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- Russia unveiled on 19 may the world's first floating nuclear power station at a ceremony in the port of the far northern city of Murmansk, where it will be loaded with nuclear fuel before heading to eastern Siberia.
- Built in Saint Petersburg, the Akademik Lomonosov arrived in Murmansk on 17 may where it was moored in the port and presented to the media.
- Constructed by the state nuclear power firm Rosatom, the 144 by 30 metre (472 by 98 foot) ship holds two reactors with two 35 megawatt nuclear reactors that are similar to those used to power icebreaker ships.
- The 21,000-tonne barge will be towed in the summer of 2019 to the port of Pevek in the autonomous Chukotka region in Russia's extreme northeast, 350 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle.
- The barge can produce enough electricity to power a town of 2,00,000 residents, far more than the 5,000 who live in Pevek, Russia's northernmost town.
- It will be primarily used to power oil rigs as Russia pushes further north into the Arctic to drill for oil and gas and needs electricity in far-flung locations.
- Vitaly Trutnev, who is in charge of the construction and operation of floating nuclear power stations at Rosatom, said such units would "supply electricity and heat to the most remote regions, supporting growth and sustainable development."
- He said use of such floating reactors can save 50,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year.The barge had initially been scheduled to be fuelled in Saint Petersburg, but that work was moved to Murmansk instead due to concern in countries along the Baltic Sea.
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- Researchers from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences discovered fossils of the common mouse-eared bat that prove the species already existed more than 33 million years ago
- The bones of the tiny mammal were found at a fossil site in 1999, unearthed when a new high-speed train track was built east of Brussels, but researchers spent decades sifting through tonnes of soil to make the discovery.
- Eventually they encountered the bones of a tiny bat, from the myotis or mouse-eared bat genus, barely changed from those commonly found in Europe today. This discovery has led to the bat being baptised 'Myotis belgicus'.
- Senior palaeontologist at the Institute, Thierry Smith, said that the discovery was unexpected because most rodents have a complex evolutionary history.
- The Belgian discovery shows that the previous estimate of when such bats appeared for the first time was off by some seven million years.
- Smith explained the long life of the bat species could be explained by the fact that bats are the only mammal capable of flying and as such did not need to compete with others for resources.
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- Eight months after India enforced a no-fly list (NFL) for disruptive passengers, Birju Kishore Salla the Mumbai jeweller who created a hijack scare on a Jet Airways' flight last year has become the first person to be put on the same.
- Salla's act of leaving a hijack message in the business class lavatory of a Mumbai-Delhi flight on October 30, 2017, which had forced the plane to divert to Ahmedabad, has led Jet to ban him from flying its planes for five years.
- "This is the first case of an Indian carrier putting someone on the NFL. Jet Airways has informed us that after following due procedure, they have banned him (Salla) for five years with effect from November 2017 for breach of security. It is the airline's responsibility to inform other carriers and then it is up to them whether they also put the person on their NFLs.
- We will continue to maintain a database for such passengers," said a senior official of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).Despite repeated attempts, Jet did not comment on this issue Salla has been banned from flying under the highest level (three) of on-board unruly behaviour that entails grounding from two years to a lifetime.
- This level covers life-threatening behaviour like damage to aircraft operating systems, serious physical violence and attempted or actual breach of cockpit. Level one covers unruly behaviour like physical gestures. Punishment under this level can be grounding of up to three months.
- The second level is for physically abusive behaviour like pushing and sexual harassment, where grounding is up to six months. Under each level, grounding time is doubled for subsequent offences
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- The New York Police Department (NYPD) has got its first female turbaned Sikh auxiliary police officer, whose induction aims to motivate others to join law enforcement and help create better understanding of Sikhism.
- Gursoach Kaur will join the New York Police Department as an Auxiliary Police Officer (APO) after graduating last week from the New York City Police Academy.
- "We are proud to welcome first Sikh turbaned female Auxiliary Police Officer in the New York Police Department. APO Gursoach Kaur and other Auxiliary Police Officers graduated from the academy. We are proud of you. Stay safe. #sikhsinlawenforcement," the Sikh Officers Association tweeted.
- The association said in a Facebook post that it is "proud" to welcome Kaur to the Police Department.
"Your service will be a motivation for others to join the Law enforcement Family," it said.
- The association is the nation's first organisation to represent Sikh Officers in Law Enforcement.
Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri also tweeted about Kaur, expressing hope that a turbaned lady officer will help create better understanding of Sikhism in the US.
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- Tavishi Perara may be India's first 'child without a father', or that's how her birth certificate will read, thanks to Madras high court's direction to authorities to keep the column blank.
- The relief, however, did not come easy for the child's mother, Mathumitha Ramesh, who had to wage two rounds of litigation to ensure her daughter got a birth certificate without the father's name.
- Mathumitha was separated from her husband Charan Raj by mutual consent, and Tavishi was born in April 2017 through intrauterine fertility treatment with the help of a semen donor.
- The Trichy Corporation commissioner, however, issued a certificate showing one Manish Madanpal Meena as the child's 'father', as he had helped Mathumitha during her treatment. When she approached authorities seeking removal of Meena's name, it was rejected on the ground that errors in a name could only be rectified, while removal was not possible.
- Assailing the September 4, 2017 order, Mathumitha moved the HC, which directed revenue officials to rectify the certificate. But her application to the revenue divisional officer was rejected again on the ground that it was the registrar of births and deaths which was the competent authority to settle the issue.
- Mathumitha approached the court again, where her counsel argued that Meena's name had "erroneously crept" into the certificate.
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- Jammu and Kashmir Governor, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and Union Ministers Nitin Gadkari and Jitendra Singh were present on the occasion. The project has been built by the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation in north Kashmir’s Bandipora district. It has been constructed at a cost of 5200 crore rupees.
- It is expected to generate 1,713 million units of electricity per annum. Jammu and Kashmir would get 12 percent of power from the project. PM Modi also laid the foundation stone of the ring road project in Srinagar. This will boost connectivity with Bandipora, Uri and Ganderbal.
- Earlier, PM Modi laid the foundation stone of Zojila Tunnel, providing all-weather connectivity between Srinagar, Kargil, and Leh.The Zojila pass will be Asia's longest bi-directional tunnel. It is situated at an altitude of 11,578 feet on Srinagar-Kargil-Leh National Highway which remains closed during winters.
- Addressing the gathering in Leh, PM Modi said, Jammu and Kashmir is going to get development projects worth 25,000 crore rupees. He said these projects will have a positive impact on the people of the state.
- PM Modi said, there is great scope for agricultural growth across the state. He said Jammu and Kashmir can play a key role in holistic healthcare.
- The Prime Minister also attended the closing ceremony of the birth centenary celebrations of the 19th Kushok Bakula Rinpoche. He said the Buddhist leader distinguished himself as an outstanding diplomat. PM Modi said, during his Mongolia visit, he witnessed the goodwill Bakula Rinpoche has in that country.
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- After Russia, China and US, India has decided to include Artificial Intelligence in its defence forces with an aim to enhance the operational preparedness of the armed forces.
- Speaking to the news agency ANI, Ajay Kumar, Defence Secretary (Production), Ministry of Defence said that a task force has been set up under the chairmanship of Tata Sons chairman N. Chandrasekaran to finalise the specifics and framework of the project.
- "Artificial Intelligence is going to influence everything in the future, our common lives also including it also going to affect the future warfare. Most of the major countries in the world are taking steps to ensure that their defence systems are fully empowered by the use of Artificial Intelligence. In India, we have also taken steps in this direction," Kumar said.
- The project to equip defence forces with Artificial Intelligence, includes the representation from all defence forces or Defence Research and Development (DRDO) labs, government, BEL, experts, professionals and startups.
- "This multi-stakeholder group is looking at what are the kinds of requirements," Kumar said.He further said that India has a fairly strong IT industry base which will become the biggest strength in terms of developing Artificial Intelligence capabilities.
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- Asian, Arab, and women filmmakers scored big at the closing ceremony of the 71st Cannes Film Festival, while Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda took home the top prize the Palme d'Or.
- Kore-eda, in the festival's main competition for the fifth time, won the Palme d'Or for 'Manbiki Kazoku' (Shoplifters), a deeply felt film about a cobbled-up family existing on the margins of society and fighting to prevent itself from imploding.
- Kore-eda is only the second Asian Palme d'Or winner this millennium (after Thailand's Apichatpong Weerasethakul for 'Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives', 2010).
- This is the seventh time that a director from Asia has bagged the coveted trophy. Spike Lee's engaging, feisty anti-racism period drama 'BlacKkKansman', the true story of an African-American police detective who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado Springs in the 1970s, won the Grand Prix, while Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki's neorealist Beirut street life tale Capharnaum earned the Jury Prize.
- The Best Director prize went to Poland's Pawel Pawlikowski for the wonderfully well-crafted black-and-white 'Cold War', a 1950s story of impossible love between a music composer and a gifted singer, two strong-willed individuals from dissimilar backgrounds drawn to each other amid disruptions caused by history.
- On 16MAy, in the parallel Cannes Critics' Week, the Franco-Indian co-production 'Sir', directed by debutante Rohena Gera, had won the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution. The film's principal characters ? a wealthy young Mumbai man and his efficient, ambitious housemaid are played by Vivek Gomber and Tillotama Shome.
- The section's top prize, the Grand Prix, went to the Brazilian comedy-drama Diamantino, about a footballer whose life is upended by an error in a crucial World Cup final and the death of his father.
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- MIT scientists have designed a robotic glider that can skim along the water's surface, riding the wind like an albatross while also surfing the waves like a sailboat.
- In regions of high wind, the robot is designed to stay aloft, much like its avian counterpart. Where there are calmer winds, the robot can dip a keel into the water to ride like a highly efficient sailboat instead. The robotic system, which borrows from both nautical and biological designs, can cover a given distance using one-third as much wind as an albatross and travelling 10 times faster than a typical sailboat.
- The glider is also relatively lightweight, weighing about 6 pounds. The researchers hope that in the near future, such compact, speedy robotic water-skimmers may be deployed in teams to survey large swaths of the ocean. "The oceans remain vastly undermonitored," said Gabriel Bousquet, a former postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US.
- In a previous study, researchers decoded the dynamics of albatross flight and identified the mechanics that enable the tireless traveller to cover vast distances while expending minimal energy. The key to the bird's marathon voyages is its ability to ride in and out of high- and low-speed layers of air.
- Researchers found the bird is able to perform a mechanical process called a "transfer of momentum," in which it takes momentum from higher, faster layers of air, and by diving down transfers that momentum to lower, slower layers, propelling itself without having to continuously flap its wings.
- They observed that the physics of albatross flight is very similar to that of sailboat travel. Both the albatross and the sailboat transfer momentum in order to keep moving.
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- The malign shadow of US sanctions hangs over the informal summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on 21May, with New Delhi becoming a cat’s paw not only in the scrap between Washington and Moscow, but also in the turf war between the White House and Congress.
- Although India has asserted that it will not allow any third country to dictate its ties with Russia, the so-called Caatsa (Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act) legislation has become Washington’s poison-tipped arrow threatening New Delhi’s long-cherished and long-nourished defence ties with Moscow which Washington is trying to whittle down.
- While assuring New Delhi that it will do its best to avert the Congress-mandated sanctions against countries that have cozy ties with Russia, the Trump administration, pleading that its hands are tied by tough waiver conditions, is also using it to wean countries such as India away from the Russian arms industry to sell more American weapons.
- In India’s case, the immediate efforts are aimed at nixing New Delhi’s plans to buy five S-400 Triumf air defence systems for around $4.5 billion from Russia, a prospective deal that is expected to be part of the India-Russia defence cooperation talks that will also take into account the Caatsa wrinkle and how to get around it.
- On the weekend before his departure to Sochi, Modi tweeted that he is "confident the talks with President Putin will further strengthen the Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership between India and Russia," indicating his determination to get around the roadblock set up by Washington, with which too New Delhi has an increasingly close defence ties. The US wants an even closer relationship.
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