MUMBAI: A foreign cargo ship, which collided with another vessel about 10 km off Mumbai harbour, tilted further spilling oil for the third day today as Navy and Coast Guard made hectic efforts to contain the leak.
" MSC Chitra has tilted 80 degrees and the total oil spill is nearly 50 tonnes, Arun Singh, Commandant (Operations), Coast Guard said.
He said so far, 300 containers carrying oil have tumbled into the water.
A worried Chief Minister Ashok Chavan said, "This is a serious issue. We have already filed cases against the captains of the two ships which are from abroad. Today, I am going to have an aerial look at the accident site".
"We are trying to contain the leak as far as possible," he said.
Two Panamanian cargo ships — MSC Chitra and MV Khalijia-111 — collided on Saturday off the Mumbai coast causing an oil spill from one of the vessels.
Thirty three crew members, including two Pakistanis, were rescued following the incident.
The Navy and the Coast Guards carried out anti-pollution operations for the third consecutive day today to check and neutralise the oil spill.
Six coastguard vessels and a helicopter with anti-pollution dispersal spray systems were pressed into service yesterday to contain the oil spill.
Officials are yet to locate the leakage. The thick oil slick has been sighted two to three kms around the vessel Chitra.
"Traffic has been suspended as the containers are still sighted floating into the channel thus making navigation hazardous," a Coast Guard official said. According to officials, Chitra was carrying about 1,200 containers which had over 266 tonnes of fuel.http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/6280073.cms?prtpage=1
2. 33 Army men feared swept away to PoK
By Yusuf Jammel in the Asian Age, Aug 9
Srinagar: Rescuers found more bodies as they dug through trampled homes in Leh, engulfed by mudslides after Thursday night’s cloudburst, raising the toll to 150. Most of over 400 missing people are also feared dead, among whom 33 Army soldiers are believed to have been washed away in flash floods to PoK.
The soldiers, including three JCOs, of 15 Bihar Regiment, were deployed along the Line of Control near Siachen.
The Army has sought the help of its Pakistani counterparts to trace them. The jawans were manning a forward military post near Turtuk, the last village on the LoC’s Indian side salvaged from the Pakistanis in the 1971 war. They are feared to have been swept by swollen waters of Shyok River the same night the cloudburst struck Leh. Earlier, two bodies of soldiers were found by rescuers near the riverbank.
Air Force planes on Sunday rushed relief material and vital BSNL equipment from New Delhi to restart communication links. With the Leh airport runway cleared on Saturday, special Air India, Jet and Kingfisher flights took stranded tourists from Leh to New Delhi, and more flights are expected to operate Monday. Army and BRO engineers are busy repairing bridges so that vital links, including the Srinagar-Leh and ManaliLeh roads, can be reopened by Monday evening. http://epaper.asianage.com/ASIAN/AAGE/2010/08/09/ArticleHtmls/09_08_2010_001_035.shtml?Mode=1
3 .Army Chief in CAG trouble for golf funds, No Misuse says Army
New Delhi: Once again, the sport of golf has dragged the Army into a controversy. A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), tabled in Parliament, has indicted the current Chief of Army Staff, Gen. V.K. Singh (without naming him or his current position) for allegedly misusing his financial powers when he was earlier heading the Ambala-based “Kharga” 2 Strike Corps to sanction unauthorised construction of a golf club building at Ambala cantonment.
The CAG report blames the (then) commander of the Headquarters 2 Corps (GOC), who was the sanctioning authority in December 2006. The GOC at the time was none other than Gen. Singh, then a lieutenant-general heading the 2 Corps.
Army sources acknowledged that Gen. V.K. Singh had been commanding the 2 Corps earlier for some of the time when the work on the building was being car
ried out, but claimed that "all proper sanctions were taken" and that "there was no misappropriation or misuse of funds".
But the CAG report clearly states: "In yet another case of misuse of financial powers, Commander of HQ 2 Corps … got a building constructed for a Golf Club in Ambala Cantonment under the cover of sanctions issued for carrying out special repairs…."
The report added: "An unauthorised club building, i.e. a double-storey building having a restaurant, kitchen, bar, committee room, museum, library, golf secretary’s office, reception, toilet block etc, was got constructed in Kharga Environmental Park and Training Area (KEPTA), another name for the Golf Club. It was also revealed that another building, P-258, was demolished by the contractor and a new building for the golf club came up at the site.” The CAG report noted that an earlier CAG report in 2008-09 had blamed a former head of the Western Command (and another officer) of allegedly misusing financial powers for the purchase of golf carts.
Speaking on Sunday, an Army source said: “It is a procedural issue. All proper sanctions were taken. Sanctions have gone through various headquarters. There is no misappropriation or misuse of funds. Works have been physically executed on the ground, checked, and handed over to the unit. Being a procedural matter, it will get resolved.Regarding `special repairs’, if something happens to a building, there is a provision that the whole architecture can be changed."
Army sources criticised the CAG’s findings, saying that "the local auditor at Ambala is unable to understand the point…", and that "in any case, golf is an officially-recognised sport in the armed forces". http://epaper.asianage.com/ASIAN/AAGE/2010/08/09/ArticleHtmls/09_08_2010_001_006.shtml?Mode=1
4. India lags behind Pak in N-armoury: US expert
The nuclear information director of Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Hans M Kristensen, has sought to settle the debate on India and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal by declaring that Pakistan doesn’t only have more warheads and fissile material but also better delivery systems for such weapons.
“As far as I can gauge, apart from nuclear testing where India started first, Pakistan has always been a little ahead in warheads, fissile material and delivery systems,” said Kristensen in his latest write-up for FAS.
The TOI report was based on a study carried out by Kristensen and Robert Norris which said apart from Pakistan having more nuclear warheads, it had fissile material for 90 more warheads. India, it said, had fissile material for 60-105 warheads.
As per Kristensen’s latest estimate, while India has 60-80 warheads, Pakistan has 70-90.
“The two countries are now at a warhead level about equal to that of Israel (80 warheads). But whereas it took Israel 40 years to reach that level, India and Pakistan have done so in only 12 years. And they’re apparently not done,” he added.
Kristensen is also co-author of the ‘Nuclear Notebook’ column in the ‘Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’, which claims to be the most accurate source of information on nuclear weapons and weapon facilities available to the public, and the ‘World Nuclear Forces’ overview in the SIPRI Yearbook. http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online//Politics/09-Aug-2010/India-lags-behind-Pak-in-Narmoury-US-expert
