Electric power

Synopsis India, which has an electricity trading deal with Nepal, is investing billions of dollars in infrastructure including hydropower plants, as New Delhi looks to grow its influence in its smaller neighbours, where China is also increasingly active. India and Nepal will build a 695 megawatt (MW) hydropower plant , officials said on Monday, as the Himalayan nation looks to exploit its abundant potential to generate clean energy to ease power shortages. India, which has an electricity trading deal with Nepal, is investing billions of dollars in infrastructure including hydropower plants, as New Delhi looks to grow its influence in its smaller neighbours, where China is also increasingly active. The Arun IV project will be jointly built on the Arun River in Nepal's east by India's Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam ( SJVN ) Ltd and Nepal's state-owned Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) owing 51% and 49% of equity respectively, NEA spokesperson Suresh Bahadur Bhattarai … [Read more...] about India, Nepal agree to build hydroelectric power plant

In its initiative to make the sprawling campus spread over about 300 acres carbon neutral, the National Institute of Technology – Karnataka (NIT-K) at Surathkal has now designed and developed 11 electric vehicles on its own for use by its students, faculty and staff members. The institute has also built a solar powered charging station to feed the e-vehicles. Thanks to major financial support for its E-Mobility Projects at the Centre for System Design (CSD) by its alumni and donors. Of the e-vehicles included three scooters, a foldable scooter, two bikes and five cycles. Pruthviraj U., Head, E-Mobility Projects told The Hindu that of the two bikes one is being used by the institute’s security personnel for campus surveillance. Another bike has been given to the Forest Department for the surveillance in the Kudremukh National Park area. The other vehicles are in use in the campus and are geo fenced. “The initiative began when the COVID-19 lock down began. The team comprising … [Read more...] about NIT-K rolls out electric vehicles to make campus carbon neutral

If Ukraine had joined NATO as Russian President Vladimir Putin once feared, it would have added an extra 210,000 troops and 2,550 tanks to the alliance's military strength, bringing the total up to at least 3.7 million personnel, including troops, personnel and civilian fighters. Putin has always justified his invasion of Ukraine as a means to stop the eastward expansion of the 30-strong Western military alliance but Finland and Sweden have both dramatically increased military spending since the war began on February 24. The two countries have announced their intention to join NATO, signaling that Putin's war aims to prevent the alliance from getting stronger are backfiring. Moscow has been quick to warn that the two countries' move to join the alliance will be met by "retaliatory steps," including deployment of nuclear weapons. However, Sweden's ruling party approved the country's bid to join NATO on Sunday, as well as Finnish politicians calling for their country to … [Read more...] about Putin’s NATO Backfire? How Finnish, Swedish Forces Compare With Ukraine’s

SEOUL, May 16 (Reuters): Standing tall in bright red hazmat suits, five North Korean health workers stride towards an ambulance to do battle with a Covid-19 outbreak that - in the presumed absence of vaccines - the country is using antibiotics and home remedies to treat. The isolated state is one of only two countries yet to begin a vaccination campaign and, until last week, had insisted it was COVID-free. Now it is mobilizing forces including the army and a public information campaign to combat what authorities have acknowledged is an "explosive" outbreak. In an interview on state television on Monday, Vice Minister of Public Health Kim Hyong Hun said the country had switched from a quarantine to a treatment system to handle the hundreds of thousands of suspected "fever" cases reported each day. The broadcaster showed footage of the hazmat team, and masked workers opening windows, cleaning desks and machines and spraying disinfectant. To treat Covid and its symptoms, state … [Read more...] about Lacking vaccines, North Korea battles Covid-19 with antibiotics and home remedies

For the first time in the annals of the Madras High Court, a judge has conducted a case through ‘WhatsApp’, and on a Sunday. Justice G R Swaminathan took up the case while being stationed in Nagercoil, where he had gone to attend a marriage function on Sunday, following a submission of P R Srinivasan, the hereditary trustee of Shri Abheeshta Varadaraja Swamy temple, that his village will face the ‘divine wrath’ if the proposed ‘Rath’ (Car) festival was not held on Monday. “This fervent prayer of the writ petitioner made me hold an emergency sitting from Nagercoil and conduct the case through Whatsapp,” the judge said in the opening sentence of his order. It was a triangular session, with the judge hearing the case from Nagercoil, petitioner’s counsel V Raghavachari at one place and Advocate-General R Shanmugasundaram, at another place, in the city. The issue pertained to a temple in Dharmapuri district. Holding that the Inspector attached to the Hindu Religious and Charitable … [Read more...] about In a First, High Court Hears Case Through Whatsapp