India among five nations to build world's largest telescope

India along with Japan, the US, China and Canada will start work on the world’s biggest telescope on Hawaii Island that will enable to identify an object as small as coin from a distance of 500 kms.

The 30-meter telescope will be established near the summit of the Mauna Kea volcano with a cost of $1.4 billion.

The construction is expected to be completed by March 2022. Japan is expected to cover about a quarter of the construction costs.

To mark the start of construction, 100 astronomers and officials from the five countries are scheduled to attend a ceremony on October 7 at a location 4,012 meters high on Mount Mauna Kea.

The telescope will be larger than Japan’s Subaru Telescope, one of the world’s biggest, which was also built on the summit of Mauna Kea and started observation in 1999.

The Subaru Telescope’s single main mirror measures 8.2 meters in diameter, while the new telescope will be composed of 492 hexagonal mirrors, each measuring 72 cm across.

The telescope’s light-condensing capabilities will be 13 times greater than the Subaru telescope’s, enabling the identification of an object as small as a coin from a distance equivalent to 500 kms.

Astronomer Masanori Ie, a professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan who leads the Japanese team on the project, said the new telescope will broaden the understanding of the cosmos.

A telescope with greater light-condensing capabilities can search for stars that are less bright or farther from Earth. The most distant and oldest star observed to date was born some 800 million years after the Big Bang.

Government cancels Nine SEZs

       In a meeting of the Board of Approval on 29 September 2014, nine SEZs (Special Economic Zone) including those given to Hindalco, Adani, Essar etc have been cancelled because the projects have not made any satisfactory progress in terms of execution. Most of the developers have also been granted extensions, some of which have even expired. Any tax benefits or incentives given to the developers will now have to be refunded by them.

SEZ rules w.r.t validity and extension

Approval of an SEZ is valid only for three years. At least one unit of the project has to commence production within the span of three years. If at least one such unit if functional, the project is said to be operational. Provisions are in place for granting of extensions also, but an extension may be cancelled is no progress is shown by developers.

BoA (Board of Approval)

The BoA is an inter-ministerial body which is headed by the Commerce Secretary. Representatives of the states are also included in the BoA. Approvals and extensions to SEZs are granted by the BoA.

SEZ Policy in India

India was one of the first countries in India to introduce the EPZ (Export Processing Zone) model of promoting exports. The Kandla EPZ established in 1965 was the first EPZ in Asia. With a view to overcome multiplicity of regulatory clearances, lack of infrastructure and promote flow of foreign investment into India, the SEZ Policy was introduced in 2000.

SEZ Act

To further establish a stable mechanism whereby industries could be incentivized to generate employment and exports, the SEZ Act was passed in 2005. The Act exempts the profits generated in SEZ’s units from all taxes for 5 years, and the developers of the project are exempt from tax for 10 consecutive years in a block of 15 years.

SEZ Reforms

As of now, there are 192 operational SEZs in various parts of India, and 200+ approved SEZs that are yet to become operational. The Centre has expressed its intention to reform SEZs and has said that SEZs are an important part of India’s Foreign Trade Policy. It is considering initiatives such as modifying tax rules, especially those imposing MAT (Minimum Alternate Tax) and DDT (Dividend Distribution Tax), and allowing dual use of infrastructure in non-processing areas.

Google social network site–Orkut closed

Google closed the social networking site Orkut permanently on 30 September 2014. Google announced the decision to shut down Orkut in June 2014.

Old users of Orkut will be able to take backup of their pictures and posts till September 2016 and users can export their profile data, community posts and photos using Google Takeout. But no one will be able to create new IDs on Orkut account.

Decision of shutting down Orkut was taken as its competitor social networking sites namely Facebook and Twitter were much popular than orkut. Now, Google has moved to a new platform - the Google Plus.

About Orkut

Orkut started in 2004 was named after its creator, Orkut Buyukkokten, a Google employee.

Orkut had some features similar to the facebook like sharing videos, like option, uploading the pictures and others. Some options were different from facebook like who visited the user profile will be known in Orkut whereas it is not available in Facebook.

Mr. Jens Stoltenberg: Next secretary general of NATO

The Atlantic Council appointed Mr. Jens Stoltenberg as the next Secretary General of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). He will replace Denmark’s Mr. Anders Fogh Rasmussen and l take over as leader of the 28-nation military alliance in October 1, 2014. Previously, Mr. Stoltenberg was the Labour Prime Minister of Norway (from 2005-2013).

North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NATO countries shown in green

Flag of NATO

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO; /ˈneɪtoʊ/ nay-toh; French: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique Nord (OTAN)), also called the (North) Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance based on the North Atlantic Treaty which was signed on 4 April 1949. The organization constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party. NATO's headquarters are in Brussels, Belgium, one of the 28 member states across North America and Europe, the newest of which, Albania and Croatia, joined in April 2009. An additional 22 countries participate in NATO's Partnership for Peace program, with 15 other countries involved in institutionalized dialogue programmes. The combined military spending of all NATO members constitutes over 70% of the world's defence spending.

NATO was little more than a political association until the Korean War galvanized the organization's member states, and an integrated military structure was built up under the direction of two U.S. supreme commanders. The course of the Cold War led to a rivalry with nations of the Warsaw Pact, which formed in 1955. Doubts over the strength of the relationship between the European states and the United States ebbed and flowed, along with doubts over the credibility of the NATO defence against a prospective Soviet invasion—doubts that led to the development of the independent French nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of the French from NATO's military structure in 1966 for 30 years. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the organization was drawn into the breakup of Yugoslavia, and conducted its first military interventions in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995 and later Yugoslavia in 1999. Politically, the organization sought better relations with former Warsaw Pact countries, several of which joined the alliance in 1999 and 2004.

Article 5 of the North Atlantic treaty, requiring member states to come to the aid of any member state subject to an armed attack, was invoked for the first and only time after the 11 September 2001 attacks,[5] after which troops were deployed to Afghanistan under the NATO-led ISAF. The organization has operated a range of additional roles since then, including sending trainers to Iraq, assisting in counter-piracy operations and in 2011 enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973. The less potent Article 4, which merely invokes consultation among NATO members, has been invoked four times: by Turkey in 2003 over the Iraq War, twice in 2012 by Turkey over the Syrian Civil War after the downing of an unarmed Turkish F-4 reconnaissance jet and after a mortar was fired at Turkey from Syria and by Poland in 2014 following the Russian intervention in Crimea.

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