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More couples adopting family planning measures
- The total number of family planning acceptors in the country has increased by 3.5 per cent between 2010 and 2011.
- Condom is the most preferred method of family planning
- Sterilisations the least adopted means.
- Spacing methods is also adopting by number of couples for family planning, including
- Oral pill too has being used
- IUD (intrauterine device) insertions has being used by women.
- Of the total sterilisations conducted, vasectomy (male sterilisation) comprised only 4.2 per cent.
- Only Sikkim had 35 per cent men undergoing vasectomy while in the neighbouring Mizoram and Nagaland no vasectomy seems to have been done and in Arunachal Pradesh just three.
- Bihar has shown an unbelievable jump of 92 per cent between 2010 and 2011 in sterilisations, 61 per cent in IUD users, 49 per cent in condom users and 71 per cent in oral pill users.
- Compare this with Jharkhand, which has shown an overall decline in all methods used for family planning.
- Karnataka too has shown an all-round decline
- Considering the number of unsterilised couples as the base for family planning methods, the performance in sterilisations per 10,000 unsterilised couples exposed to higher order of birth (3 and above), Tamil Nadu has shown the best performance at 1,834 sterilisations followed by Karnataka (1,197)
- India average of 315 sterilisations per 10,000 unsterilised couples.
- But rather strangely, there are fewer takers of free condoms distributed by the government whereas the quantum of condoms sold by the commercial companies increased by 32.7 per cent.
GI tag to boost Darjeeling tea exports
- Darjeeling tea exports are set to increase by volume and value, following its registration as a protected geographical indication (PGI) product from India.
- The industry closed 2011 by registering a 10 per cent increase in total Darjeeling tea exports.
- Darjeeling Tea was the first Indian product to be recognised by the European Union as a protected GI.
- The unique ‘muscatel' flavour of the Darjeeling teas is preferred by tea-drinkers across the EU, which now accounts for 60 per cent of exports of Darjeeling tea.
- Germany and Japan are some of the most lucrative markets for Darjeeling tea, although the U.S. too is emerging as an important market riding on the wellness-beverage plank that many companies were positioning tea on.
Mars probe fragments crash into Pacific Ocean:
- Russia believes fragments of its Phobos-Grunt probe, which spiralled back to the Earth after failing to head on a mission to Mars, crashed on Sunday into the Pacific Ocean
- A Russian probe designed to travel to a moon of Mars but got stuck in Earth orbi
- A large part of each orbit is over water, and scientists have estimated that the risks of the probe crashing into any populated areas are minimal.
- Phobos-Grunt is one of the heaviest pieces of space junk ever to fall on Earth, and one of the most toxic too.
