11 AUGUST 2016

Ø  Michael Phelps won two gold medals at the Rio Olympics on Tuesday, avenging his 200m butterfly defeat at the London Olympics and anchoring the U.S. 4x200 freestyle team. With this, he boosted his gold medal tally to 21.

Ø  A President, a Prime Minister and a Chief Minister sitting in three different cities met virtually to dedicate the first unit of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP) to the nation. Nearly 28 years after Russia and India signed the agreement to set up the plant, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Wednesday did the honours through a video conference organised from Moscow, Delhi, Chennai, and Kudankulam.

Ø  Finding no trace of the An-32 aircraft that went missing over the Bay of Bengal on July 22, two specialised vessels have now been deployed to beef up the search. Oceanographic research vessel Samundra Ratnakar of the Geological Survey of India and research vessel Sagar Nidhi of the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) will undertake sea bed profiling. Sagar Nidhi, which was in Mauritius, was specifically called in for the purpose and it joined the search on Monday, a Coast Guard officer told.

Ø  India’s output of scientific publications may be increasing but their quality is skewed. Though India annually publishes about 1,00,000 research papers, its top research institutions appear to be focussed on engineering and physical sciences. Indian institutions did not make the quality cut or were too few in the arts and humanities, business, management and accounting, neuroscience, nursing, psychology and social sciences, according to an analysis in the August 10 issue of the peer-reviewed Current Science journal. India’s research base is completely skewed towards physical sciences and engineering with very little for biological sciences and medicine, and virtually none in social sciences, arts and humanities when excellence at the highest level is considered.

Ø  Booklets titled Mere Vichaar (My Thoughts), believed to have been written by former Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Kalikho Pul, have been recovered from his residence, an official here confirmed.

Ø  Adding an unusual layer to India’s African engagement, the Narendra Modi government is sending a senior Minister to hold a dialogue with the tribes of southern Africa later this month. The visit by Minister for Tribal Affairs Jual Oram will begin a new Indian season of political, diplomatic and trade outreach to Africa.

Ø  Even as obstacles have been lifted for Australia’s export of uranium to fuel India’s nuclear power plants, South Australia has said a huge business opportunity awaits Indian firms that can help it set up nuclear waste disposal facilities. South Australia, a state in south central Australia, houses over a quarter of the world’s uranium resources and about 70 per cent of Australia’s reserves of the heavy metal. Recently, a Royal Commission looked into the potential for increasing South Australia’s participation in the nuclear fuel cycle including in the establishment of facilities for the storage and disposal of radioactive and nuclear waste. The Commission’s viability analysis determined that “a waste disposal facility could generate more than (Australian) $100 billion income in excess of expenditure … over the 120-year life of the project.” Such a facility must be owned and controlled by the state government, the Commission suggested, adding that local community consent was required to host such a facility. Political bipartisanship and stable government policy were also essential, it observed.