Netsol Water Solutions

GUWAHATI: NGO Jana Jagriti, which has been spearheading a campaign against construction of dams in the upper reaches of Brahmaputra by China, has said the agreement recently signed between Indian and China on exchanging hydrological information is a mere "renewal" of an already existing pact between the two countries. Jana Jagriti president Ashok Singhal on Friday claimed an agreement on exchanging hydrological data was signed five years ago, which would have expired on June 4 this year. "No new agreements or MoUs have been signed to address the concerns of the people of the Northeast. The government has failed to get any assurance from China on India's concerns over diversion of Brahmaputra water in China," he said. Jana Jagriti claims China has planned 39 hydel projects on Brahmaputra in Tibet region, where the river is called Tsangpo. The NGO also claims to have information about the location of the dams planned by Beijing, but refused to reveal the source

TOKYO: Three Chinese government ships remained in the waters off disputed Tokyo-controlled islands for nearly 12 hours on Monday, Japan's coastguard said, as a long-running row shows no sign of fading. Maritime surveillance vessels were spotted in the 12-nautical-mile zone off the Senkaku islands, which China calls the Diaoyus, in the East China Sea shortly after 9:00 am, the coastguard said. They left the zone shortly before 9:00 pm. It is the latest episode in a fraught few months which have seen repeated stand-offs between official ships from both sides as they jostle over ownership of the strategically-important and resource-rich islands. In a separate maritime incident in the East China Sea, a foreign submarine was spotted sailing underwater near Kume, one of Japan's Okinawan islands, from late Sunday to early Monday, the dfence ministry said. The submarine was thought to be Chinese, Japanese media said. It sailed close to 12-nautical-mile territorial waters off Kume,