Prelims 2020: Places in News Part-3

Lothal

A National Maritime Heritage Museum will be established at Lothal in Gujarat.

• The museum will act as an independent research centre for the archaeology of boat building, reconstruction of maritime history and materials traded.
• It will hold a display of salvaged materials from shipwreck sites in Indian Ocean waters.
• According to the ASI, Lothal had the world's earliest known dock, which connected the city to an ancient course of the Sabarmati river on the trade route between Harappan cities in Sindh and the peninsula of Saurashtra when the surrounding Kutch desert of today was a part of the Arabian Sea.

Kulasekarapattinam

Union Government is planning to set up a new rocket launchpad here.

At present, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has two launch pads at Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDCC) in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.

• Kulasekharapatnam was an ancient port dating to the 1st centuries AD and was contemporaneous to the existence of Kollam, Cheran Port, another Pandyan port.
• Kollam served the Pandyas on the west coast while Kulasekharapatnam served them on the east coast connecting them to Ceylon and the pearl fisheries in the Gulf of Mannar facing the Tirunelveli Coast.

Chenani-Nashri tunnel 

The Chenani-Nashri tunnel, the longest tunnel in Jammu and Kashmir, will be renamed after Bharatiya Jana Sangh founder Shyama Prasad Mukherjee.

• This tunnel links Kashmir Valley with Jammu by an all-weather route.
• This 9 km long, twin-tube, all-weather tunnel between Udhampur and Ramban in Jammu & Kashmir is not only India’s longest highways tunnel but also Asia’s longest bi-directional highways tunnel.
• Built at an elevation of 1200 metres on one of the most difficult Himalayan terrains, the tunnel cuts the travel time between Jammu and Srinagar by two hours, bypassing about 41 km of road length.
• It also ensures an all-weather passage on a route that often sees heavy traffic jams and disruptions due to landslides, snow, sharp curves, breakdown of vehicles and accidents.
• The tunnel is a part of the 286-km-long four-laning of the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway (NH 44). 
• The tunnel has an efficient, transverse ventilation system. 
• There is also a fully-integrated control system with ventilation, communication, power supply, incident detection, SOS call box, and fire fighting.
• Fitted with intelligent traffic mechanisms, the tunnel has fully automatic smart control and no human intervention will be required for its operations.
• The tunnel is also equipped with advanced scanners to ward off any security threat.
• Very few tunnels in the world have this kind of fully integrated tunnel control.

Great Barrier Reef

Australia has downgraded the outlook for the Great Barrier Reef to ‘very poor’ for the first time.

• With almost 3,000 individual reefs, 900 islands, located off Australia’s East Coast, it is the largest coral reef in the world.
• It is home to an incredible diversity of species and home to a wide range of life, including fish, sea turtles, giant clam, seahorse, sea snakes, nudibranch, sea turtles, stingray, sharks and many more.
• The Great Barrier Reef has experienced two mass coral bleaching events in 1998 and 2002.
• Bleaching was more severe in 2002 when aerial surveys showed that over 50% of reefs experienced some coral bleaching.
• If the condition of the Great Barrier Reef continues declining, it may lose its world heritage status.

Victoria Falls

Zimbabwe’s president unveiled the “National Tourism Recovery and Growth Strategy,” at the breathtaking Victoria Falls, for green sustainable tourism development. 

• Victoria Falls, located on the Zambezi River, at the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, is the largest waterfall in the world, measuring 1708 metres wide and 108 metres high.
• The falls are also referred to as “The Smoke that Thunders” and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• The flow of Victoria Falls has been reduced to a trickle due to the severe droughts in the southern African region since October 2018.

Chabahar Port

The port project along Iran’s southern coast in the Sistan-Baluchistan province has been a part of discussions between New Delhi and Tehran since their first agreement to develop it, in 2003.

• Located on the Gulf of Oman and is the only oceanic port of the country.
• The Chabahar project ties India and Iran together as New Delhi deals with its difficult neighbour to the west, Pakistan.
• A major trade and connectivity hub on Iran’s coast gives India an alternative route to Afghanistan, bypassing Pakistan. 
• It also has the potential to provide an Indian strategic counter to Pakistan’s Gwadar port being developed by China right next door to Chabahar.
• Over the years, the Chabahar project has grown, and now envisages a port, a free trade zone, the 628-km railway line to Zahedan, and then the little over the 1,000-km track to Sarakhs on the border with Turkmenistan.

 Hong Kong

On 30 June, China’s top legislature unanimously passed a new national security law for Hong Kong that entered into force in the territory the same day, just before midnight. The law is dangerously vague and broad: virtually anything could be deemed a threat to “national security” under its provisions, and it can apply to anyone on the planet.

• Hong Kong, officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (HKSAR), is a metropolitan area and special administrative region of China.
• Hong Kong is situated on China's southern coast, 60 km east of Macau, on the east side of the mouth of the Pearl River estuary.
• It is surrounded by the South China Sea on all sides except the north. 

Taal volcano

The volcano erupted recently causing threats to lives and livelihoods.

• It is a volcano on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.
• It is classified as a “complex” volcano.
• A complex volcano, also called a compound volcano, is defined as one that consists of a complex of two or more vents, or a volcano that has an associated volcanic dome, either in its crater or on its flanks.
• Volcanologists warn a bigger eruption could be yet to come- but no one can predict when, or if, it will explode or settle back down.

 Z Morh tunnel

Work on the Z-Morh tunnel, part of a strategic project for ensuring round-the-year connectivity between Kashmir valley and Ladakh region, is being undertaken on a war footing and it will be completed by June 2021.

• Z-Morh Tunnel is a road tunnel project and is the first step toward ensuring all-weather connectivity between Srinagar and Kargil in the Ladakh region of India.
• The tunnel gets its name from the Z shape of the road that it will replace between Sonamarg and Gagangir.
• The 6.5 km long road tunnel is being constructed near Gagangir or Gagangair in Ganderbal district of the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. 
• The tunnel would avoid the regions of snowfall and avalanches.
• Along with Zoji La tunnel (which is 22 km from Z-Morh tunnel towards Leh), the Z-Morh tunnel will ensure year-long road connectivity between Srinagar and Kargil which currently remains closed for about seven months due to snow.
• The tunnel is capable of allowing 1,000 vehicles an hour at a speed of 80 km per hour.