8.7 quake hits Indonesia, India issues tsunami warning for Andaman and Nicobar Islands

India issued a tsunami warning for Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the eastern coast on Wednesday after a 8.7 magnitude quake in Indonesia shook major cities, causing panic and sending people fleeing onto the streets.

The Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Service issued a red high-level warning for the islands, and also put out lower alerts for the coasts of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.

India’s tsunami warning center said waves measuring up to 6 metres were expected along parts of its eastern coast, which was heavily hit by the 2004 tsunami. Smaller waves were expected to hit the remote Andaman and Nicobar islands.

The US Geological Survey said the quake was centred 33 kilometres beneath the ocean floor around 495 kilometres from the provincial capital of Banda Aceh.

Said, an official at Indonesia’s Meteorology and Geophysics Agency who goes by only one name, said a tsunami warning has been issued.

Indonesia straddles a series of fault lines that makes the vast island nation prone to volcanic and seismic activity.

A giant 9.1-magnitude quake off the country on December 26, 2004, triggered a tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed 230,000 people, nearly three quarter of them in Aceh.

Isro launches PSLV-C-15 with 5 satellites

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle PSLV-C-15 carrying remote sensing Cartosat-2B along with four satellites blasted off from the spaceport near here on Monday morning.

The four-stage 44.4 metre tall PSLV-C-15 lifted off at the end of a 51-hour countdown from the Satish Dhawan space centre at 9.22 AM.

The rocket soared into skies in clear weather leaving behind plumes of smoke.

It will place four satellites into orbit, including Alsat from Algeria, two nano satellites from Canada and Switzerland, and a pico (very small) satellite Studsat built by seven engineering students of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

The countdown started on Saturday morning for the launch of the 44-metre tall, 230-tonne PSLV.

ISRO has been carrying out multiple launches for several years. In 2008, it set a world record by launching 10 satellites at one go.

Built to last for five years, the Rs.200-crore Cartosat-2B is India’s 17th remote sensing satellite and is meant to augment ISRO’s remote sensing data services along with two other satellites, Cartosat-2 and 2A launched earlier.

The satellites imagery can be used for preparing detailed forest type maps, tree volume estimation, village/cadastral level crop inventory, town/village settlement mapping and planning for development, rural connectivity, canal alignment, coastal land form, mining monitoring and others.

“With the launch of Cartosat-2B, ISRO will have 10 remote sensing satellites in orbit – IRS 1D, Resourcesat 1, TES, Cartosat 1, 2 and 2A, IMS 1, RISAT-2, Oceansat 1 and 2,” Satish, the director for publications and public relations, said.

India is a world leader in the remote sensing data market, earning a sizeable amount.

“The other remote sensing satellites that are slated for launch are RISAT (end of 2010 or early 2011), Resourcesat and Megha-Tropiques,” Satish added.

Maharashtra has most new AIDS cases in India

MUMBAI: “A true AIDS epidemic is not a future possibility for Maharashtra; it is a present reality”, warns a pamphlet brought out by an NGO fighting against the spread of HIV. And this is not an alarmist tirade. In the last three years, Maharashtra has registered the largest number of new AIDS cases in India. The 98,578 fresh cases registered in the state since 2007 make up 23%—almost a quarter—of the 4,19,982 AIDS patients registered across the country.

Maharashtra was one of the earliest states in India where the disease manifested itself, registering its first AIDS case in Mumbai, in 1986. Lack of awareness, a large migrant population and a thriving sex trade have made it extremely difficult to combat the spread of HIV in the state. The National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) has drawn up a list of 49 districts in India with a “high prevalence” of HIV/AIDS, of which 14 are in Maharashtra.

According to a study conducted by Population Foundation of India, a Delhi-based NGO funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, workers in the hotel and tourism industry had the highest HIV prevalence among groups tested in the state, followed by drivers and the unemployed. Truck drivers, who travel long distances, brought the infection with them, often to areas where the disease had not yet penetrated.

What is worrying is that in Maharashtra, HIV is not confined to high-risk groups such as sex workers, but has entered the general population. Moreover, the disease is no longer an urban phenomenon, but has spread to rural areas as well. Now, even places like Latur, Jalgaon, Chandrapur and Sangli fall under NACO’s list of “high prevalence” districts.

Experts say this is because “bridge groups” contribute to the spread of the virus, referring to husbands who use the services of sex workers and then infect their wives with HIV, who in turn pass on the infection to their babies.

Since 2007, 10,371 persons have succumbed to the disease in Maharashtra, second only to Andhra Pradesh, where 12,879 people have died due to AIDS.

Public health experts say the disease can only be fought through proper counseling, awareness-raising measures, and accurate testing. J J Hospital in Byculla is one of 10 centres of excellence that are battling the advent of AIDS in India. And Maharashtra has 30 anti-retroviral treatment centres—the most in the country.