Diamer-Bhasha affectees provided mobile health unit - The Express Tribune

Unit will serve as a facili­ty for people residi­ng in diffic­ult-to-reach areas. The mobile health unit, comprising a four wheel drive ambulance and all necessary medical instruments, was handed over by Wapda

LAHORE: The Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) has provided a state-of-the-art mobile health unit to affectees of the Diamer-Bhasha Dam Project. The unit will serve as an expanded medical facility to people residing in difficult-to-reach areas adjacent to the project.

The mobile health unit, comprising a four wheel drive ambulance and all necessary medical instruments, was handed over by Wapda Chairman Shakil Durrani to project authorities here at Wapda House today.

Speaking on the occasion, the Chairman said the mobile health unit, in addition to existing health facilities in the area, will prove instrumental in the treatment of ailing individuals in the Diamer district of Gilgit-Baltistan and the Kohistan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Besides providing civic amenities to affectees of the project under a compensation package chalked out in accordance with standards laid down by international donors and financial institutions, Wapda will also upgrade District Headquarters Hospitals at Chilas, Gilgat and Skardu, he added. The chairman expressed satisfaction over the setting up of Wapda medical camps in the project area.

The Diamer-Bhasha Dam Project was formally initiated by the Prime Minister in October last year after the Council of Common Interest unanimously approved the project. For the $12 billion project, the land acquisition process is in progress; while 13 contracts for construction of Wapda offices, colonies, contractors’ camps, roads and infrastructure in the project area have already been awarded.

The Diamer-Bhasha Dam is a multi-purpose project which aims to store water for irrigation, mitigate flooding and generate low-cost environment-friendly hydel power. On completion, the project will store 8.1 million acre feet of water, besides generating 4500 megawatts of electricity. The project will add about 20 billion units of electricity annually to the national grid. Annual benefits of the project have been estimated at about $2.3 billion.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 15th, 2012.

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China's mobile phone users exceed 1b - China Daily

BEIJING - Chinese citizens are increasingly relying on mobile phones as a primary method of communication, according to data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Friday.

The number of mobile phone users in China increased by 32.57 million to 1.02 billion in the first quarter of this year, the ministry said.

Of the mobile phone users, the number of subscribers to third-generation services expanded by 23.64 million to 152.06 million during the period.

Meanwhile, fixed-line subscribers dropped by 1.08 million in the first three months.

The business revenues of the country's telecommunications industry rose by 10.2 percent year-on-year to 250.5 billion yuan ($39.76 billion) during the period. The rise was 0.8 percentage points higher than the growth rate registered in 2011.

During the period, the industry's service prices dropped 6.1 percent from a year earlier, with fixed-line services and mobile services down 4.6 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively.

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LA Times Taliban photos and mobile technology in the battlefield, drones and ... - Washington Post (blog)

Following the photos in the LA Times of soldiers in Afghanistan with dead Taliban members, CNAS’ Andrew Exum writes about how the U.S. military will be forced to deal with mobile technology on the battlefield. (Bloomberg)

“In February, President Obama signed into law a reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that requires the agency — on a fairly rapid schedule — to write rules opening U.S. airspace to unmanned aerial vehicles. This puts the FAA at the center of a potentially dramatic set of policy changes that stand to usher in a long list of direct and indirect benefits. But the FAA is not a privacy agency. And although real privacy concerns have arisen about these aircraft, asking the agency to take on the role of privacy czar for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) would be a mistake,” write Ben Wittes and John Villasenor. (Washington Post)

“TARP and related interventions by the Federal Reserve helped reactivate credit markets long before they would have recovered on their own, helped to stabilize the housing market, helped save the U.S. auto industry and helped prevent recession from morphing into something worse. And they did so for far less than early estimates and prior rescues had suggested were possible,” writes Center on Budget and Policy Priorities scholar Jared Bernstein. (Washington Post)

AEI’s Jonah Goldberg on the art of the political distraction. (National Review)

Politico’s Arena asks: Can presidential dog taunts be brought to heel? Brookings’ Darrell West answers.

Room for Debate asks: Is prostitution safer when it’s legal? (New York Times)

Spring cleaning: Tom Ricks says to throw out the all-volunteer military. (Washington Post)

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