The insulation is meant to keep heat and noise to very low levels for additional passenger comfort.

Vande Bharat Express has 16 air-conditioned coaches of which 2 are executive class coaches. The total seating capacity is 1,128 passengers. It is much more than the conventional Shatabdi rake of equal number of coaches, thanks to shifting of all electric equipment below the coaches and seats in the driving coach also.

Adding up the green footprints, the train has regenerative braking system in the Vande Bharat Express coaches which can save up to 30% of electrical energy.

Speed, Safety and Service are the hallmarks of this train.Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai, a Railways Production unit, has been the force behind a completely in-house design and manufacture, computer modelling and working with a large number of suppliers for system integration in just 18 months.

In keeping with the vision of Prime Minister’s vision of “Make in India”, the major systems of the train have been designed and built in India.  Impact of this train, matching global standards of performance, safety and passenger comfort and yet costing less than half of global prices, has the potential to be a game changer in the global rail business.

NEW DELHI : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday assured the nation that the “sacrifices” of the jawans at a deadly terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama “will not go in vain”. 

Strongly condemning the attack on a CRPF convoy in which nearly 40 of its personnel lost their lives, Mr Modi tweeted, “The entire nation stands shoulder to shoulder with the families of the brave martyrs. May the injured recover quickly”.

In terms of magnitude and the scale, today’s attack at Pulwama is far more deadlier than the one in Uri in the Valley about two years ago when 19 soldiers were killed in a terror attack at Army base. The Army had at that time retaliated with precise surgical strikes on terror launchpads across the Line of Control. 

In a suicide attack on Thursday afternoon, terrorists drove a SUV laded with nearly 350 kg of explosives into a CRPF convoy which was heading to Jammu from Srinagar. The vehicle hit one of the buses which was carrying about 40 personnel. Reports said that 40 other jawans battling for their lives of which 13 are said to be in a critical condition.

NEW DELHI :  While on a visit to the Press Club of India (PCI) here, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday applied for the membership of the Club. 

During an informal interaction with the office bearers of the Press Club of India, she recalled that she was editor of “Jago Bangla” , a Bangla publication of her party. She said that she was a life member of Kolkata Press Club as well and expressed a desire to be a member of the PCI as well. 

The PCI Secretary-General Mohua Chatterjee provided her with a membership form which she signed and returned and assured of completing all other formalities during her next visit to the Capital. 

The West Bengal Chief Minister said she would also like to release English translation of her book “My Journey” at the Club during her next visit to the PCI, probably on February 26 or 27. 

She also addressed an impromptu press conference, taking questions on a wide range of issues from journalists. She came to the PCI after paying a courtesy call on the President Ram Nath Kovind. “For the first time I also visited the Mughal Garden in Rashtrapati Bhawan which is indeed very beautiful with a wide range of flowers in full bloom. Personally, I like the tulips there very much,” she added. 

The India Health Fund (IHF),seeded by the Tata Trusts, with strategic support from The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria has launched the TB Quest – a quest for innovations towards eliminating tuberculosis. 

This is being co-partnered by the Ministries of Health and Family Welfare, Science and Technology, and Centre for Cellular And Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP), an initiative of the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, The Global Fund, Social Alpha, Stop TB Partnership, and the Tata Trusts, a statement issued by Tata Trust has said.

The TB Quest is aimed to support the adoption and scale-up of innovative products and processes through comprehensive support to innovators including funding, technical mentorship, handholding for lab to market journey, and dialoguing with policy and programme experts for roll-out.

The Government has set a target of eliminating TB by 2025, a vision that demands innovative ideas, bold approaches, and unprecedented investments by stakeholders across the board.  To realise this goal, IHF is committed to bringing together various partners and stakeholders, pooling expertise and resources, fostering innovations and translating these from “lab to last mile”. TB Quest is a result of this vision.

The call for innovations in products, technologies and processes are for bringing the ‘missing’ TB patients within the purview of care, including notification, through innovations to find new cases and ensure care continuum; screening and appropriate management for Latent TB Infection (LTBI) among all identified high risk population groups in India; infection control in settings such as health care facilities, crowded habitations, congregate settings, including workplaces where transmission is high and addressing gaps in the supply chain of anti-TB drugs and consumables in public and private sectors  

Selected applications will receive wide support, including milestone-based funding support for validation, beta prototyping, feasibility studies and product/ process evaluation, as applicable. The awardees will benefit from collective engagement with global stakeholders and access to the global ecosystem working towards TB elimination. They will also have the opportunity of presenting their innovations to RNTCP aiming at integration with the National Strategic Plan for TB Elimination (2017-25)

Applications will be accepted till April 8, 2019. Further details about the TB Quest and the application process are available at www.indiahealthfund.org. 

New Delhi : China and India – two economic powerhouses of Asia – are contributing significantly to the greening of the planet, a new global study released on Monday has found.

The world now has about 5.5 million square kilometers of extra green leaf area round the year compared to 2000. A bulk of this increase is due to greening in China and India. China has contributed 25 percent to this increase while India added 6.8 percent of the total global net increase in leaf area between 2000 and 2017. 

The contribution to the greening by the two countries is much higher though they have less vegetated area than some of the developed countries. China has 6.6% and India only 2.7% of global vegetated area. The increase in total leaf area recorded in India is equal to that in the United States or Canada, each of which has three times more vegetated area. 

Greening refers to increase in total leaf area – forests, croplands, orchards, monoculture plantations, commercial plantations. 

The increase in green areas is mostly due to 35 percent increase in food production in both the countries with multiple cropping aided by facilitated by fertilizer use and availability of surface as well as groundwater irrigation. China has also taken up on a large scale rejuvenation of forest areas and afforestation on degraded lands. 

In China, the greening is from forests (42%) and croplands (32%), but in India it is mostly from croplands (82%) with minor contribution from forests (4.4%).

Earlier studies had identified carbon dioxide fertilization as the main reason for the greening of earth’s lands. But this study has found that greening is more due to land use changes. The study is based on satellite data from MODIS sensors of NASA. These sensors view the entire earth twice a day at 500 meter resolution.

“China and India account for one-third of the greening but contain only 9% of the global vegetated land area. This is a surprising finding considering the general notion that there is land degradation in populous countries due to over-exploitation,” Chi Chen of the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University, lead researcher, told India Science Wire. The study has been published in journal Nature Sustainability. 

However, experts feel that the increase in greening driven by croplands and plantations should not be seen as compensation for loss of forests in Brazil, Indonesia and other parts of the world. “Greening due to intensive agriculture does not enhance the land sink because crop carbon quickly returns back to the atmosphere,” explained Dr. Victor Brovkin of Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Germany, also a co-author of the study. 

“Since the contribution of forests in India’s greening is minor (4%) it has not been explored in detail in this study. However, it is important that we find overall greening trend in natural vegetation (forests) in India, unlike some recent studies reporting a browning trend,” commented Dr. Rajiv Kumar Chaturvedi (BITS Pilani, Goa campus), and a member of the research team, while speaking to India Science Wire.

When asked how the new study compares with the forest area statistics of the Forest Survey of India (FSI), Dr Chaturvedi said the two can’t be compared as both have different contexts and objectives. Â“I believe that FSI estimates are supposed to be more robust as their estimates are supposed to be based on thousands of ground observations, in addition to satellite data.  However, FSI estimates will gain more credibility if their ground data as well as satellite assessment is made publicly accessible and is subjected to rigorous peer review,” he added. 

The research team included Chi Chen, Taejin Park, Baodong Xu and Ranga B. Myneni (Boston University); Xuhui Wang, Shilong Piao, Zaichun Zhu (Peking University); Rajiv K. Chaturvedi  (BITS, Goa campus); Richard Fuchs (Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research, Germany); Victor Brovkin (Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Germany); Philippe Ciais (Université Paris Saclay, France); Rasmus Fensholt (University of Copenhagen); Hans Tømmervik (Norwegian Institute for Nature Research); Govindasamy Bala (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore); Ramakrishna R. Nemani (NASA Ames Research Center). (India Science Wire)

NEW DELHI :  From flying and static displays of its best-in-class products to showcasing its cutting-edge aerospace services, Airbus is planning one of its biggest-ever participation at Aero India to be held in Bengaluru from February 20 to 24. 

The centrepiece of the flying displays will be the A330neo – the latest addition to the leading Airbus wide-body family featuring advanced materials, new optimized wings, composite sharklets and highly efficient engines that together deliver 25% reduced fuel burn and CO2 emissions. Demonstration flights will be performed by the new generation tactical airlifter C295 which can perform multi-role operations under all weather conditions.

On static display will be Airbus’ most versatile twin-engine rotorcraft – the H135 & H145. The H135 is known for its endurance, compact build, low sound levels, reliability, versatility and cost-competitiveness. The H145 is a member of Airbus’ 4-tonne-class twin-engine rotorcraft product range – with designed-in mission capability and flexibility, especially in high and hot operating conditions. 

Visitors at the Airbus exhibit will be able to witness the company’s continued commitment to supporting the growth of India’s aviation, defence and space sectors, particularly in the areas of ‘Make in India’ and ‘Startup India’. Aerospace fans can also savour interactive virtual and augmented reality experiences at the Airbus stand, according to a company statement he.

“Aero India is the jewel in the crown of the world’s largest defence and third-largest commercial aviation market,” said Anand E Stanley, President and Managing Director of Airbus India & South Asia. “Airbus’ large-scale commitment to the show demonstrates that India is more than a market, it’s a core base for us,” he said. 

On display will be scale models of the C295 – medium transport aircraft; the A330 MRTT – Multi-Role Tanker Transport aircraft; the A400M – the most versatile airlifter currently available; the SES-12 – a geostationary communications satellite and a holographic display of the Hybrid SAR Earth observation radar satellite.

In helicopters, scale models of the H225M– the military version of Airbus’ H225 Super helicopter; the AS565 MBe – the all-weather, multi-role force multiplier; along with the H135 and H145 will be on display. Commercial aircraft scale models will include A330-900, the member of Airbus’ A330neo new generation widebody, the A321neo and ATR 72-600.

Airbus will also demonstrate a wide range of service offerings, including through its fully owned subsidiaries Satair and Navblue, with particular focus and demonstrations of Skywise-based digital services. Also, on display will be Airbus’ Advanced Inspection Drone which accelerates and facilitates visual checks, considerably reducing aircraft downtime and increasing the quality of inspection reports.

In India, it has sought to foster innovation and entrepreneurial spirit through Airbus BizLab, which will be present at Hall E 2.9. Visitors will get a first glance of the opportunities that the startup accelerator has created in the Indian innovation ecosystem. Airbus Bizlab will also partner with Invest India to organise the ‘Startup Day’ at Aero India.

Airbus will also leverage the event to acquire talent. On February 23 and 24, it will offer members of the public the opportunity to explore career prospects with Airbus India in Avionics Software, Aircraft System Simulation and Airframe Structures as well as in API Development, Full Stack Development, Big Data, Cloud and DevOps.

Airbus is a global leader in aeronautics, space and related services. In 2017 it generated revenues of € 59 billion restated for IFRS 15 and employed a workforce of around 129,000. Airbus offers the most comprehensive range of passenger airliners from 100 to more than 600 seats. Airbus is also a European leader providing tanker, combat, transport and mission aircraft, as well as one of the world’s leading space companies. In helicopters, Airbus provides the most efficient civil and military rotorcraft solutions worldwide.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is supporting a patent challenge filed in India this week by two tuberculosis survivors, to prevent pharmaceutical corporation Johnson & Johnson (J&J) from extending its monopoly on the tuberculosis drug bedaquiline.

Nandita Venkatesan from Mumbai, India and Phumeza Tisile from Khayelitsha, South Africa, who filed the patent challenge at the Mumbai Patent Office, both survived drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) but lost their hearing because of the toxicity of the treatment. They are now fighting to ensure that newer drugs like bedaquiline – which are safer and more effective – are made affordable and accessible to everybody with DR-TB, to replace painful and toxic drugs that need to be injected.

An estimated 558,000 people developed DR-TB in 2017, but only 25 per cent of them were treated. The standard DR-TB treatment used by most countries up to now has included drugs that need to be injected daily and are associated with several serious side effects. The cure rate is only 55 per cent.

“I lost my hearing when I was 24 because of the brutal side effect of an injected DR-TB drug,” said Nandita Venkatesan, who completed her treatment in 2015. “I was devastated by this loss, which took a heavy financial, emotional and mental toll on me. With this patent challenge, we want to prevent an extension of the patent monopoly that will continue to block people from accessing more affordable generic versions of bedaquiline.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently recommended bedaquiline as a core part of an all-oral treatment regimen for DR-TB, and relegated drugs that must be injected and cause serious side effects to last-resort options only. Scale-up of WHO’s recommendations by countries will dramatically increase the number of people who should receive this drug. By November 2018, only 28,700 people had received bedaquiline worldwide – nearly 70 per cent of whom have been treated in South Africa.

Despite the benefits of the drug, high prices remain a significant barrier. J&J recently announced a reduced price of US$400 for six months of bedaquiline treatment for South Africa and countries procuring the drug through the Global Drug Facility, but this falls short of making the drug affordable in all countries affected by the DR-TB epidemic, a statement issued by MSF said here.

“The evidence of improved cure rates and lives saved for people with drug-resistant TB using bedaquiline is crystal clear,” said Dr Anja Reuter, a DR-TB doctor with MSF in Khayelitsha, South Africa. “Bedaquiline is crucial to offering patients a fighting chance without the toxic side effects of drugs that need to be injected. This treatment revolution is already a reality in South Africa, but DR-TB programmes elsewhere need this drug at an affordable price. If this patent application is rejected, generic versions of this drug could be available sooner at reduced prices, saving hundreds of thousands of lives and reducing immense suffering around the world.”

The J&J patent application being challenged is for the salt form of bedaquiline, which does not merit patenting under India’s patent law. If granted, J&J’s monopoly on bedaquiline would be extended from 2023 to 2027, delaying entry of generics by four additional years. This strategy of ‘patent evergreening’ through filing of additional, often unmerited patents, is commonly used by corporations to extend monopolies on their drugs beyond the standard 20 years. Preventing this patent barrier is expected to encourage TB drug manufacturers from India to enter the market with generics and supply bedaquiline at lower prices to national TB programmes and TB care providers globally.

The development of bedaquiline and the evidence for its potential to improve cure rates with fewer side-effects was the result of a collective effort of the global TB community. MSF is urging J&J to refrain from attempts to extend its monopoly that will further delay the availability of quality-assured generic versions of bedaquiline in India, South Africa and other countries.

Vasant Panchmi, the fifth day of spring season that marks the end of winter, is a very auspicious day in our calendar. The word Vasant instantly evokes the image of vast fields covered with green grass and crops with birds chirping all around. The season is perhaps the best for animals as well and hence Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) this year decided to observe Jeev Jantu Kalyan Diwas on Vasant Panchmi day every year.

The idea behind this is to raise awareness level about animal sentience in the country and ensure best animal welfare standards are adopted.  At a time animal farming is happening at industrial scale there is always possibility of animal welfare getting compromised in piggeries, dairies and poultry farms. Besides, cases of cruelty against animals are reported in huge numbers.

The Hon’ble Supreme Court has recognized that animals have same basic rights as humans and endorsed the five freedoms for them. These include freedom from hunger, thirst and malnutrition; freedom from fear and distress; freedom from physical pain and discomfort; freedom from pain, injury and disease; and freedom to express normal patterns of behavior.

Being the statutory body under Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 the AWBI has been working with state governments and local bodies for guaranteeing the basic rights to animals but a lot distance needs to be covered for actual implementation of the Hon’ble Supreme Court’s directive.

Besides causing pain and suffering to animals, poor implementation of welfare measures has significant bearing on human health. A poorly managed dairy with inadequate facilities is bound to adversely affect the health of cows. This will certainly affect the quality of milk consumed by humans. It is, therefore, necessary that dairies in the urban and rural areas have proper provision for air, water and sunlight besides cleanliness. On many occasions these essential things are compromised to save on cost but in the long run it could have devastating consequences.

In recent years, the issue of homeless animals has emerged as a major problem. While in urban areas they eat food leftovers thrown in plastic bags and die painful death, in the rural areas they become victim of cruelty as farmers resort to extreme measures in order to protect their fields from stray animals. The UP government’s decision to build cow-shelters in every panchayat and districts is highly commendable and similar scheme in other states would go long way in securing basic rights for farm animals.

On its part, the Board has been conducting training programmes for capacity building.  The Board has trained over 300 animal lovers and activists from across the country and appointed them as honorary animal welfare officers since 30th July 2018 to work directly with law enforcement agencies for effective implementation of animal welfare laws and rules. Further, it has taken up the issue of activation and strengthening of State Animal Welfare Board and District SPCAs (Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) with state governments.

Apart from farm and companion animals, the Board has laid equal emphasis on wild animals and worked with concerned agencies for prevention of cruelty against them and protection. It is worth noting that we share the Mother Earth with all the animals who play a very important role in maintaining the ecological balance. 

As we celebrate Jeev Jantu Kalyan Diwas and become more concerned about animals India could certainly be the best place for animal welfare. With tolerance, compassion and kindness being the core of Indian culture, a small change could bring much bigger difference.

(Author is Secretary, Animal Welfare Board of India under Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC))

A research group from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, have developed a paper-based kit that can evaluate the pasteurization of milk based. The developed kit can discriminate the pasteurized and raw milk based on the determination of intrinsic indicator present in milk. The duo team, led by Prof. Pranjal Chandra, department of biosciences and bioengineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati with Ph.D. research scholar Kuldeep Mahato has published the recent innovation in biosensor and bioelectronics journal.

As per the authors “Milk being a widely consumed stable food, its safety has become a prime concern to consumers due to the inevitable microbial invasion making it a pool for the various type of food born infections. Therefore, milk is boiled in households and before consumption and in dairies a rapid heat & cold shock is given technically called pasteurization for killing the microbial forms.  The available confirmatory for this the tests are based on various high-end instruments which limits the test in many ways, thus, the requirement of low cost easy to handle kit based detection is of the need of the hour especially in the third world countries”. Prof. Chandra the lead author also added that “in context to the third world countries the availability of quality controls are rare or nonfunctioning at the point of collections. Thus, using our developed portable testing kit, the reportedly greater mass spoilage of milk at collection points due to the microbial invasion can be prevented from such quality deteriorations”.

To develop the kit researchers used ordinary filter paper and cut to small disc using the office punch machine. Thereafter, the paper discs were chemically impregnated with the sensing probe consisting the antibody of the ALP an indicator molecule for the pasteurization and target molecule in this case. When ALP comes into contact with the probe, it turns white paper disc into a colored one.

As per the authors “, the paper was functionalized with the 4-carboxybenzene diazonium solution followed by chemical treatment which eventually exposes the COOH flanking groups. On which the NH2 groups of the anti-ALP was coupled by means of covalent bioconjugation techniques on the paper surface. When a drop of milk is dispensed on the paper disc, the present ALP reacts with probes, gives the color change. The appearance of the greenish blue color at the paper sensor was then captured using smartphone camera and the image was processes using the digital image colorimetric technique. The technique tells the correlation of the  ALP content on the basis of color change. Using this generated data from standard conditions, one can estimate the amount of ALP in the milk and tell the state of freshness.

” The kit have been assessed using the milk of different sources collected from the nearby villages and the commercial outlets form the IIT-G campus following the spike-recovery method of analysis” said Prof. Chandra. In most cases, close to 94% of the ALP have been determined using the probe. The authors also confirmed the greenish blue color appearance is explicitly due to the ALP, not due to the interference of vitamins, other proteins, and minerals in the milk. The handy kit is merely of 2 square centimeter in size made up of the paper biosensor and the support of cellulose acetate film. The biosensor is covered from outside using the O-ring and the centrally holed cellulose acetate circular lid, which prevent the probe from the mechanical distortion. Since ALP is also tested in various body fluids, the kit can also be utilized in clinics. Fabrication in the laboratory at present costs around Rs. 80 to Rs 125 per kit and could come down when mass manufactured, researchers said.

 “As of now, our developed kit is capable of discriminating the raw from pasteurized milk based on the ALP determination, which is correlated with the present microbial forms or microbial contamination in milk. We are considering that in future we will address the determination of chemical-based contaminations in milk as well,” Kuldeep Mahato, a Ph.D. scholar, who worked on this project along with Prof. Chandra told during an interaction.