Kolkata Blog

2009 Twenty20 World Cup will be played from 5th of June to 21st June 2009 in England. During IPL T20 I have noticed the ads during the live stream on iplt20.com, that they are going to bring the live stream on their site. Users have to register to view this as that was in the case of iplt20. I guess there will also be restriction for some countries where the users cann’t follow the live streams brought by www.iplt20.com/www.t20.com.

Viewers from the restricted countries can try the following links.

1. http://www.cricketlivestreaming.com promises free online livestream link for T20 World Cup.

2. http://www.viewlivecricket.com also promises free online livestream link for T20 World Cup.

3. http://www.liveindcricket.com also promises free online livestream link for T20 World Cup.

4. http://www.teezcricket.com: Site for live streaming. Many options available.

5. http://www.acricket.com: Site for live streaming, uses mostly SopCast.

6. http://livecricket.bollym4u.com: Site for live streaming.

Most of these sites use P2PTV softwares like SopCast, TvAnts, TVU to show the matches. You have to download the respective players to watch the game.

By Mike Hewitt and Dr. Krassimir Petrov

1. Introduction

In this essay we attempt to estimate global money supply and relate it to global supply of gold. For the global money supply, we use money supply figures for currency in circulation from 86 selected currencies, from 81 independent countries and five monetary unions. For the global supply of gold, we use data from the World Gold Council (WGC). Finally, we attempt to interpret the price of gold as a relationship between global money supply and global gold supply.

2. Data Description

For money supply, we consider five monetary unions and 81 sovereign (independent) currencies. Here is a quick survey of those unions. The first monetary union is the European Monetary Union (EMU), commonly known as the Eurozone, and using the Euro as a common currency. It includes 16 Western European countries, such as Germany, France, Belgium, and Austria. The second currency union is the East Caribbean Currency Union, which uses the East Caribbean Dollar, and includes members like Antigua and Barbuda. The third union is the West African Monetary Union (UEOMA), using the West African Franc, and includes members like Benin and Burkina Faso. The fourth union is the Central African Monetary Union, technically known as CEMAC, which uses the central African Franc, and includes members like Cameroon, Chad, and Congo. The fifth union is technically known as the IEOM, uses the French Pacific Franc, and includes members like French Polynesia and New Caledonia.

Table 1 below, Currency Unions, provides the details for each currency union, such as its popular and technical name, its currency name, currency code, and member countries.

Table 1. Currency Unions

The five currency unions and 81 independent currencies cover a total of 122 countries that make up 98.4% of the world’s GDP and 86.1% of the world’s population. Figure 1 below visualizes the coverage. Areas with grey color on the map represent countries without available data. Areas with blue, red, and orange color represent the three most important economic unions, respectively the European, the West African, and the Central African Unions.

Figure 1. Countries Included in the Analysis

Reliable money supply data could not be found for all countries. The five largest economies for which data was unavailable were: Morocco, Vietnam, Angola, Sudan, and Cuba. These countries comprise 0.6% of world GDP and 2.8% of world population. Their relatively insignificant share of the global economy makes us believe that their exclusion from our analysis would not materially affect our results and our conclusions.

Myanmar (Burma) requires a special note. Cross-country money supply comparisons rank Myanmar very high. This apparent paradox arises from the discrepancy between the overvalued official exchange rate and the more realistic “black market” exchange rate. For the local currency, the 2005 money supply is reported at 1.83 trillion kyat (MMK). The official exchange rate (6.7147 MMK to 1 USD) makes this the fifth most valuable currency in the world with a value of US$273 billion. The unofficial black market exchange rate (1300 MMK to 1 USD) provides a value of only US$1.4 billion. In our opinion, the official rate overvalues the currency roughly 200 times and introduces an obvious bias in the data, so Myanmar money supply was not included.

3. Monetary Aggregates

The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) provides a link on their website that lists central banks for different countries. The following charts and tables use money supply data from these official websites, whereby each link identifies the economic area.

Unfortunately, there is no unified methodology for calculating different monetary aggregates. This presents analytical problems as different countries use different definitions of money supply. Different definitions, in turn, require different methodologies for calculating different monetary aggregates, which immensely complicates cross-country comparisons. Unfortunately, we are not aware of any widely accepted solution to this particular problem.

Quite commonly, money is conceptually defined across a continuum from narrow money to broad money. Narrow money typically includes highly liquid forms of money that function as a medium of exchange, while broad money additionally includes other less liquid forms of money that function as a store of value. Monetary aggregates are conventionally denoted in ascending order by M0, M1, M2, M3, etc. Smaller aggregates like M0 and M1 correspond conceptually to narrow money supply, while larger aggregates like M2 and M3 correspond to broad money supply. We should note that in the heady days of monetarism, economists have further elaborated those aggregates and have devised M4, M5, M6, etc.

Most generally and most commonly, but not necessarily uniformly, M0 refers to outstanding currency (banknotes and coins) in circulation, but excludes cash reserves. M1 includes M0, demand deposits, and cash reserves. M2 includes M1 and savings deposits, conventionally maturing within two years or redeemable at notice within three months. M3 includes M2, repurchase agreements, money market funds, and debt securities maturing within two years.

Additionally, not every country publishes all four of the common monetary aggregates. For example, the U.S. Federal Reserve ceased publishing M3 on May 23, 2006. However, various independent sources have successfully reconstructed the M3 series and have continued to publish it.

For our analysis, we concentrated exclusively on the narrowest measure of money supply, M0. Conceptually, it corresponds best to the monetary interpretation of gold. We expect it to relate well to the value of gold, although further studies may be necessary to analyze the relationship of gold to higher aggregates, such as M1, M2, and M3.

4. Global Currency Comparisons

The following pie charts in Figure 2 below show the relative value of global currencies (M0) when converted to USD for means of comparison.

Figure 2. Global Narrow Money Supply

The left-hand side of the figure shows that the four largest currencies in circulation comprise nearly three-quarters of the global narrow money supply. Not surprisingly, those currencies are the Euro, the U.S. Dollar, the Japanese Yen, and the Chinese Yuan. The right-hand side zooms in on the “other” 79 currencies of the left-hand side that were simply too small to see when shown together with the big currencies. We show the next thirteen most important currencies that comprise more than half of the “other” category. It is clear from the picture that those thirteen currencies are relatively small compared to the big currencies. Nevertheless, it illustrates well their portion of the global money supply.

Next, we consider narrow money supply growth rates. For the whole dataset, the average growth rate of M0 is 8.2%. Table 2 below shows the twelve currencies with the fastest annual growth rates of M0, shown in the middle column highlighted in yellow:

Table 2: Fastest Growing Currencies in Relative Terms

*The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe ceased publishing any statistics after June 2008 at which point 1 USD equalled 40.9 billion Zimbabwe Dollars.

It is clear from the table above that while their growth rates are relatively high, the value of these currencies are relatively small in absolute terms.

On the other hand, when converted to U.S. Dollars as of Oct 31, 2008, the fastest growing currencies in absolute terms are shown in Table 3 below.

Table 3: Fastest Growing Currencies in Absolute Terms

From the comparison of the two tables above, it is quite obvious that the rapidly inflating currencies are too small to significantly affect global money supply growth rates. From the second table it is clear that the “big” currencies contribute the bulk of increases in the global money supply. From this particular analysis we can conclude that a sample of the largest 10-15 currencies in the world can provide a meaningful analysis of the growth rate of global money supply.

5. Money Supply vs. Gold Supply

It is estimated by the WGC that a total of 165,547 tonnes of gold have been mined. This is equivalent to about 5.32 billion ounces. Most of that gold is currently available as supply at some price, possibly much higher than the current market price. Given that the total gold supply is relatively stable and that very little gold is consumed in industrial processes, the annual increase in the supply of gold from current mining is relatively stable — about 1.5%.

Figure 3 below shows the calculation of the value of all gold ever mined. The top left graph in the figure shows the price of gold for the period of 1970-2008. The top right graph in the figure shows the quantity of all gold mined for the same period. Finally, the bottom graph in the figure shows the product of the price with the quantity, which represents the value of all gold ever mined.

The October 31, 2008 closing spot price for one troy ounce of gold was US$806.62. Multiplied by the corresponding quantity, the total value of all gold ever mined was US$4.3 trillion. This is just slightly more than the US$4.03 trillion global M0 money supply from Figure 2 above.¹

Figure 3. Global Value of Gold

Figure 4 below shows a historical comparison for the value of mined gold against that of currency in circulation. This chart essentially overlays our previous data on global money supply with the data on the value of gold. It provides the basis for our valuation of gold.

Figure 4. Global Money Supply vs. Global Value of Gold

6. Gold Valuation

The period from 1945 to 1971 is widely known as the “Bretton Woods” era. The chief aim of the Bretton Woods Agreements was to establish the rules for commercial and financial relations among the world’s major industrial countries. The policy required that each country maintained the exchange rate of its currency within a fixed value–plus or minus one percent – to the U.S. Dollar, which in turn would be convertible to gold at the rate of US$35/oz for foreign governments.² The system collapsed when President Nixon took the U.S. Dollar off the gold standard on August 15, 1971 in response to growing demands from foreign governments to exchange their paper dollars for U.S. Treasury gold. At that time there was some speculation by professional economists and Wall Street that the price of gold would collapse as the U.S. Dollar ‘would no longer hold it up’. In reality, just the opposite occurred – not only did gold not collapse, but instead it began a multi-year bull market, reaching an intraday peak of US$873 a troy ounce on January 21, 1980.³

Our analysis essentially begins with the collapse of Bretton Woods. The first major observation is that during the 1970s, gold advanced much farther than money supply. There are two fundamentally different explanations for this phenomenon. The first explanation, espoused by neoclassical economists, is that gold is inherently more volatile and more unstable than paper currencies. The other explanation, espoused by the School of Austrian Economics, holds the opposite to be true and that price swings in gold reflect the discounted value of expected future inflation. In other words, Austrian economists contend that the monetary policy associated with paper currencies is inherently unstable, and this instability of paper currencies is magnified when discounted to the current price of gold; this discounting mechanism generates the apparent excessive volatility of gold.

The second fundamental observation is that during the 1970s, gold rose at significantly faster rates than money supply. Neoclassical economists explain this with the inherently volatile nature of gold. However, volatility simply cannot explain this 10-year trend. Volatility relates to variability in prices around the trend, not to the direction of the trend. Neoclassical economists have no meaningful explanation here, except to resort to volatility of gold and irrational behaviour of gold “bugs”. On the other hand, the explanation by Austrian economists is straightforward and logical: as inflation accelerated throughout the 1970s, the discounting mechanism of the gold market resulted in accelerating price of gold from the rising inflationary expectations.

The third fundamental observation is that there is a possibility for a long-term divergence between the value/price of gold and global money supply. This divergence is obvious for the period of 1980-2000. The neoclassical school has not offered a satisfactory explanation for this phenomenon except to point out disparagingly that gold is a “barbarous relic”, “irrelevant” or “dead”. The Austrian explanation, however, is again quite straightforward: the period was generally characterized by disinflation, so the discounting mechanism produced lower gold prices due to the falling inflationary expectations that more than offset increases in money supply.

7. Conclusion

This analysis leads us to speculate that while divergences caused by inflationary expectations can last for a very long time, even decades, the long-term price of gold is driven by global money supply.

Notes

1. As an interesting aside, one may note that the present U.S. debt of US$10.5 trillion easily exceeds the value of ALL circulating currencies in the world PLUS the value of all gold ever mined! A naive person may wonder just exactly how the American government ever intends to pay this debt off…
2. It was illegal for Americans to own gold for investment purposes since President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6102 on April 5, 1933. It wasn’t until Dec 31, 1974 when Americans could own once again own gold coins, bars and certificates.
3. In nominal terms, gold did not surpass this level until Jan 8, 2008 – nearly some 28 years later.

Published originally on DollarDaze.org – Jan 27, 2009.

© 2009 Mike Hewitt and Dr. Krassimir Petrov

কলকাতা ব্লগে এখন ব্লগ এবং কমেন্টস বাংলায় লেখা সম্ভব। সাহায্যের জন্য Help for Bangla writing দেখুন।

Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya inaugurated the Light Rail Transit (LRT) on 18th February, which is to be completed in five years according to the claims of the state government.

The LRT will connect Joka in the south with Barrackpore in the north through air-conditioned coaches plying on elevated tracks. The 40 km stretch will contain 37 stations and 40 trains will ply in double track. It will take 90 minutes from Joka to Barrackpore and 1 lakh 20 thousand commuters can use this service after the completion of the first phase of the project. According to government the number of commuters will go up to 4 lakhs after the completion of the second phase.

Light Rail Transit route
Source: Anandabazar Patrika

Minutes before the inauguration, the government signed an MoU with Srei — an infrastructure and finance company which is leading a consortium of Czech company Amex International and the West Bengal Transport Infrastructure Development Limited — for executing the project.

The cost of the project, which will be executed in two phases, has been estimated at Rs 6,000 crores.

Please put your signature at WE SUPPORT INDUSTRIALIZATION OF WEST BENGAL in support of industrialization of West Bengal.

Steve Masterson, London – 24 May, 2006

The Scottish Socialist Voice (issue 264 – 11th May) ran an article beginning, “Iran has really gone and done it now. No, they haven’t sent their first nuclear sub into the Persian Gulf. They are about to launch something much more deadly … next week the Iran Bourse will open to trade oil, not in dollars but in euros.” This apparently insignificant event has consequences far greater for the US people, indeed all for us all, than is imaginable.

Currently almost all oil buying and selling is in US-dollars through exchanges in London and New York. It is not accidental that they are both US-owned.

The Wall Street crash in 1929 sparked off global depression and World War II. During that war the US supplied provisions and munitions to all its allies, refusing currency and demanding gold payments in exchange.

By 1945, 80% of the world’s gold was sitting in US vaults. The dollar became the one undisputed global reserve currency – it was treated world-wide as ’safer than gold’. The Bretton Woods agreement was established.

The US took full advantage over the next decades and printed dollars like there was no tomorrow. The US exported many mountains of dollars, paying for ever-increasing amounts of commodities, tax cuts for the rich, many wars abroad, mercenaries, spies and politicians the world over. You see, this did not affect inflation at home! The US got it all for free! Well, maybe for a forest or two.

Over subsequent decades the world’s vaults bulged at the seams and more and more vaults were built, just for US dollars. Each year, the US spends many more dollars abroad that at home. Analysts pretty much agree that outside the US, of the savings, or reserves, of all other countries, in gold and all currencies – that a massive 66% of this total wealth is in US dollars!

In 1971 several countries simultaeously tried to sell a small portion of their dollars to the US for gold. Krassimir Petrov, (Ph. D. in Economics at Ohio University) recently wrote, “The US Government defaulted on its payment on August 15, 1971. While popular spin told the story of ’severing the link between the dollar and gold’, in reality the denial to pay back in gold was an act of bankruptcy by the US Government.” (1) The 1945 Bretton Woods agreement was unilaterally smashed.

The dollar and US economy were on a precipice resembling Germany in 1929. The US now had to find a way for the rest of the world to believe and have faith in the paper dollar. The solution was in oil, in the petrodollar. The US viciously bullied first Saudi Arabia and then OPEC to sell oil for dollars only – it worked, the dollar was saved. Now countries had to keep dollars to buy much needed oil. And the US could buy oil all over the world, free of charge. What a Houdini for the US! Oil replaced gold as the new foundation to stop the paper dollar sinking.

Since 1971, the US printed even more mountains of dollars to spend abroad. The trade defecit grew and grew. The US sucked-in much of the world’s products for next to nothing. More vaults were built.

Expert, Cóilín Nunan, wrote in 2003, “The dollar is the de facto world reserve currency: the US currency accounts for approximately two thirds of all official exchange reserves. More than four-fifths of all foreign exchange transactions and half of all world exports are denominated in dollars. In addition, all IMF loans are denominated in dollars.” (2)

Dr Bulent Gukay of Keele University recently wrote, “This system of the US dollar acting as global reserve currency in oil trade keeps the demand for the dollar ‘artificially’ high. This enables the US to carry out printing dollars at the price of next to nothing to fund increased military spending and consumer spending on imports. There is no theoretical limit to the amount of dollars that can be printed. As long as the US has no serious challengers, and the other states have confidence in the US dollar, the system functions.” (3)

Until recently, the US-dollar has been safe. However, since 1990 western Europe has been busy growing, swallowing up central and eastern Europe. French and German bosses were jealous of the US ablility to buy goods and people the world over for nothing. They wanted a slice of the free cake too. Further, they now had the power and established the euro in late 1999 against massive US-inspired opposition across Europe, especially from Britain – paid for in dollars of course. But the euro succeeded.

Only months after the euro-launch, Saddam’s Iraq announced it was switching from selling oil in dollars only, to euros only – breaking the OPEC agreement. Iran, Russia, Venezuela, Libya, all began talking openly of switching too – were the floodgates about to be opened?

Then aeroplanes flew into the twin-towers in September 2001. Was this another Houdini chance to save the US (petro)dollar and the biggest financial/economic crash in history? War preparations began in the US. But first war-fever had to be created – and truth was the first casualty. Other oil producing countries watched-on. In 2000 Iraq began selling oil in euros. In 2002, Iraq changed all their petrodollars in their vaults into euros. A few months later, the US began their invasion of Iraq.

The whole world was watching: very few aware that the US was preparing for the first oil currency, or petrodollar war. After the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, remember, the US secured oil areas first. Their first sales in August were, of course, in dollars, again. The only government building in Baghdad not bombed was the Oil Ministry! It does not matter how many people are murdered – for the US, the petrodollar must be saved as the only way to buy and sell oil – otherwise the US economy will crash, and much more besides.

In early 2003, Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela talked openly of selling half of its oil in euros (the other half is bought by the US). On 12 April 2003, the US-supported business leaders and some generals in Venezuela kidnapped Chavez and attempted a coup. The masses rose against this and the Army followed suit. The coup failed. This was bad for the US.

In November 2000 the euro/dollar was at $0.82 dollars, its lowest ever, and still diving, but when Iraq started selling oil in euros, the euro dive was halted. In April 2002 senior OPEC reps talked about trading in euros and the euro shot up. In June 2003 the US occupiers of Iraq switched trading back to dollars and the euro fell against the dollar again. In August 2003 Iran starts to sell oil in euros to some European countries and the euro rises sharply. In the winter of 2003-4 Russian and OPEC politicians talked seriously of switching oil/gas sales to the euro and the euro rose. In February 2004 OPEC met and made no decision to turn to the euro – and yes, the euro fell against the dollar. In June 2004 Iran announced it would build an oil bourse to rival London and New York, and again, the euro rose. The euro stands at $1.27 and has been climbing of late. See the European Central Bank history of the euro/dollar: http://www.ecb.int/stats/exchange/eurofxref/html/eurofxref-graph-usd.en.html#1999

But matters this month became far, far worse for the US dollar. On 5th May Iran registered its own Oil Bourse, the IOB. Not only are they now selling oil in euros from abroad – they have established an actual Oil Bourse, a global trading centre for all countries to buy and sell their oil!

In Chavez’s recent visit to London he talked openly about supporting the Iranian Oil Bourse, and selling oil in euros. When asked in London about the new arms embargo imposed by the US against Venezuela, Chavez prophetically dismissed the US as “a paper tiger”.

Currently, almost all the world’s oil is sold on either the NYMEX, New York Mercantile Exchange, or the IPE, London’s International Petroleum Exchange. Both are owned by US citizens and both sell and buy only in US dollars. The success of the Iran Oil Bourse makes sense to Europe, which buys 70% of Iran’s oil. It makes sense for Russia, which sells 66% of its oil to Europe. But worse for the US, China and India have already stated they are very interested in the new Iranian Oil Bourse.

If there is a tactical-nuclear strike on – deja-vu – ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in Iran, who would bet against a certain Oil Exchange and more, being bombed too?

And worse for Bush. It makes sense for Europe, China, India and Japan – as well as all the other countries mentioned above – to buy and sell oil in Euro’s. They will certainly have to stock-up on euros now, and they will sell dollars to do so. The euro is far more stable than the debt-ridden dollar. The IMF has recently highlighted US economic difficulties and the trade deficit strangling the US – there is no way out.

The problem for so many countries now is, how to get rid of their vaults full of dollars, before it crashes? And the US has bullied so many countries for so many decades around the world, that many will see a chance to kick the bully back. The US cannot accept even 5% of the world’s dollars – it would crash the US economy dragging much of the world with it, especially Britain.

To survive, as the Voice article stated, “the US, needs to generate a trade surplus to get out of this one. Problem is it can’t.” This is spot on. To do that they must force US workers into near slavery, to get paid less than Chinese or Indian workers. We all know that this will not happen.

What will happen in the US? Chaos for sure. Maybe a workers revolution, but looking at the situation as it is now, it is more likely to be a re-run of Germany post-1929, and some form of extremeright mass movement will emerge.

Does Europe and China/Asia have the economic independence and strength to stop the whole world’s economies collapsing with the US? Their vaults are full to the brim with dollars.

The US has to find a way to pay for its dollar-imperialist exploitation of the world since 1945. Somehow, eventually, it has to account for every dollar in every vault in the world.

Bombing Iran could backfire tremendously. It would bring Iran openly into the war in Iraq, behind the Shiite majority. The US cannot cope even now with the much smaller Iraqi insurgency. Perhaps the US will feed into the Sunni v Shiite conflict and turn it into a wider Middle-East civil-war. However, this is so dangerous for global oil supplies. Further, they know that this would be temporary, as some country somewhere else, will establish a euro-oil-exchange. Perhaps
in Brussels.

There is one ’solution’ – scrap the dollar and print a whole new currency for the US. This will destroy 66% of the rest of the world’s savings/reserves in one swoop. Imagine the implications? Such are the desperate things now swimming around heads in the White House, Wall Street and Pentagon.

Another is to do as Germany did, just before invading Poland in 1938. The Nazis filmed a mock Polish Army attack on Germany, to win hearts and minds at home. But again, this is a finger in the dam. So, how is the US going to escape this time? The only global arena of total superiority left is military. Who knows what horrors lie ahead. A new world war is one tool by which the US could discipline its ‘allies’ into keeping the dollar in their vaults.

The task of socialists today is to explain to as many as possible, especially our class, that the coming crisis belongs purely to capitalism and (dollar) imperialism. Not people of other cultures, not Islam, not the axis of evil or their so-called WMDs. Their system alone is to blame.

The new Iranian Oil Bourse, the IOB, is situated in a new building on the free-trade-zone island of Kish, in the Persian Gulf. It’s computers and software are all set to go. The IOB was supposed to be up and running last March, but many pressures forced a postponement. Where the pressure came from is obvious. It was internationally registered on 5th May and supposed to open mid-May, but its opening was put off, some saying the oil-mafia was involved, along with much international pressure. Just google `pertroeuro’, and the story lies before you.

From now on, anyone in the know will wake up every morning and, even before coffee, will check out the latest exchange rate between the euro and dollar.

(1) The Proposed Iranian Oil Bourse (Krassimir Petrov, Jan 2006)
http://www.countercurrents.org/us-petrov200106.htm
(2) Oil, Currency and the War on Iraq (Cóilín Nunan, Scotland, Dec 2003)
http://www.feasta.org/
(3) Petrodollar Became the Essential Basis for the US Economic Hegemoney in the 1970s. (Bulent Gokay, Keele University, May 2006)
http://english.pravda.ru/topic/petrodollar-138/

Source: GreenLeft_discussion, Yahoo Group

Joining a new global initiative to save the tiger, the World Bank on Wednesday said if the striped cat continues to vanish from the wild, it will be the first large predator to go the way of the dodo.

“To secure the future of the tiger in the wild and save it from poachers, financial and material resources and a strong policy commitment is needed,” it said while listing poaching, prey depletion, forest degradation and habitat loss as the main reasons for its decline.

Its existing wild populations inhabit fragmented and isolated patches of land constituting a meager seven per cent of their “historic range”, it said.

“If current trends persist, tigers are likely to be the first species of large predator to vanish in historic times,” it said in a statement after joining the worldwide alliance of conservationists, scientists and celebrities besides Global Environment Facility to save the tiger.

It’s joining the initiative bears significance in that tiger numbers have declined from over 100,000 a century ago to just 4,000 today with 3,000 of them in India.

Noting that the animals had become an “enforcement dependent species”, it said the tiger population health was an indicator of biodiversity and a barometer of sustainability.

The World Bank and its partners have decided to assess financing needs and work with governments and the private sector for tiger conservation.

“Since tigers are at the top of the food chain, the conservation of wild tigers also means preservation of the habitats in which they live and the prey populations that support them,” the statement said.

News Source: PTI
Photo Source: Save The Tiger Fund

At last Delhi cleared the way for Kolkata’s second Metro corridor.

The Rs 4,680-crore East-West Metro project, a 13.77-km stretch of underground and elevated tracks from Salt Lake to Howrah, will be implemented by a company modelled on the Delhi Metro Railways Corporation. It will have six representatives each of the Centre and the state government. Urban development secretary M. Ramachandran will be its chairman.

Work will start next January and the route is likely to be inaugurated by 2014.
Chief secretary Amit Kiran Deb said the elevated tracks would be laid first. “The completion cost is likely to increase to around Rs 5,300 crore. The elevated portion will be made operational once construction is complete.”

The state will bear 30 per cent of the expenditure and the Centre 25 per cent. The remaining 45 per cent will be a soft loan from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.

East-West Metro route
Source: Anandabazar Patrika

The East-West Metro will have 12 stations, of which six will be underground and six elevated. A stretch of 8 Kilometers wil be underground and under the Ganges and the rest 5.77 Kilometers will be elevated.

The government will acquire three acres of land for the stations. The car shed will be at Salt Lake’s Central Park. 35-40 acres of land will be needed for that and the state government is to provide it for free, which according to present land price costs Rs 600 crore. “People affected by the project will be relocated on plots owned by the transport department off Poddar Court and along AJC Bose Road,” Deb said.

The fares will range from Rs 8 to Rs 15. The difference between the existing Metro and the East-West link is that the new one will have standard gauge instead of broad gauge tracks. The tunnels under the Hooghly will be dug using a boring machine weighing 500 tonnes.

Delhi Metro Rail Corporation had been commissioned by the Bengal government to prepare the project report.

“The Kolkata East-West Metro structures have been designed to be earthquake-resistant,” Delhi Metro spokesperson Anuj Dayal said.

They could soon be gone

About six waves of massive extinction are known in the history of the earth, the last one wiped out dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Now, add one more to the list — pollution, but this has no natural causes. A new report on the destruction of natural habitats has claimed that pollution, which is manmade and rampant, is actually eliminating three species every hour.

The extinction rate has not been seen since the dinosaurs vanished 65million years ago, says a shock report on the destruction of natural habitats.

One in four mammals are on the endangered list, including orangutans, chimpanzees and elephants. The doomsday list also includes one in eight bird types, a third of amphibians and 70 PER CENT of plant life, reports the United Nation’s World Conservation Union.

It warns failure to act on greenhouse gases and climate change could threaten food supplies and “destroy the foundation of human life”.

Officials from 191 countries in Bonn, Germany, heard the destruction already costs £1.8billion a year and that failure to act on greenhouse gases and climate change could threaten food supplies and “destroy the foundation of human life”.

They hope to agree ways of slowing the extinction rate. A UN summit in 2002 set a target for slowing extinction but is way behind schedule. Last year, the United Nations had warned that human activities would wipe out animal or plant species every hour and called on the world to do more to slow the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs by 2010.

“Biodiversity is being lost at an unprecedented rate. The global response to these challenges needs to move much more rapidly, and with more determination at all levels,” the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon had said in a statement.

In the first ever analysis of the effect of the transport sector on climate, it has been established that road traffic contributes the most to global warming, aviation sector has the second largest warming effect, and shipping has a net cooling effect on the Earth’s climate.

According to a report, for the analysis, five researchers from CICERO (Center for International Climate and Environmental Research) broke down the transport sector to four subsectors: road transport, aviation, rail, and shipping.

The research team then calculated each subsector’s contribution to global warming by looking at the radiative forcing (RF) caused by transport emissions.

The study concludes that since pre-industrial times, 15 per cent of the RF caused by man-made CO2-emissions has come from the transport sector.

It also looks at other emissions. For ozone, transport can be blamed for 30 per cent of the forcing caused by man-made emissions.

The study implies that more attention needs to be put on the fast growing road sector. Looking solely at CO2 emissions, road traffic alone has led to two-thirds of the warming caused by total transport emissions.

When the researchers looked at the effect today’s road emissions has on future climate, they found that the share is even larger: the road emissions of today will constitute three- fourth of the warming caused by transport over the next hundred years.

For shipping, the picture is more complicated.

Until now, shipping has had a cooling effect on climate. This is because shipping emits large portions of the gasses SO2 and NOx, which both have cooling effects.

However, although these two gases, until now, have given the shipping industry a cooling effect, this effect will diminish after a while, as the gases don’t live long in the atmosphere. After a few decades, the long-lived CO2 will dominate, giving shipping a warming effect in the long run.

The reason that road transport tops the list is mainly the amount of vehicles on the roads and the smaller cooling effect from their emissions. Following road transport, aviation is the second largest transport contributor to global warming.

However, the historical contribution from aviation emissions to global warming is more than doubled by the contribution from road emissions. In fact, over the next 100 years, today’s road emissions will have a climate effect that is four times higher than the climate effect from today’s aviation emissions, the report said.

In general, the transport sector’s contribution to global warming will be continuously high in the future.

Environmental pollution may trigger diabetes, scientists suspect in the US.

In the commentary published in the recent edition of the Lancet, Cambridge scientists Oliver Jones and Julian Griffin highlight the need to research the possible link between certain pollutants and diabetes.

In their commentary, Jones and Griffin cite peer reviewed research including that of Dr D Lee, et al, which demonstrated a very strong relationship between the levels of POPs in blood, particularly organochlorine compounds, and the risk of type-2 diabetes.

Past research had found individuals are more at risk of diabetes if they are thin with high levels of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in their blood than if they are overweight but with low levels of POPs, scientists said.

POPs are chemicals that remain intact in the environment for long periods and are considered as toxic to humans and wildlife. The POPs came into prominence as effective pesticides with the introduction of Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane (DDT) one of the best-known synthetic pesticides in the 1940s.

Many of these chemicals, including DDT, fell out of favour after they were blamed for the declining number of wild birds and other animals and the possible negative human health effects, according to a report posted in the Cambridge University website.

My father lives near Kolkata and has been recently diagnosed with gastric adeno-carcinoma. He will require a gastrectomy urgently. He had undergone triple bypass several years ago, and has recovered fairly well.

We are considering the following centers:

1. RTIICS 2. AMRI 3. CMRI

Can anyone share what they know about these places, especially regarding the facilities, cleanliness, pre/post op care, friendliness, availability and so on. If there are other places we should consider, please let me know.

Thank you very much!

-Ambar