JAIPUR: The Jal Mahal land lease agreement dispute reached the Supreme Court on Thursday, as was widely anticipated.

The private company, the Jal Mahal Resorts Pvt Ltd that was to lose the lease after the Rajasthan High Court declared the agreement illegal, filed a special leave petition (SLP) before the apex court, challenging the verdict passed on May 17. The SLP was mentioned before a division bench of Justice Deepak Verma and Justice SJ Mukhopadhaya that directed that the case to be listed again on Friday.

Chandigarh: SC orders bar on razing of any construction which has come up till May 21. In an immediate relief for those facing demolition of their buildings/ constructions in the Sukhna catchment area, the Supreme Court today ordered a stay on the demolition orders. Making it clear that the Administration authorities will not demolish any construction which has come up till May 21, a division bench of the Apex Court today also ruled that no further construction will be allowed to come up in the catchment area till further orders.

Scientists have identified thousands of sites in the Arctic where methane that has been stored for many millennia is bubbling into the atmosphere.
The methane has been trapped by ice, but is able to escape as the ice melts.
Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers say this ancient gas could have a significant impact on climate change.
Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas after CO2 and levels are rising after a few years of stability.

The Philippine fisheries chief on Sunday said he had ordered a study into a foreign species called the ‘knife fish’ that was posing a threat to the local fishing industry at the country’s largest lake.
The knife-shaped fish are reported to be multiplying in Laguna Lake where they are displacing the native species, said Asis Perez, head of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources.
‘It is carnivorous. It will compete with our existing natural fish. We have yet to get a full appreciation of the damage caused by this fish,’ he told AFP.

SIVASAGAR: At a time when indiscriminate fishing has caused rapid depletion of the local varieties in the region, a section of unscrupulous traders are thriving in Sivasagar sub-division and other parts of Sivasagar district.

Fish production in the district has depleted to such an extent that the people have not been able to meet the minimum requirement, not to speak of export. The district has to procure huge quantities of fish from outside to meet the local demand. The reason behind the large-scale depletion is not hard to fathom.

A two-judge bench of Jabalpur high court on Friday admitted a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) regarding allotment of land to the private Chirayu Hospital in the state capital and served notices on the Madhya Pradesh government asking for a reply within four weeks.

The high court bench comprising Justice Rakesh Saxena and Justice S.C. Sinho on Friday responded to the PIL by Mr Tarun Gupta, secretary Parishram Samaj Kalyan Samiti by issueing notices to six state departments — these are departments of revenue, housing and environment, capital project administration, Medical Council of India and Chirayu Charitable Society.

The Nangyang Technological University of Singapore has offered assistance to rehabilitate the Kandy Lake.

A team of environmental engineers from the Nangyang University, led by its President Professor Bartill Anderson, pledged to extend support to renovate the Kandy Lake by providing funds and knowhow. The lake is polluted and partially silted up and parts of its banks are faced with threat of collapse.

The director-general of the Environmental Protection Agency Rafiuddin Ahmed has said that initial inquiry report into contamination of a part of Keenjhar Lake establishes presence of the pollutant elements, including urea, but fails to point out their sources.

Talking to reporters at the EPA office here on Wednesday, the DG said that urea was cause of the lake water’s contamination but its source was not yet unknown. The EPA had set up a committee to probe the contamination, which submitted the initial report on May 11, he said.

The district administration has taken a major initiative to rejuvenate the traditional water bodies and their inlet channels from the catchment areas at a cost of Rs 1.82 crore under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) Scheme.

Besides this, the authorities also proposed to remove the blockades in channels that connected these water bodies with the Palar River for a stretch of about 20 kms from Pallikonda to Vellore before the onset of the southwest monsoon in July.