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How Madhya Pradesh tiger reserves are raking profits like never before NEWS

By: PIBtech on 22:28 / comment : 0 ,

According to reports, out of total revenue of Rs 166 crore generated from
wildlife tourism in the four tiger reserves, 40 percent makes it back to the local community.

In a study carried out at four tiger reserves - Bandhavgargh, Pench, Kanha and Panna - in Madhya Pradesh in the last one year, wildlife researchers have found that contrary to the negative perception around tourism, it supports wildlife in many ways. First, as per calculations, it was bringing about over 400 percent more money for conservation than what the state and central governments provide as annual budgetary. Tourism also brought prosperity to the villages in the form of development, like roads, electricity, water, schools, hospitals, income and employment.

Resultantly, it led to a 'wildlife-friendly' attitude as opposed to 'villages untouched by tourism'. It also found that the number of international visitors here has drastically reduced due to legal and environmental regulations. And the potential of the tourism industry and infrastructure here is not being optimally utilised. Lead author, Dr. Raghunandan S Chundawat said, "We found that the total revenue generated from wildlife tourism in the four tiger reserves in 2016-17 stands at Rs 166 crore. Over 45 percent of the money makes its way back to the local community."

Jimmy Carter: The media has been harder on Trump than predecessors news

By: PIBtech on 22:34 / comment : 0 , , ,

“I think the media have been harder on Trump than any other president certainly that I’ve known about,” Carter told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. "I think they feel free to claim that Trump is mentally deranged and everything else without hesitation.”
Carter also defended Trump against claims that the current president's aggressive style is souring U.S. relations with the world. “Well, he might be escalating it but I think that precedes Trump,” he told the Times. “The United States has been the dominant character in the whole world and now we’re not anymore. And we’re not going to be. Russia’s coming back and India and China are coming forward.”
Perhaps Carter is seeking to placate Trump as part of a job interview: The 93-year-old former president said he is willing to undertake a diplomatic mission to North Korea to discuss its nuclear weapons program.
Carter told the Times he had discussed the North Korea issue with H.R. McMaster, Trump's national security adviser.
“I told him that I was available if they ever need me,” Carter said.
While Carter's comments about the media might please Trump, an ex-presidential couple might not be too happy with the Times interview: Bill Clinton and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
"We voted for (Bernie) Sanders" in the primary, Carter said.
Presidents who succeeded Carter, including Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, have all chafed at the Georgian's various comments on the issues of the day.

Balochistan commander, CM discuss security news

By: PIBtech on 22:29 / comment : 0 , , , ,



QUETTA: Balochistan Chief Minister Nawab Sanaullah Zehri and Commander of Southern Command Lt Gen Asim Bajwa discussed on Friday various issues, including law and order situation in the province.
During a meeting held at the Chief Minister Secretariat, the commander and the chief minister stressed the need for close coordination and cooperation between the civil and military leadership to achieve successes in the fight against terrorism.
Lt Gen Bajwa said terrorism would be eliminated from the province for the establishment of complete peace there. He said sacrifices of the people of the province and personnel of the security forces would not go in vain.
Mr Zehri said that stability and economic development in the country were linked to peace in Balochistan.
He expressed satisfaction over the continued cooperation between the civil and military leadership in all fields. He said the government would cooperate fully with security forces in their efforts for establishment of peace in the province.
The chief minister also held a meeting with Inspector General of Balochistan Police Moazzam Jah Ansari and discussed with him law and order situation in the province

Senate to take up Elections Act amendment bill News

By: PIBtech on 22:26 / comment : 0 , , , ,




ISLAMABAD: The Senate is set to take up on Monday a crucial opposition bill seeking an amendment to the recently-passed Elections Act, 2017, with an aim to repeal the controversial clause that allows a personineligible to be elected as a lawmaker to become an office-bearer of a political party.
The bill titled the Elections (Amendment) Bill, 2017, is part of the 48-point agenda issued by the Senate Secretariat for the opening day of the autumn session of the upper house of parliament.
The bill had jointly been submitted to the Senate Secretariat earlier this month by Taj Haider, Saleem Mandviwala and Mukhtiar Ahmed Dhamra of the Pakistan Peoples Party; Syed Shibli Faraz, Azam Khan Swati, Mohsin Aziz, Nauman Wazir Khattak, Liaquat Khan Tarakai, retired Brig John Kenneth Williams and Samina Saeed of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf; Kamil Ali Agha of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q and Sirajul Haq of the Jamaat-i-Islami.
If the opposition is serious in bringing this amendment then it will have to ensure the presence of maximum number of its members in the Senate on Monday as Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani will put the motion for the bill to vote, if the government opposed its introduction.
Taking advantage of its numerical strength, the PML-N had earlier this month bulldozed the Elections Act, 2017, through the National Assembly and it was assented by President Mamnoon Hussain within hours of its passage from the lower house of the parliament.
Four parties seek to bar a person from holding party office if he is ineligible to become lawmaker
The law was passed to allow the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N to re-elect former prime minister Nawaz Sharif as its chief. Earlier on July 28, Mr Sharif was disqualified by the Supreme Court from becoming a lawmaker in its verdict in the Panama Papers case.
The original bill passed by the National Assembly had been adopted by the Senate with amendments, but the amendment to Clause 203, sought by the opposition members, was defeated in the upper house due to the opposition’s ill-preparedness.
A number of petitions have already been filed in the Supreme Court challenging the said provision of the Elections Act. The PPP is one of the petitioners.

Opposition strategy

Talking to Dawn on Sunday, PPP’s parliamentary leader Taj Haider said that learning from the past they had this time chalked out a strategy to ensure the presence of maximum number of its members in the house when the movers would be seeking permission for tabling the bill.
Mr Haider said they also planned to hold a meeting of the joint opposition before the session to devise a strategy. The PPP leader said he had been contacting individually every opposition member so that they could succeed not only in the introduction of the bill, but for its passage the same day.
Mr Haider was of the view that there was no need for sending the bill to any standing committee as enough discussion had already taken place on the issue on the floor of the house. He said the opposition would press the chairman to get the bill passed without referring it to the committee. He said if the government insisted on sending the bill to the committee, they would ask the chairman to decide the matter through a vote.
He expressed the hope that they would succeed in their move this time. He recalled that during the previous session, the Senate had already passed a resolution with 52-28 votes against the same controversial provision in the act introduced by the government only to benefit the ousted prime minister.
The government had last month managed the passage of the Elections Act, 2017, from the Senate with an amendment to a clause of the Political Parties Order, paving the way for the re-election of Nawaz Sharif as the PML-N president.
The government had managed to get the law passed from the opposition-dominated Senate due to division within the ranks of the opposition parties and their failure to devise a proper strategy to block the bill. Leader of Opposition in the Senate Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan had moved the same amendment to the bill at the time of its passage, but the treasury members defeated it through voting when a member of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) also supported the government.
Mr Haider agreed that when the bill had come for voting in the Senate last month, the opposition parties could not formulate a strategy. He regretted that MQM Senator Ateeq Shaikh voted against the opposition-moved amendment, thus providing the government an opportunity to get the bill sailed through the house.
During the previous session, the Senate had adopted a resolution stating that a person ineligible to be elected as lawmaker should not become office-bearer of a political party. The resolution had been moved by Mr Ahsan of the PPP and it was supported by other opposition parties.
Mr Ahsan had pointed out that an anomalous situation had arisen in the country wherein a person who was disqualified to be a member of parliament could continue to be an office-bearer, even the head of a political party.
Law Minister Zahid Hamid had termed the resolution mala fide and noted that even holding a discussion on it should not be allowed.

Fraught relations NEWS

By: PIBtech on 22:22 / comment : 0 , , , ,


A hostage rescue. A drone strike. Courtesy phone calls. High-level official visits. Pakistan and the United States are trying to re-establish ties, however fledgling, after the Trump administration unveiled its South Asia strategy, which takes a harder line against Pakistan for allegedly harbouring militant groups, and calls for an expanded role for India in Afghanistan — the opposite of Pakistan’s preference for what should unfold across its western border.
The overtures are welcome for those who believe Pakistan should maintain a multipronged foreign policy comprising strong alliances with stronger nations. Conversely, they have been met with cynicism by US sceptics — the American-Canadian couple was conveniently recovered the day before a US delegation arrived in Islamabad; the US drone strike that allegedly killed the chief of Jamaatul Ahrar (JuA) took place days before US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s scheduled visit to Islamabad in what is being seen as a reciprocal and reconciliatory gesture. Both camps can agree that this is not the stuff of a coordinated bilateral relationship with shared strategic objectives; it is the piecemeal politics of placation.
Grand gestures aside, the fundamental challenges of the US-Pakistan relationship persist. The US is frustrated by Pakistan’s dubious counterterrorism credentials. Even while seeking to thaw frosty relations, Washington has called out Pakistan for supporting militant groups. Earlier this month, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff told a congressional hearing that Pakistan’s agencies had links to militant groups; and even while Trump was gloating about improved ties between the two countries, the director of the CIA announced that US citizen Caitlin Campbell and her family had been held hostage by the Haqqani network for five years in Pakistan (and not Afghanistan, as our security forces had indicated).
Fundamental challenges exist for Pak-US relations.
Pakistan, meanwhile, remains concerned about the destabilising effects of US meddling in the region, which could manifest in several ways: growing Indian influence in Afghanistan; an increasingly dysfunctional and hostile government in Kabul; entrenched sanctuaries for anti-Pakistan militant groups such as JuA and the TTP across the Durand Line; and regional designs against CPEC.
As long as these divergent objectives and concerns remain, the US-Pakistan relationship will be stuck in a rut. But we can no longer dismiss this as a foreign policy irritant — the rut damages Pakistan.
Islamabad’s fraught ties with Washington leads to knee-jerk foreign policymaking on other fronts, including the all-eggs-in-one-basket approach of cosying up to China in order to have a reliable counterweight to the US. This approach involves geostrategic and economic concessions, the full implications of which Pakistan has yet to understand. It is also one that will become entrenched during the Trump administration in light of the US president’s truncated flirtation with Xi Jingping, and Tillerson’s public critique of China as a destabilising force and economic predator. As US-China tensions escalate, Pak­istan will gradually find itself choosing a side.
Clumsy rapprochements with Washington also undermine Pakistan’s democratic set-up. The relationship with the US is dominated by our military, but the fallout is left to the civilian government to manage. Analysts speculate that the drone strike that apparently killed Omar Khalid Khorasani indicates a resumption in military and intelligence cooperation between Islamabad and Washington. But it’s the government that has to cover the tracks of America’s unpopular drone strike policy. While in the US, our foreign minister responded to the sudden uptick in drone strikes in and around Kurram Agency with hemming and hawing about indeterminate territory and fuzzy borders. Pak­istan’s lack of transparency regar­ding its involvement in and tolerance for US drone strikes has eroded the government’s credibility with the public.
Contortions in US-Pakistan ties also fuel conspiracy theories that stymie Pakistan’s chances of developing a clear narrative against terrorism — those who speak out against militant activity on Pakistani soil are labelled American stooges, and their position is perceived to be sinister rather than in the long-term interests of the country. Meanwhile, militant groups continue to capitalise on anti-Americanism to attract increasingly diverse recruits.
As such, it’s in Pakistan’s interest to refresh the US-Pakistan relationship. Perhaps one way forward is to focus on issues beyond the Afghanistan — and by extension, India — angle. Secretary Tillerson has indicated that he will explore improved economic ties between the US and Pakistan during his visit. Our representatives should try to generate more US support for CPEC, and Pakistan’s economic growth overall. A conversation about regional security concerns couched in the language of economic opportunity may offer one way to break out of the rut.

Space Station news

By: PIBtech on 22:17 / comment : 0 , , , ,

Space Station


Expedition 53 Commander Randy Bresnik and Flight Engineer Joe Acaba of NASA completed a 6 hour, 49 minute spacewalk at 2:36 p.m. EDT. The two astronauts installed a new camera system on the Canadarm2 robotic arm’s latching end effector, an HD camera on the starboard truss of the station and replaced a fuse on the Dextre robotic arm extension.
 
The duo worked quickly and were able to complete several “get ahead” tasks. Acaba greased the new end effector on the robotic arm. Bresnik installed a new radiator grapple bar. Bresnik completed prep work for one of two spare pump modules on separate stowage platforms to enable easier access for potential robotic replacement tasks in the future. He nearly finished prep work on the second, but that work will be completed by future spacewalkers.
 
This was the fifth spacewalk of Bresnik’s career (32 hours total spacewalking) and the third for Acaba (19 hours and 46 minutes total spacewalking). Space station crew members have conducted 205 spacewalks in support of assembly and maintenance of the orbiting laboratory. Spacewalkers have now spent a total of 53 days, 6 hours and 25 minutes working outside the station.
Two NASA astronauts switched their spacesuits to battery power this morning at 7:47 a.m. EDT aboard the International Space Station to begin a spacewalk planned to last about 6.5 hours. Live coverage is available on NASA Television and the agency’s website.
Expedition 53 Commander Randy Bresnik and Flight Engineer Joe Acaba of NASA will replace a camera light assembly on the Canadarm2 latching end effectors (LEE) that spacewalkers installed on the Canadarm2 robotic Oct. 5. They will also install an HD camera outside the station among other tasks in the 205th spacewalk in support of assembly and maintenance in station history.
Bresnik is wearing the suit with red stripes, and helmet camera #18. Acaba is wearing the suit with no stripes, and helmet camera #17.
Four Expedition 53 crewmates huddled together and made final preparations the day before the third and final spacewalk planned for October. Meanwhile, NASA’s commercial partner Orbital ATK has announced Nov. 11 as the new launch date for its Cygnus cargo carrier to the International Space Station.
Commander Randy Bresnik and Flight Engineer Joe Acaba are reviewing procedures and configuring tools before their spacewalk set for Friday at 8:05 a.m. EDT. NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Paolo Nespoli from the European Space Agency will assist the spacewalkers in and out of their spacesuits and guide the duo as they work outside.
The spacewalk was originally set for Wednesday before mission managers replanned a new set of tasks due to a camera light failure. Bresnik and Acaba will now replace the camera light assembly on the Canadarm2’s newly installed Latching End Effector and install an HD camera on the starboard truss. The duo will also replace a fuse on Dextre’s payload platform and remove thermal insulation on two electrical spare parts housed on stowage platforms.
Orbital ATK is targeting the launch of its eighth Cygnus resupply mission to the station for Nov. 11. Cygnus will make a nine-minute ascent to space after launch, then begin a two-day trek to the station where it will be installed for a month-long stay after its capture by the Canadarm2.
The Expedition 53 crew trained for a medical emergency in space today after spending the morning on weekly housecleaning tasks. Afterward, two astronauts reviewed procedures and checked their tools ahead of Friday’s spacewalk.
Cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin joined NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acaba for a routine training session to handle a medical emergency aboard the International Space Station. The trio reviewed medical hardware, chest compression techniques and individual roles and responsibilities.
Afterward, Acaba moved on to spacewalk preparations with Commander Randy Bresnik. The spacewalkers are due to begin a 6.5 hour spacewalk Friday at 8:05 a.m. EDT. NASA TV will cover the spacewalking activities live beginning at 6:30 a.m.
This will be the third spacewalk this month and consists of repackaged tasks that include the replacement of a camera assembly on the newly installed Latching End Effector, the installation of an HD camera on the starboard truss, the replacement of a fuse on Dextre’s payload platform and the removal of thermal insulation on two electrical spare parts housed on stowage platforms.

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