Month: August 2018

India said on Tuesday it expected to spend less than 100 billion rupees ($1.43 billion) on its first manned space mission to be launched by 2022, suggesting it is likely to be cheaper than similar projects by the United States and China.

India is cultivating a reputation as a low-cost space power, after the 2014 launch of an unmanned Mars mission at a cost of $74 million, or less than the budget of the Hollywood space blockbuster Gravity and a fraction of the $671 million the U.S. space agency NASA spent on its MAVEN Mars mission.

The Indian manned mission, announced this month by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and to be led by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), will aim to send a three-member crew to space for five to seven days in a craft that will be placed in a low Earth orbit of 300-400 km, the Department of Space said in a statement.

“ISRO has developed some critical technologies like re-entry mission capability, crew escape system, crew module configuration, thermal protection system, deceleration and floatation system, sub-systems of life support system etc required for this program,” the statement said.

ISRO Chairman K. Sivan said the agency had “perfected the engineering aspects of the mission,” although it was new to the field of bioscience — dealing with living beings.

Private agencies will also participate in the mission, and ISRO might consider collaborations with space agencies from “friendly countries with advanced space programs,” the statement added.

India’s neighbor and old rival China first sent humans to space in 2003, becoming only the third country to have such capability after Russia and the United States.

China’s Shenzhou program is secretively run through military and government agencies and its budget is not public. In 2003, officials said it had cost 18 billion yuan ($2.62 billion).

India’s space program has a total budget of around $4 billion, and Modi’s government hopes recent satellite launches — many on behalf of foreign governments — would improve its prospects of winning a larger share of the more than $300 billion global space industry.

Earlier this month, NASA unveiled its analysis of data collected from lunar orbit by an Indian spacecraft. The findings marked the first time scientists confirmed by direct observation the presence of water on the moon’s surface — in hundreds of patches of ice deposited in the darkest and coldest reaches of its polar regions.
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Sizzling weather this summer will put pressure on almost 200 governments to reach a deal in Poland in December on the details of a global plan to limit climate change, the incoming president of the U.N. talks said.

Environment ministers will meet in Katowice, the heart of Poland’s coal-producing region, Silesia, to agree on rules for the 2015 Paris climate accord. That accord set a sweeping goal of ending the fossil fuel era this century, but the text was vague on details.

“Paris is empty without Katowice,” Michal Kurtyka, a former deputy energy minister of Poland who will preside at the December 3-14 talks, told Reuters.

Poland, which generates most of its electricity from coal, is hosting the annual U.N. climate talks for the third time.

“The Paris Agreement includes certain principles. However, the way they will be implemented will be described in the Katowice package. So the more detailed and concrete it is, the better,” Kurtyka said.

Hot weather this summer that set off wildfires from California to Greece has made officials more determined to reach a detailed deal in Katowice, he said.

“For sure this is something that affected millions of people all over the world. … Societies in particular countries will act on politicians. I think that this will increase political determination for the solutions to be as concrete and as

detailed as possible,” Kurtyka said.

Bangkok session

Many issues remain to be discussed at an extra session in Bangkok next month, he said, where “a vision of the whole should be built.”

Some of the sticking points include the way the countries report on their emission reductions, adapting to climate change and financing tools, he said.

Environmentalists have complained about foot-dragging by the countries involved. French Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot resigned Tuesday in frustration over sluggish progress on climate goals.

Writing the “rule book” — formally known as “implementation guidelines” — is the biggest test of the international commitment to the Paris Agreement since President Donald Trump said in June last year that he would pull the United States out.

“If some countries, such as for example the U.S., conclude that they are not ready to follow the Paris Agreement direction, then I’d assume that all other countries will seek to keep their presence so that they are part of the agreement,” Kurtyka said.

“I will strive for all parties to become signatories, whereas the question I will ask at the end will be: ‘Do I hear a voice of objection?’ I hope not.”

The choice of Poland for the climate talks is itself a point of contention, because of its dependence on coal. In February, the European Union’s top court said the country had failed to uphold air-quality standards, one of several environmental conflicts between Poles and the EU.

“The opinions that Poland is not a reliable climate talks host, due to the significant share of coal in power production, are formulated from the EU perspective. The world is more diverse than that,” Kurtyka said.

Kurtyka was appointed the climate talks president in April. He replaced the former Environment Minister Jan Szyszo, who had been initially named to preside at the conference in Katowice.

Szyszko had approved the increased logging in the ancient Bialowieza Forest in 2016, another of Poland’s conflicts with the European Union.
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India’s federal health ministry called Tuesday for stopping the sale or import of electronic cigarettes and heat-not-burn tobacco devices that companies like Philip Morris International Inc. were planning to launch in the country.

India has stringent laws to deter tobacco use, which the government says kills more than 900,000 people every year. But the country still has 106 million adult smokers, second only to China, according to the World Health  Organization.

In an advisory to state governments, the health ministry said such devices were a “great health risk” and it was possible that children and nonsmokers using such products could switch to cigarettes once they became addicted to nicotine.

The government took a position on such products with tobacco giant Philip Morris planning to launch its iQOS smoking device in India. Reuters reported in June that Philip Morris was working toward achieving iQOS’s acceptability as a reduced-risk product in the country.

Philip Morris says the sleek, penlike iQOS heats but does not burn tobacco, producing a nicotine-containing vapor rather than smoke and making it less harmful than conventional cigarettes. The company wants to one day stop selling cigarettes altogether.

The health ministry asked Indian states to “ensure” that electronic nicotine delivery systems including e-cigarettes — devices that use a nicotine-laced liquid — and heat-not-burn devices are not sold, manufactured, imported or advertised.

Such devices, the ministry said, “are a great health risk to public at large, especially to children, adolescents, pregnant women and women of reproductive age.”

Philip Morris did not respond to Reuters queries. ITC, India’s leading cigarette maker, which also sells e-cigarettes, also did not respond.

A senior health official said the government was “sending a strong message” about how such products are harmful for the public.

Last year, a New Delhi resident filed public interest litigation in the Delhi High Court calling for regulation of e-cigarettes. The court last week asked the federal health ministry to say when it would announce regulatory measures for such devices.

“The case was filed to bring out the absolute absence of regulation. It is now critical that stringent implementation measures are taken,” said Bhuvanesh Sehgal, a Delhi-based lawyer who argued in the case.

In recent years, the Indian government has intensified its tobacco-control efforts, raising cigarette taxes, ordering companies to print bigger health warnings on packs and introducing a quit-smoking helpline.
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Indonesia produces an estimated 1.3 million tons of plastic every day, much of which ends up in the oceans, clogging the ecosystem and killing wildlife. Last year the country pledged to cut the amount it throws into the sea by 70 percent by 2025. As Jack Hewson reports, the sea itself could help to solve the problem.
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President Emmanuel Macron suffered a major political blow Tuesday as his popular environment minister resigned live on radio — without informing the French leader beforehand.

Nicolas Hulot, one of the most respected members of the Cabinet among the French public, took even his interviewers by surprise on the France Inter radio station when announcing his move.

“I am taking the decision to leave the government,” Hulot said, adding that he felt “all alone” on environmental issues within the government.

The 63-year-old TV celebrity, who made his name as an environmental campaigner, was lured into government last year by Macron, but has repeatedly clashed with his cabinet colleagues over policy.

“We’re taking little steps, and France is doing a lot more than other countries, but are little steps enough?… the answer is no,” he added.

Hulot, whose future in the government has been a subject of speculation for months, said he had not informed Macron or Prime Minister Edouard Philippe of his plans to resign.

“It’s an honest and responsible decision,” he added.

His departure adds to mounting problems for 40-year-old centrist Macron, who swept to power in May last year promising to solve decades of low growth and high unemployment in France and reform the European Union.

Due to slowing economic growth, his government is having difficulties drawing up the 2019 budget which saw Prime Minister Philippe announce at the weekend that he was dropping targets for reducing the deficit.

At the diplomatic level, Macron is struggling to convince his European partners of the need for a more integrated EU as nationalist governments make gains across the continent.

Over the summer, the former banker also suffered the first major political scandal of his 15-month term when a senior security aide was filmed manhandling protesters while wearing a police helmet.

Anger in government

Hulot’s announcement is likely to be received bitterly by Macron, who was starting a trip to Denmark to sell his EU agenda on Tuesday.

“The most basic of courtesies would have been to warn the president of the republic and the prime minister,” government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux told the BFM news channel.

Hulot was formerly the star presenter of the hit Ushuaia environmental TV programme in France and had repeatedly turned down offers to enter government by previous French presidents.

He was widely reported to be close to quitting in February after media reports that the granddaughter of former French president Francois Mitterrand had accused him of rape in the 1990s.

Hulot furiously denied the claims and said they had been extremely hurtful for him and his family.

He had also faced criticism from fellow green campaigners, who accused him of failing to influence the Macron government sufficiently after he lost battles with his colleagues in the agriculture and economy ministries.

Hulot was left disappointed when the government backtracked on a target to reduce the share of nuclear power in the country’s energy mix to 50 percent by 2025, while EU negotiations on pesticides were another source of frustration.

On Monday, the cost of a hunting licence was cut in half to 200 euros — another bitter pill for the vegetarian.

“Do you do an environmental revolution in one year? The response is no,” government spokesman Griveaux added. “I prefer little steps to not moving.”

Macron’s record on the environment is mixed.

He has made the battle against global warming one of his foreign policy priorities, organizing a major conference in Paris last year in an effort to compensate for Trump’s scepticism about climate change.

He also led efforts at the EU level to reduce the use of the controversial weedkiller chemical glyphosate and he scrapped a proposed airport in western France, partly on environmental grounds.

Macron’s political opponents immediately seized on the resignation.

“I don’t necessarily share the same opinions as Nicolas Hulot, but I can understand that he feels betrayed today, like a lot of French people, by the strong promises that were made and the sense that in the end they have not been kept,” said Laurent Wauquiez, the head of the rightwing Republicans party.

 
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President Trump recently proposed cuts to the Clean Power Plan. The Obama-era plan aims to generate electricity with less coal and more renewable energy and slash carbon emissions from the nation’s power plants by about one-third by 2030. Trump’s proposal was criticized by environmentalists but applauded in West Virginia, where coal mining jobs are vital to the economy. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara reports.
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Taking a low-dose of aspirin every day has been known to help people who have already had a heart attack. But major new research has found the risks do not outweigh the benefits for most other people. Faith Lapidus has details.
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