Indian National Bird

The Indian peacock, Pavo cristatus, the national bird of India, is a colourful, swan-sized bird, with a fan-shaped crest of feathers, a white patch under the eye and a long, slender neck. The male of the species is more colourful than the female, with a glistening blue breast and neck and a spectacular bronze-green train of around 200 elongated feathers. The female is brownish, slightly smaller than the male and lacks the train. The elaborate courtship dance of the male, fanning out the tail and preening its feathers is a gorgeous sight.

Our Oceans Are In Trouble:

What is the state of the ocean today?

It's actually very bad. It's probably worse in many ways than the state of conservation on land, but we don't think about it because we don't live in it.

Basically it comes down to what we put into the atmosphere and ocean and what we take out of the ocean. What we put into the atmosphere is carbon dioxide, which makes the ocean hotter. And when it dissolves in the oceans themselves, it makes them more acidic. From the land, you're getting all this runoff into the oceans—vast amounts of nutrients associated with excess fertilizer, pesticides, industrial waste, waste from cars and city streets. There's a lot of stuff that fertilizes the ocean and causes bacteria and other slimy stuff to proliferate, plus things that actually poison the ocean.

We also have the massive scale of fisheries. We're pulling out the tops of the food chain. Most of the big fish in the ocean are already gone. We've also strip-mined the bottom of the sea floor with trawls.We've basically created a massive disturbance to the ocean, which is resulting in collapsing ecosystems, failing fisheries, toxic blooms.

When did scientists realize the damage we're causing the ocean?

In the last 50 years, things have really deteriorated. People have had some impact for a long time, but the ocean can suffer a certain amount of assault from human activity and not have a major problem with it. Now everything is increasing. Carbon dioxide is increasing dramatically. Industrial fisheries, since about the 1950s, have increased dramatically.

BBC plans to double its output made in Wales

THE BBC last night announced ambitious plans to double the proportion of network productions made in Wales, with Crimewatch coming to Cardiff in 2011 and Casualty likely to follow a year later.Coming just a week after ITV’s decision to slash programme making in Wales, the news is a welcome boost for the broadcasting industry.

In a speech to the Royal Television Society last night, BBC executive Jana Bennett also announced that, for the very first time, a network commissioning executive will be based in Cardiff to help build on the success of the independent production sector.The shifting of resources to Wales ties in with the BBC’s commitment to better reflect the diversity of creative talent around the UK.

In 2006 and 2007 the proportion of spend outside London increased by 15%. Last year the BBC, affectionately known as Auntie, spent £300m outside London.Ms Bennett’s announcement was said to represent the corporation’s determination to build a large-scale, sustainable production centre in Wales, focused on drama, factual and music content.It would enable BBC Wales and its partners in the independent sector to build on the success of existing network programmes such as Doctor Who and Torchwood.

NASA Space Probe to Fly Over Mercury, Closest Planet to Sun:


A U.S. spacecraft will fly over Mercury next week to photograph the planet closest to the sun, in the second of three passes, NASA said.

The Messenger probe will take more than 1,200 pictures and collect data from the smallest planet in the solar system when it swings 125 miles (200 kilometers) above Mercury's cratered surface on Oct. 6, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said a statement on its Web site yesterday.

The 2,442-pound (1,107 kilogram) probe is due to pass the planet three times before settling into orbit in March 2011, NASA said. Messenger was launched in August 2004 at a cost of $286 million. It first flew past in January and will make its final pass in September 2009.

``The results from Messenger's first flyby of Mercury resolved debates that are more than 30 years old,'' Sean Solomon, the mission's principle investigator from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said in the statement. ``The second encounter will uncover even more information about the planet.''

The spacecraft is more than halfway through a 4.9 billion- mile journey that includes more than 15 trips around the sun before entering orbit around Mercury, NASA said. The probe is designed to improve scientists' understanding of how Earth, Venus and Mars were formed, and their interactions with the sun.

The January flyby showed that volcanic eruptions produced many of Mercury's plains and that its magnetic field appears to be generated in a molten iron core, according to the space agency.

The second flyby may bring more information about the particles located around the planet's magnetic field, according to NASA, which said the probe will also chart Mercury's topography.

has a diameter of about 3,000 miles, less than half the diameter of Earth and is 36 million miles from the sun.

Before Messenger, the only other craft to visit Mercury was Mariner 10, which passed the planet three times in 1974 and 1975.