north east online - north east india news: Sep 22, 2009

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Students' organisations oppose uranium mining in Meghalaya

T
he Khasi Student's Union (KSU) of Meghalaya on Tuesday got the support of Langrin Youth Welfare Association (LYWA) to fight against the state government's move to facilitate the Uranium Corporation of India Ltd (UCIL) to Uranium in Meghalaya.

The pamphlets distributed by the two organisations said the KSU and LYWA would like to apprise the public on the danger of Uranium mininng intended to be taken up by Centre through the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), Atomic Mineral Division and UCIL.

The distribution of pamphlets was part of the KSU agitational programme to oppose the recent cabinet decision to lease out 422 Sq. Hectares at Mawthabah in West Khasi Hills District to UCIL for the Rs 209 crore first phase pre-development project. The KSU flet the cabinet decision would facilitate UCIL to take up the uranium project in the near future.

Another tremor jolts northeast, Monday's quake toll 11

A
nother earthquake measuring 5.7 on the Richter scale shook India's northeast and adjoining Myanmar early on Tuesday.

The death toll in Monday's tremor in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan rose to 11, officials said.

According to the Indian Meteorological Department, a 5.7 magnitude earthquake rocked parts of India's northeast at 1.08 am on Tuesday with the epicentre located along Myanmar.

The tremor was experienced in the northeastern states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Manipur, besides Myanmar.

This is the second quake to have rocked the region in less than 12 hours -- after a 6.3 magnitude earthquake at 2.23 pm on Monday rocked Bhutan and India's northeast.

"There are no immediate reports of any damage to lives and properties in Tuesday's earthquake, although people panicked and ran out of their homes with Monday's high intensity quake still fresh in their minds," said a disaster management official here.

Bhutanese officials added that the death toll in Monday's earthquake in Bhutan had gone up to 11 with an injured victim succumbing overnight.

"The death count is now 11 and several others are injured. We are assessing the extent of damage and compiling reports from the ground to know more about any more casualties," U. Tenzing, an official of Bhutan's disaster management department, said from Thimphu by telephone.

There were three Indians among those killed in Bhutan - falling boulders in the eastern district of Samdrup Jongkhar hit them and their bodies have been handed over to Indian authorities in the northeastern state of Assam.

Eight people died after buildings collapsed in two regions east of capital Thimphu, Tenzing said.

"Rescue teams are working overtime to assess the damage and look for people trapped or injured," the Bhutanese official said.

The quake sent boulders down hillsides in eastern Bhutan, blocking roads to remote, hilly regions. Homes and monasteries were also damaged.

"Some of the monasteries were damaged and monks and other people simply fled the worship places out of fear," said T. Dorji, a resident of Trashigang district in eastern Bhutan.

"There are reports of landslides in some areas and power and telecommunications networks have been disrupted in eastern districts of Bhutan," Bhutan's Home Minister Lyonpo Minjur Dorji said.

Strong tremors lasting up to 20 seconds Monday were experienced Guwahati, the main city of Assam, where nervous residents ran into the streets.

Cracks appeared in several buildings in the city but there was no serious damage, witnesses said.

Tuesday's tremor is the sixth since August 11 to have hit the northeastern region.

Manipur’s militant mothers deliver arms, threats

S
ome mothers, like tennis star Kim Clijsters or boxing champion FC Marykom, deliver aces or knockout punches. Others in conflict zones, like Thingujam Kiranmala and Aboi Vaiphei, deliver extortion notes and pistols.

Militant outfits in Manipur began outsourcing their subversive missions to security personnel some time back. They have now employed young housewives, preferably with a baby in her arms, to fuel their separatist campaigns.

This came to light after the Manipur Police arrested five women who were on the payroll of these outfits. Their assignment — for Rs 500-1,000 per job — was to serve extortion notices, collect money and deliver small arms.

Helping the police get wind of the new modus operandi were the residents of Kakwa Lilando Lampak area in Imphal West district. Last week, they caught Kiranmala alias Inaobi (30) while extorting money for the area’s pradhan, P. Devan. The outlawed Kangleipak Communist Party had served him a pay-up notice earlier.

The locals later handed her and two of her aides — a woman named Aboi Vaiphei (31) and Ngulkhohao Vaiphei (22), a rifleman of the 6th Indian Reserve Battalion — to a patrolling commando unit. The latter entrusted the terror trio with the police in the adjoining Imphal East district.

“The arrested housewives confessed to working for militant groups for money,” Imphal East police chief Th Radheshyam Singh told HT. He added that three more housewives with infants in tow were also arrested from other areas of the district.

Kiranmala had taken her 10-month-old baby along to extort from Devan. So did Okram Puspa Devi (29) of Sekmaijin village, Ashang Kasungti (29) of Tapokpi village and Anju Thapa (25) of Purum Khulen Sogolmang village while delivering demand notes to health clinics and business houses in Imphal.

“These women come from poor families and fall prey to militants ready to pay. This is a very disturbing trend,” Singh said. Other officers said the militants could be taking advantage of the tendency of security forces to spare a young woman carrying a child the ordeal of frisking.

Wary of attracting flak from rights activists, the police have appealed to the people to inform them about “any woman with child moving in their respective area in a suspicious manner”.

Quake kills at least 11 in Bhutan, shakes India

A
6.3-magnitude earthquake shook the remote mountain nation of Bhutan on Monday, killing at least 11 people, damaging an ancient monastery and forcing hundreds to flee, officials said. At least 15 people were also injured.

The afternoon earthquake was initially reported in Guwahati, the capital of India's northeastern Assam state, but it was centered in a little-populated eastern region of the tiny nation of Bhutan. Much of Bhutan, a Himalayan nation sandwiched between India and China, is sparsely populated, reachable only by walking paths and without electricity or telephones.

"We're trying to piece together information to assess the damage," Ugyen Tenzing, the country's director of disaster management said from Thimphu, Bhutan's capital.

He said at least seven people were killed when their houses collapsed in the eastern districts of Munggar and Trashigang, and rescuers were searching for survivors under the debris of other buildings. Most buildings in that region are small farmhouses made by hand from mud and stone.

Four Indian highway workers were also killed in Bhutan's Samdrup Jhongkar district, near the border with India, when the road they were working on collapsed, Tenzing said, adding that at least 15 people had been injured across the earthquake zone. In the Trashigang district, more than 200 Buddhist monks and 100 local officials were forced to flee an ancient monastery when it was left damaged by the quake. For centuries, much of Bhutan was governed from fortified monasteries, and today many of those buildings are also used as government offices.

The U.S. Geological Survey reported the quake's magnitude as 6.3 and said it was centered about 80 miles (125 kilometers) north of Gauhati and 115 miles (180 kilometers) east of Thimphu at a depth of 4.5 miles (7.2 kilometers).

"I dragged my family out. ... We ran down the staircase from our third floor apartment," said Sadeq Hazarika, an Assam state official who lives in Gauhati. "We saw our building developing a big crack. This was the biggest tremor I felt in many years." The region has been hit by major earthquakes in the past, including in 1950 and 1897. Assam has been shaken by a series of small quakes in recent weeks. The quake briefly rocked Bhutan's capital.

"We felt a strong shock for a moment, one second. People panicked and rushed out of their homes and businesses," said Tashi Dhendup, who runs a travel agency in Thimphu. He was not aware of any damage to buildings in that city.

The quake was also felt in Bangladesh and Lhasa, the Tibetan capital in southwest China, but there were no signs of damage in either place, officials said.

China has military weaponry to match best Western arsenals : Chinese Defence Minister

B
eijing, Sep.22 (ANI): Chinese Defence Minister General Liang Guanglie has said that Beijing has developed some of the world’s best armaments which are at par with the westerns countries.

In what is being seen as a rare disclosure, General Guanglie claimed that China now has the weaponry to match the West.

“The People''s Liberation Army now has almost all types of weaponry in the arsenal of Western countries,” he said in an interview.

“Now we have developed military-use satellites and advanced fighter aircraft in the air, newly designed tanks, cannons and missiles on land and advanced warships and submarines on the sea,” The China Daily quoted General Guanglie, as saying. (ANI)

Mizo youth held with explosive material in Assam

S
ecurity forces have seized huge amounts of explosive material, including hundreds of gelatin sticks, from an Agartala-bound train in Assam and arrested two men from Mizoram, police said in Agartala on Monday.

"Government Railway Police (GRP), during a routine search on the Silchar (southern Assam)-Agartala train, recovered 320 gelatin sticks and wires at the Karimgang station in southern Assam Sunday," police spokesperson Rajendra Datta told reporters in Agartala.

The material was found in the bags of the two men from the Mizoram capital Aizawl -- Henri Vanlao Ghaka, 25, and Lalthan Sanga, 24.

Ghaka and Sanga had no rail tickets and told GRP officials that they wanted to go to Dimapur in Nagaland but boarded the Agartala-bound train by mistake.

The second bag, with 57 gelatin sticks, was recovered when the train reached Dharmanagar, 200 km north of Agartala.

Police suspect that the Mizo youth kept the second bag in a different place of the same train to deceive the security forces.

"Assam and Tripura police in association with the Mizoram police are investigating the matter," Datta said.

"These 377 gelatin sticks and other materials, weighing over 45 kg, might have been smuggled from across the border," he added.

On Thursday, Tripura police had arrested a 16-year-old boy with three US-made pistols and ammunition in Agartala and busted a clandestine plan to thwart a terror strike planned during the Durga Puja celebrations in the state.

No power in Kolkata, chief minister takes stairs

L
rge parts of Kolkata
are without power today. A technical fault in the city's main power supplier (Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation or CESC) has led to a virtual shut down of generation, transmission and distribution of electricity to the city.

The snag occurred around 9.30 this morning. It could take all day to correct the fault, according to a CESC spokesman.

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya had to walk up a flight of stairs to get to his office in the state secretariat Writers Building.

He could not use the elevator because of a 40-minute power cut

The CESC generates about 975 MW of power from four power plants which have got de-synchronised due to the technical problem.

Tremor rocks North-East, claims three in Bhutan

G
UWAHATI/KOKRAJHAR/SHILLONG/ITANAGAR: For a fifth time in 40 days, an earthquake rocked the North-East on Monday afternoon and claimed at least
three lives in its epicentre, Bhutan.

Measuring 6.2 on the Richter Scale, this was the strongest of the nine tremors that rocked the region this year.

Bhutanese officials confirmed that three persons died at Mongar, about 180 km east of Thimpu, and five were injured. Sources said the victims were believed to be labourers from Assam's Baksa district. Some unofficial reports, however, put the toll at seven.

Kunjang Wangdi, the deputy commissioner of the Bhutanese district of Sarpang, said some of the victims were Indian workers and they died in the Gyalposhing area when a building collapsed. He, however, could not provide the exact toll. Bhutanese website Kuensel Online quoted government officials as saying that reports of damage poured in from eastern Dzongkhags.

In the northeastern region of India, Monday's tremor triggered a widespread panic across Assam with hundreds of people seen running out of their houses in sheer desperation, frantically looking for safer places.

According to the Borjhar-based Regional Meteorological Centre (RMC) in Guwahati, the earthquake occurred at 02.23 pm with an epicenter in Bhutan between 27.3? North latitude and 91.5 ? East longitude.

"This was the strongest quake in the North-East this year," RMC director D K Handique said.

Even as officials of the state disaster management department claimed no casualty or damage to property was reported, TOI found some highrises in Guwahati developing cracks. A seven-storey building in the city's Bhangagarh area tilted and touched another apartment. A witness said people staying in the two buildings ran out of their houses. "All 72 families staying in flats were scared," said a member of the apartment society.

Kamrup (Metro) deputy commissioner Prateek Hajela said he had got news about some buildings developing cracks and asked his officers to verify the reports. The lower Assam districts of Nalbari, Baksa, Kamrup and Kokrajhar bordering Bhutan were also jolted by the quake.

Hitesh Das, the deputy secretary of the state disaster management department, said they had verified reports from eights districts. "So far, no casualty was reported. We are awaiting reports from other districts. We have already put all district administrations on high alert," he said.

State revenue and disaster management minister Bhumidhar Barman has convened an emergent meeting on Tuesday to assess the situation.

Met officials in Shillong said there was no immediate report of any damage to life or property in Meghalaya. Tawang, the Buddhist monastery town in Arunachal Pradesh, too, experienced the quake for about seven seconds. Sources said there was no report of any damage.

Incidentally, the North-East is located in the seismically active Zone V, making the region one of the most quake-prone areas in the world. Assam had already experienced two high-intensity earthquakes one in 1897 and the other in 1950. The two tremors had triggered some topographical changes in Assam and changed the courses of a number of mighty rivers, including the Brahmaputra.

2009 Quakes

Sept 4: 21:08 am Indo-Myanmarese border M 5.9

Aug 31: 12:57:44 am Manipur-Nagaland region M 5.3

Aug 19: 4:15:15 pm Sonitpur M 4.9

Aug 11: 3:13:39 am Manipur M 5.6

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