Palolem reliefwork during 2020 lockdown

Konkan Railway pet project Sky Bus gathers dust in Goa

Skybus a solution to India's transport problems

#goa, #margao, #margaoRailwaystation, #konkanrailway, #indianrailways, #konkan, #railfans, #instagram, #maharashtra, #centralrailways, #kokan, #rail, #windowseatproject, #mumbai, #chiplun, #railways, #of, #konkanrailways #konkandiaries, #india #ratnagiri, #southernrailway, #irfca #msrtc #railduniya #goa #railroadmania, #indianrailway #travel, #easternrailways, #malvan, #kudal, #a, #travelphotography, #indianraillove, #lust, #raigad, #railfan, #westernrailways, #konkanifood, #sindhudurg, #railroad, #railphotography, #freakyonwheels, #d, #sawantwadi, #railfanning, #raildrishti, #photography, #kankavli, #indianrailzone, #konkani, #naturephotography, #nature, #kokanchi, #incredible, #train, #panvel, #instagramers, #insta, #incredibleindianrailways, #northernrail

BY ARMSTRONG VAZ     

First printed on DEC 15, 2008 IN TECHNOLOGY on http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/263508 (Digitaljournal.com)

On one hand the progress chart of India has been hailed but the benefits have not percolated to the lower strata of society. The Sky bus project a path breaking indigenously-developed technology is one example of the slow pace things move in the India.

+ Add Image

On one hand the progress chart of India has been hailed but the benefits have not percolated to the lower strata of society. The Sky bus project which is path breaking indigenously-developed technology is one example of the slow pace things move in the Indian democracy.

Indian infrastructure is facing the problems which any surging economy faces in its transitional phase. With rapid growth on the economic front, Indian transport system is trying to have grip over the situation, what with crammed roads, overcrowded trains and buses, being a usual scene in the metros and the major cities of the country.

The Sky Bus transport was taunted as one of the solution to ease the load on the congested traffic lines of the Indian metros. That was almost three years back when the railway minister dedicated the modern rail transport system technology to the world when federal Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav dedicated the Sky bus project to the nation on October 15 2004 in the western Indian state of Goa.

But in the intervening period, since October 2004 the project has been caught in a dilemma with the indigenously-developed Sky Bus technology awaiting a nod from federal law makers on whether it should be introduced in India.

"My biggest problem is that the railway ministry has not been able to decide whether the skybus is a train or a bus. In fact, the skybus is ready for commercial use but for policy constraints," B Rajaram, the former managing director of Konkan Railway Corporation (KRC), had said before his retirement in Jan. 2005.

Sky Bus transport- what is that - is that is the immediate question which shoots up.

The Sky bus is essentially a fusion of a bus and a train. Its carriage looks like a bus, but it runs like a train, and instead of the compartments running on rails, they hang below the rails and slide 10 metres above the regular road traffic.

The new technology innovation is Rajaram's baby and he holds patent rights for it in the US.

A second, KRC Managing Director Dr K K Gokhale retired recently and he had these to say about the pending sky bus project which is awaiting the light of the day.

"The Union Cabinet has informally cleared a proposal to bring in legislation. But, the Bill is yet to be placed before Parliament to make it a law," he has said last month.

Contrary to the views of its managing directors, the Konkan railway website mentions that - Sky Bus metro falls under tramway category, under Art 366(20) of Constitution of India, since it operates along existing roadways and within municipal limits, hence excluded from Indian railway act.

The former MD of KRC Rajaram has been vocal in propagating sky bus as the one of the solution to decongesting the cities. "At Rs.50 crore per kilometre, it will provide the same services at one-fourth the cost of the Delhi metro. Unlike the metro, the skybus follows existing roads, thus reaching into the very heart of the city while decongesting the roads. Moreover, it can be implemented and commissioned within two years," he says.

The two-coach Skybus has a capacity for 300 passengers on a single trip and depending on the number of coaches, it is expected to handle 18,000 to one lakh passengers per hour.

But concerns over safety issue have been the major fears of the railway ministry on this untested technology and not so keen attitude to push things and they fear a black lash from the public if something goes wrong.

And the testing of the technology has come at the cost of human life and that's where the concerns of safety have been raised. On September 25, 2004 during a test run, the sky bus over sped and hit a pole- one died and two others were injured.

"The accident most likely occurred because the bogey was heading at a higher speed than it should have. Also it oscillated to a higher degree than we had expected," KRC MD B Rajaram reported at that time.

The Skybus does not really need a driver or an operator. When the Skybus approaches a station, it is supposed to slow down by itself and stop. The brake is only for emergency usage. In this case, the Skybus did not slow down, and the Control room threw the emergency brake which resulted in the accident. The accident happened on the 1.5 km test track in Goa.

Each part of the Skybus was made in India by contractors and corporate's like the Tatas and Essar provided construction material free or at nominal rates to Konkan Railway for building the test track in Goa.

The KRC has spend Rs 50 crore on this project at the 1.5 km testing laboratory at the Margao railway station, in Goa, as the new technology awaits a nod for its commercial use.

"Skybus is the story of Indian industry and entrepreneurs coming together to produce a unique thing," Rajaram had said.

Till then, the unique Indian innovation awaits the nod from the Indian law makers, on whether it will be best suited for commercial use or it will just rust out on the Goa tracks.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why Sky Bus is an ideal solution according to KRC:

Follows the existing roads- but does not take road space- and be as flexible as a bus

Have rail based mass transit capacity, same as existing rail metro

Does not divide city while providing integration along its alignment

Be derailment and collision proof- with NO CAPSIZING of coaches- so that there can never be loss of life

Be free from vandalism

Noise free and pollution-free

Non-invasive -requiring the least amount of scarce land space- and not come in the way of development.

Salient features of the Sky Bus

Heavy 52/60 kilograms /metres rails placed at standard gauge floating in elastic medium and damped by inertia of measured mass held in a 8 metres X 2metres box enclosure, supported over a 1m diameter. columns spaced at 15 metres and located at 15 metres distance from each other, in the divider space in between lanes on a road- way, at a height of 8metre above road surface- provides the support and guidance for powered bogies which can run at 100 kmph, with the coach shells suspended below, carry passengers in air conditioned comfort, can follow existing road routes, while existing traffic on roads continue.

Aesthetic and eco-friendly, the Sky Bus can never derail, capsize nor collide- by design as well as by construction, hence is safer than existing rail-based system.

With no signaling and having no points and crossings, it is a unique mass-transit system, which can be put up within two years in any crowded & congested city.

Sky Bus metro falls under tramway category, under Art 366(20) of Constitution of India, since it operates along existing roadways and within municipal limits, hence excluded from Indian railway act.

Stolen artefacts recovered in international crackdown on art trafficking

101 arrested and 19,000 stolen artefacts recovered in international crackdown on art trafficking

More than 19,000 archaeological artefacts and other artworks have been recovered as part of a global operation spanning 103 countries and focusing on the dismantlement of international networks of art and antiquities traffickers.

101 suspects have been arrested, and 300 investigations opened as part of this coordinated crackdown. The criminal networks handled archaeological goods and artwork looted from war-stricken countries, as well as works stolen from museums and archaeological sites.

Seizures include coins from different periods, archaeological objects, ceramics, historical weapons, paintings and fossils. Facilitating objects, such as metal detectors were also seized.

These results were achieved during the global Operation ATHENA II, led by the World Customs Organization (WCO) and INTERPOL, which was carried out in synchronization with the Europe-focused Operation PANDORA IV coordinated by the Spanish Civil Guard (Guardia Civil) and Europol in the framework of EMPACT. Details of both Operations, which ran in the autumn of 2019, can only be released now due to operational reasons.

Online illicit markets

Law enforcement officers paid particular attention to the monitoring of online market places and sales sites, as the Internet is an important part of the illicit trade of cultural goods.

During what was called a ‘cyber patrol week’ and under the leadership of the Italian Carabinieri (Arma dei Carabinieri), police and customs experts along with Europol, INTERPOL and the WCO mapped active targets and developed intelligence packages. As a result, 8,670 cultural objects for online sale were seized. This represents 28% of the total number of artefacts recovered during this international crackdown.

Operational highlights

 Afghan Customs seized 971 cultural objects at Kabul airport just as the objects were about to depart for Istanbul, Turkey.  The Spanish National Police (Policia Nacional), working together with the Colombian Police (Policia Nacional de Colombia), recovered at Barajas airport in Madrid some very rare pre-Columbian objects illegally acquired through looting in Colombia, including a unique Tumaco gold mask and several gold figurines and items of ancient jewellery. Three traffickers were arrested in Spain, and the Colombian authorities carried out house searches in Bogota, resulting in the seizure of a further 242 pre-Columbian objects, the largest ever seizure in the country’s history.  The investigation of a single case of online sale led to the seizure of 2,500 ancient coins by the Argentinian Federal Police Force (Policia Federal Argentina), the largest seizure for this category of items, while the second largest seizure was made by Latvian State Police (Latvijas Valsts Policija) for a total of 1,375 coins.  Six European Police forces reported the seizure of a hundred and eight metal detectors, demonstrating that looting in Europe is still an ongoing business.

Protecting our cultural heritage

This is the second time that Europol, INTERPOL and the WCO have joined forces to tackle the illicit trade in cultural heritage. Given the global nature of this crackdown, a 24-hour Operational Coordination Unit (OCU) was run jointly by the WCO, INTERPOL and Europol. In addition to assisting with information exchanges and issuing alerts, the OCU also carried out checks against various international and national databases, such as INTERPOL’s database on Stolen Works of Art and Europol’s European Information System.

“The number of arrests and objects show the scale and global reach of the illicit trade in cultural artefacts, where every country with a rich heritage is a potential target,” said INTERPOL Secretary General Jürgen Stock. “If you then take the significant amounts of money involved and the secrecy of the transactions, this also presents opportunities for money laundering and fraud as well as financing organized crime networks,” added the INTERPOL Chief.

“Organized crime has many faces. The trafficking of cultural goods is one of them: it is not a glamorous business run by flamboyant gentlemen forgers, but by international criminal networks. You cannot look at it separately from combating trafficking in drugs and weapons: we know that the same groups are engaged, because it generate big money. Given that this is a global phenomenon affecting every country on the planet – either as a source, transit or destination, it is crucial that Law Enforcement all work together to combat it. Europol, in its role as the European Law Enforcement Agency, supported the EU countries involved in this global crackdown by using its intelligence capabilities to identify the pan-European networks behind these thefts,” said Catherine de Bolle, Europol’s Executive Director.

“The operational success of Customs and its law enforcement partners offers tangible proof that international trafficking of cultural objects is thriving and touches upon all continents. In particular, we keep receiving evidence that online illicit markets are one of the major vehicles for this crime. However, online transactions always leave a trace and Customs, Police and other partners have established effective mechanisms to work together to prevent cross border illicit trade”, said Dr Kunio Mikuriya, WCO Secretary General. 

INTERPOL launches awareness campaign on COVID-19 cyberthreats

Campaign will highlight top threats and offer advice to #WashYourCyberHands 

 

SINGAPORE – In response to the rapidly changing cybercrime landscape during the COVID-19 pandemic, the global law enforcement and cybersecurity communities have formed an alliance to protect the public. 

 

Harnessing the expertise of this alliance, INTERPOL has launched a global awareness campaign to keep communities safe from cybercriminals seeking to exploit the outbreak to steal data, commit online fraud or simply disrupt the virtual world. 

 

The key message of the campaign, which focuses on alerting the public to the key cyberthreats linked to the coronavirus pandemic, is to #WashYourCyberHands to promote good cyber hygiene. 

 

The campaign will focus on social media outreach, highlighting the top threats that INTERPOL has identified based on the data collected from its member countries, private industry partners, national cybersecurity agencies and online information-sharing groups.  

 

Analysis of this data has confirmed that cybercriminals are capitalizing on the anxiety caused by COVID-19 through various cyberattacks such as data-harvesting malware, ransomware, online scams and phishing. 

 

Threats targeting people working from home during the global lockdowns will also be addressed, along with prevention tips for companies. 

 

Basic cyber hygiene advice – how to ‘wash your cyber hands’ – will be provided throughout the four-week (4 – 31 May) campaign, to ensure that individuals and businesses are equipped with the knowledge of how to protect their systems and data.  

 

Law enforcement agencies around the world and key global cybersecurity actors will share the messages of the campaign to reach the widest possible global audience. 

 

Craig Jones, INTERPOL’s Director of Cybercrime, said police and the cybersecurity industry have seen a considerable increase in the number of targeted cyberattacks by criminals since the virus outbreak began. These range from malicious web domains using the word ‘covid’ to phishing emails promising the sale of key supplies as well as ransomware attacks against critical infrastructure and hospitals. 

 

“Cybercriminals are diversifying attack vectors to launch cyberattacks exploiting the COVID-19 outbreak. These cyberthreats are causing serious harm to people and organizations, which exacerbate an already dire situation in the physical world. Now is the time when we all must come together to stop them,” said Mr Jones. 

 

“Cybercrime and cybersecurity may seem like a complex issue that is difficult to understand unless you are an expert in the field – this is not the case. INTERPOL’s campaign aims to demystify these cyberthreats and offer simple, concrete steps which everybody can take to protect themselves,” he concluded. 

 

The campaign kicked off with the publication of a document on the ‘Global landscape on the COVID-19 cyberthreats’ which outlines the latest threats identified, expected future trends and INTERPOL’s response. 

Whale shark cut for its fins by Goa fisherman in Calangute

Minor tourism stakeholders struggling to meet ends meet in Goa #Palolem

Poor family in Palolem lookng for roof overhead ahead of Indian moonsoon...