Oxygen ‘2.48 billion years old’

According to a new research, Oxygen is likely to be 2.48 billion years old. File photo

Oxygen is likely to be 2.48 billion years old, a new research has suggested.

An international team says that banded ironstone core samples from the Pilbara rocks in Australia have aided in dating the first appearance of atmospheric oxygen at 2.48 billion years ago.

Prof Mark Barley, who led the team, says their findings, published in the ‘Nature’ journal. rested on the reliability of the rock samples they used as evidence.

According to geologists, the Great Oxidation Event, when earth’s atmospheric oxygen formed, happened at between 2.48 and 2.32 billion years ago.

“This was evidence for the most primitive form of aerobic respiring life, aerobic respiring bacteria which oxidise pyrite that released acid that dissolved rocks and soils on land, including chromium, that was then carried to the oceans by the flow of water.

“The aerobic respiring chemolitho-autorobic bacteria require coexistence with cyanobacteria producing oxygen to do this,” Prof Barley said.

Prof Barley says that geobiologists are working towards a better database, for more evidence of when the types of bacteria linked to the rise of oxygen were really functioning.

“We got a good group of samples from banded iron formations and analysed the chromium isotopes and other elements because that gives the strongest evidence of oxidation.

“If you have a good deep drill hole that’s not close to a big iron ore deposit, you have got the appropriate chemistry record,” he said.

RBI hopes FDI in muti-brand retail will ease inflation

The Reserve Bank of India on Friday expressed the hope that foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail would help in bringing down inflation.

“...Certainly it (FDI in multi-brand retail) would help improve supply chain and we hope it should also contribute to reducing inflation,” Reserve Bank of India Governor D. Subbarao told reporters on the sidelines of a memorial lecture here.

Dr. Subbarao said 51 per cent FDI in multi-brand retail would attract foreign capital into the country. “It is a visible measure (taken by the Centre) that will bring in right capital in the country,” he said.

Dr. Subbarao described rising inflation as a ‘problem of success' and made a strong case for raising farm productivity to address the root cause of food inflation, which had been hovering around 10 per cent.

“The supply-demand gap in the food sector is, in part, a problem of success — a consequence of a shift in dietary habits from cereal to protein-based foods reflecting rising income, especially rural incomes,” he said.

Subsides on fuel, fertilizer, irrigation are bad

To achieve stable macroeconomic environment, the RBI chief said it would be necessary to bring down inflation to 5 per cent and reduce the fiscal deficit at the Centre as well as States.

Advocating fiscal consolidation and containment of fiscal deficit, Dr. Subbarao termed subsidies given on fuel, fertilizer and irrigation as ‘bad' ones and stressed on weeding out unproductive expenditure.

Delivering the memorial lecture, Dr. Subbarao said, “In charting a road map for fiscal consolidation, we need to be mindful of the quality of fiscal adjustment — which is to weed out unproductive expenditure and protect growth promoting expenditure,” he said.

Sharing his thoughts on subsidies in his address on ‘Rejigging the elephant dance: challenges to sustaining the India growth story', Dr. Subbarao said, “There are bad subsidies and there are good subsidies.''

“Bad subsidies like fuel subsidy, subsidy on LPG may be Rs.300 but every time you buy LPG you are getting subsidy to the extent of Rs.300. Not only you, Birla, Ambani, every time they buy a cylinder, they will also get subsidy,” he said.

“Then there is fertilizer subsidy...soil degradation happens because of fertilizer subsidy and thereafter irrigation subsidy,” he said.

Dr. Subbarao said there were good subsidies as well, like giving cycles to girls to come to school and constructing toilets for girls in schools located in villages.

In climate talks West would redefine rich and poor

As delegates gather in South Africa to plot the next big push against climate change, Western governments are saying it’s time to move beyond traditional distinctions between industrial and developing countries and get China and other growing economies to accept legally binding curbs on greenhouse gases.

It will be a central theme for the 20,000 national officials, lobbyists, scientists and advocates gathering under U.N. auspices in the coastal city of Durban on Nov. 28. Their two weeks of negotiations will end with a meeting of government ministers from more than 100 countries.

The immediate focus is the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement requiring 37 industrialized countries to slash carbon emissions to 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Each country has a binding target and faces penalties for falling short. The U.S., then and now the world’s largest polluter per capita, refused to join Kyoto because it imposed no obligations on countries like China, which has since surpassed the U.S. in overall emissions.

Now, with the Kyoto pact’s expiry date looming, poor countries want the signatories to accept further reductions in a second commitment period up to at least 2017.

“The Kyoto Protocol is a cornerstone of the climate change regime,” and a second commitment period “is the central priority for Durban,” says Jorge Arguello of Argentina, the chairman of the developing countries’ negotiating bloc known as G77 plus China.

But with growing consensus, wealthy countries are saying they cannot give further pledges unless all others or at least the major developing countries accept commitments themselves that are equally binding.

The European Union is bringing a proposal to Durban calling for a timetable for everyone to make these commitments by 2015.

Separately, Norway and Australia set out a six-page proposal for all governments to adopt a phased process of scaling down emissions.

Japan, Canada and Russia, three key countries in the Kyoto deal, announced last year they will not sign up to a second commitment period. Russia has submitted a proposal calling for a review and periodic amendments to the criteria for being judged rich or poor under Kyoto’s legal prescriptions.

“We need to discuss whether we can continue to divide the world in the traditional thinking of the North and the South, where the North has to commit to a binding form whereas the South will only have to commit in a voluntary form,” Connie Hedegaard, the European commissioner on climate policies, told reporters this month.

It’s an old debate that has been intensifying with the rapid growth of economies like those of China, India and some in Latin America and the wealth as well as high carbon emissions they generate.

The division of the globe into two unequal parts was embedded in the first climate convention adopted in 1992. At that time China was struggling to liberalize its economy, India was just opening its borders to international commerce, South Africa was breaking out of the apartheid era, and Brazil the host of the Earth Summit where the convention was adopted was an economic shambles with inflation topping 1,100 percent that year.

Everyone agrees that the few wealthy nations have the primary responsibility for reducing carbon emissions, since it was their industries that pumped carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for 200 years. Climate scientists say the accumulation of CO2 traps the Earth’s heat, is already changing some weather patterns and agricultural conditions, and is heightening risks of devastating sea level rise.

The industrial countries the U.S. chief among them have long questioned whether those definitions of rich and poor, drawn up 20 years ago, should still apply. That was one reason why the U.S. backed out of the Kyoto Protocol.

The European Union also dismisses the poor countries’ argument that, “you created the problem, now you fix it.”

The EU is responsible for just 11 percent of global emissions, says the EU’s Hedegaard, and it can’t solve global warming without the help of those emitting the other 89 percent.

Despite their swelling national bank accounts, China, India, South Africa and others say they are still battling poverty and that tens of millions of their people lack electricity or running water.

To accept legal equality with wealthy countries would jeopardize their status as developing societies even though few countries are doing more than China to rein in the growth of their emissions.

It is a world leader in producing wind and solar energy and has closed thousands of outdated and heavily polluting power plants, replacing many with cleaner-burning coal plants. Its fuel efficiency standard already surpasses the 35 miles per gallon (14.7 kilometres per litre) for passenger cars that the U.S. government hopes to reach in 2016.

And so the stalemate continues leading up to Durban.

“The North-South divide over historical responsibility still has more weight than the forward-looking approach of respective capabilities,” says Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Jennifer Morgan, climate analyst at the Washington, D.C.-based World Resources Institute, says serious discussions are going on behind the scenes over the European timetable plan, although it was not clear this week if an agreement was possible in Durban.

Other experts agree that China privately is showing more flexibility than in public.

If no deal can be concluded, Figueres said last month, a patchwork of interim arrangements may be needed to keep negotiations alive.

“What arrangements? We don’t know yet. According to what rules? We don’t know yet. Interim for how long? We don’t know yet,” she said.

Kishenji’s body identified by niece, flown to AP

Poet Varavara Rao (third from left), Deepa Rao (left), the niece of Kishenji and other members of his family pay their respects to the slain Maoist leader after receiving his body from the Medinipur Medical College and Hospital morgue on Saturday. Photo: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury

The body of top Maoist leader Kishenji, who was killed in an encounter with security forces, was on Saturday flown to his native village in Andhra Pradesh as a two-day bandh called by the ultras to protest his killing evoked partial response.

The ambulance carrying Kishenji’s body from Midnapore was diverted to gate number seven at the NSB International Airport in Kolkata and put onboard a cargo aircraft after the rights body Association for Protection of Democratic Rights demonstrated near the domestic terminal.

The body was brought by ambulance to Kolkata escorted by a pilot car after the police turned down the demand by Kishenji’s niece, Deepa Rao, revolutionary poet Varvara Rao and APDR activists to take it back home at their own cost.

The body would be taken to Kishenji’s home at Peddapalli in Karimnagar district of Andhra Pradesh in accordance with a decision of the West Bengal government.

The body was identified earlier by Ms. Deepa Rao, who had seen him last when she was just four, at the morgue at the Midnapore hospital. She was accompanied by Mr. Varvara Rao who reiterated the charge that Kishenji was killed in a fake encounter.

The State government has entrusted the CID to investigate the killing of the Maoist leader, official sources said.

Kishenji’s niece told reporters that she had taken a snap on her cellphone of the body of Kishenji in the morgue during identification.

“It is inhuman that his body has at least 20 marks of injuries with the cheek blown away,” she claimed showing the snap to reporters.

Earlier, Kishenji’s body was brought to the Midnapore hospital from the police morgue at Jhargram where it was kept after Thursday’s encounter at the Burisole jungle.

The joint forces were still searching for Suchitra Mahato who had lived with Kishenji and fled after the encounter along with other ultras.

Ms. Mahato was believed to have been injured in the gunbattle between the Maoists and the security forces, police sources said.

Meanwhile, the call for a two-day bandh in protest against the killing of Kishenji from Saturday had no impact in the State except in some pockets of West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura districts, the forested areas which comprise Jungalmahal, the sources said.

In West Midnapore district, some shops were closed in Jhargam but in other Maoist strongholds such as Binpur, Goaltore and Salboni the impact was negligible.

In Bankura district, the shutdown extended to Barikul, Ranibandh, Sarenga and Raipur police station areas.

In Purulia, shops, bazars and educational institutions were closed in eight blocs. Life elsewhere in the State remained unaffected.

Security was tight in Jungalmahal while an alert has already been issued in the State.

Draft Food Bill likely to go to Cabinet by Dec. 10: Thomas

Food Minister K.V. Thomas on Friday said the draft Food Security Bill is expected to go to Cabinet by December 10 to pave the way for its introduction in the ongoing Winter Session of Parliament.

“We have asked the government departments to send their comments on the draft Food Security Bill by December 1. After this, it is expected to go to the Union Cabinet by December 10,” Mr. Thomas, whose ministry is piloting the crucial Bill, told reporters on the sidelines of a realty conclave here.

The Food Minister said in all likelihood, the proposed Bill will be tabled in the ongoing Winter Session of Parliament, which ends on December 21.

Certain states like Maharashtra, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Uttar Pradesh have raised issues regarding procurement of foodgrains to meet the requirement of the food legislation, he said.

“Myself and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar would meet them on December 14 here to clear their doubts,” he added.

The proposed law, which the ruling Congress Party had promised in its election manifesto, seeks to provide a legal entitlement to subsidised foodgrains to 75 per cent of the country’s rural population and 50 per cent of urban India.

The government proposes to supply 7 kg of wheat/rice each month to every person falling in the ‘priority households’ category at a price of Rs 2 and Rs 3 per kg, respectively.

General households are to get a minimum 3 kg of rice and wheat per person per month at a price not exceeding 50 per cent of the support price.

On misleading advertisements, Thomas stressed on corrective action not only for consumer items, but also in the realty sector.

“There is a need for self-regulation by media organisations and other organisations against misleading advertisements on consumer items. The real estate sector, tasked with building houses for common man, shall also practice such self-regulatory action,” he added.

The minister said if self-regulation failed, the government might think of bringing a tough Bill to ensure that no one misuses the trust reposed in them by the public.

With respect to concerns that real estate firms are taking away agricultural land for house building, he said the solution lies in increasing farm productivity to ensure greater output from limited land.