Ø With a view to expand the facilities for
purchase of tickets, the Indian Railways have decided to allow public-private
partnership in the establishment and operation of computerised Passenger
Reservation System-cum-Unreserved Ticketing System terminals. At present,
only authorised travel agents are allowed to sell e-tickets while all the PRS
counters across the country are operated by the Commercial Department of the
Ministry. These new reservation centres, as per the proposal cleared by the
Railway Board, would be called Yatri Ticket Suvidha Kendras.
Ø A Supreme Court-appointed panel has suggested a
ban on government advertisements that glorify political personalities or the
party in power, particularly on the eve of elections. The court set up
the panel on a public interest writ petition seeking guidelines on government
advertisements. In its report submitted to the court, the panel said,
“Government advertisement materials should avoid photographs of political
leaders and if it is felt essential for effective government messaging, only
the photographs of the President/Prime Minister or Governor/Chief Minister
should be used.”
Ø The iconic Yal Devi Express from
Colombo to Jaffna will resume its run on October 13, some 25 years after
the link was suspended during the height of the Sri Lankan civil war. IRCON, an
Indian Railways subsidiary, restored a section of the line from Omanthai to
Pallai in the Northern Province, damaged during the war, with a $800-million
line of credit from India. Nearly 4,000 people, 400 of them skilled labourers
from India, have been working on the project for over four years. Connecting
the south to the north, the 339-km line, inaugurated in 1894, is the longest on
the island. After the war ended in 2009, the line was gradually restored
section by section, first to Omanthai, then further north to Kilinochchi, and
then to Pallai, 40 km short of Jaffna. Now, IRCON plans to extend the line
to Kankesanthurai, the northernmost tip of the island.
Ø International efforts to meet targets to stem
the loss of wildlife and habitats are failing miserably, according to a United
Nations report. The Global Biodiversity Outlook 4 , published as nearly 200 countries
meet in South Korea in a bid to tackle biodiversity loss, paints a damning
picture of governments’ efforts to meet a set of targets agreed upon in 2010 to
mitigate the destruction of species’ habitats, cut pollution and stop
overfishing by the end of the decade. Conservationists said the lack of
progress, nearly halfway to the 2020 deadline for the Aichi Biodiversity
Targets (ABT), was a troubling sign and a reality check. According to
the report, the situation is worsening for the planet’s most threatened
species, which include 90% of all lemurs and species such as the blue-tongued
forest giraffe and the spoon-billed sandpiper: “The average risk of extinction
for birds, mammals, amphibians and corals shows no sign of decreasing.” Only
five of the 20 targets, which are broken down into 56 elements, are on track
for 2020. Thirty-three show progress albeit at an insufficient rate, 10 show no
progress, five show deterioration and three have not been evaluated.
Ø NASA is inviting people around the world to
observe the sky and share photos during Earth Science Week (October 12 – 18), the U.S. space agency said in a statement.
Using the hashtag #SkyScience, participants are encouraged to post their cloud
and sky photos and observation experiences to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook,
Google+ and Flickr.
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