Skybus crash
	Everyone in Goa had waited expectantly for the Union Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav to dedicate the Konkan Railway Corporation’s Skybus Project to the nation on October 15, on the occasion of KRC’s foundation day.
However, on the very second trail run the KRC’s dream project was involved in a serious accident, killing a worker, T Babu, and injuring three others, on September 25, when one of the 15 people in the skybus prototype panicked and applied the brakes abruptly on a 16-degree curve while the machine was running at over 50 kmps. Due to the impact, the doors jerked open and Babu was flung out of the prototype from a height of about ten metres, when it crashed on column number 12. KRC Managing Director, B Rajaram, described the incident as

Verodiano award for Alexyz

The ‘Vincent Xavier Verodiano Award’ for the year 2004 has been conferred jointly on two founders of Jan Ugahi (Greg da Costa and Bernie de Souza), Goa’s ace cartoonist Alexyz and educationist Vaijayanti Prabhugaonkar. The cash value of this award is Rs.one lakh. Instituted in 1989 by Dom Martin, the objective of the award is “to promote the well-being of mankind through individual advancement in the field of art, music, science, medicine or humanities.

Lambert’s 90th birthday
Lambert Mascarenhas, the outspoken writer, thinker, freedom fighter and journalist, turned 90 on September 17. “The contributory factor to my reaching 90 is the exercise that I have been taking right from the age of 16 – from a set of exercise that I had bought from one Krishna Rao from Ooty,” he says. To him, the happier days of his life was when his book “Sorrowing Lies My Land” was published; the day when Goa was liberated on 19 December 1961 and ten day later when he got married on 29 December. “In fact, I had promised myself that unless Goa was liberated I would not get married, and that’s why I got married at the age of 42,” he said.

People against oppose mobile tower erection
Locals at several places in Salcette appear to be perturbed by the proliferation of mobile towers, which they claim cause environmental pollution due to harmful radiation. After Navelim, Cuncolim, Maddel and Curtorim, residents of Benaulim have now been protesting strongly against the erection of a mobile tower at Mazilvaddo in a residential locality. In a signed memorandum addressed to the Benaulim panchayat, the residents demanded that the panchayat body seek immediate clarification from the Goa government as well as the Union Ministry of Environment in the matter of pollution caused due to harmful radiation of mobile towers.

Deficient rainfall
With only ten days for the monsoon season to end, it appears that the seasonal total of the rainfall received this year may fall short of the normal count. While rainfall above 80 inches is considered as normal, the last showers in the city till Saturday (Sept 18) brought the season total to 1789.8 mm (only 71.1 inches) but the sources at the Weather Observatory, Altinho said the average may just reach the near normal mark but that depends on the trend during the next few days. While the total rainfall has always crossed the 2,000 mm mark for at least a decade and a half, this season may end up as the poorest one for many years.

Prof Olivinho’s Book
The National Book Trust, New Delhi, has published among 11 other titles, a book on Goa under the land and the people series of the Trust, authored by professor Olivinho Gomes, ex-vice-chancellor of Goa University. The book is an encyclopedic narrative of information covering physical environment, history, social fabric, economic order, religion and ritual, administration, feasts and festivals, language, literature and folklore, cultural heritage including music, art, architecture in religious and civil spheres, and a galaxy of achievements of Goans in all spheres of human endeavour. The book has 370 pages of text and 19 colour photographs, and is priced at Rs.110. It is available in all the leading bookstalls in Goa.

Fewer shacks this year
Shacks on the beach are a popular feature of Goa’s tourism. The Tourism department, however, seems to be worried about the proliferation of shacks, and only 228 shacks are proposed to be set up along the coastal belt as against last year’s figure of 282. A little known fact is that on the second day, when the application forms were put up for sale, there was a beeline from prospective shack owners and as many as 410 forms were sold at a price of Rs.500 each.