The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) and the Organisation for Economic Co operation and Development (OECD) invite representatives of local and regional authorities across Europe to participate in a survey on the Sustainable Development Goals. The consultation is open until Friday 15 May 2021.
US follows Europe as church membership falls below 50 percent
Americans seem to be following the pattern of Europeans and going to places of worship less and less and becoming more secular.
The proportion of Americans who consider themselves members of a church, synagogue or mosque has dropped below 50 percent, a Gallup poll released March 29 found.
It is the first time that has happened since Gallup first asked the question in 1937, when church membership was 73 percent.
Americans’ membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50 percent for the first time in Gallup’s eight-decade trend.
In 2020, 47 percent of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50 percent in 2018 and 70 percent in 1999.
“In recent years, research data has shown a seismic shift in the U.S. population away from religious institutions and toward general disaffiliation, a trend that analysts say could have major implications for politics, business and how Americans group themselves,” The Washington Post reported.
In 2020, 47 percent of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque.
The polling firm also found that the number of people who said religion was very important to them has fallen to 48 percent, a new low point in the polling since 2000.
When Gallup first measured in 1937, U.S. church membership was 73 percent and remained near 70 percent for the next six decades, before beginning a steady decline around the turn of the 21st century.
Gallup said that as many Americans celebrate Easter and Passover this week, it was updating a 2019 analysis that examined the decline in church membership over the past 20 years.
Gallup said it asks Americans a series of questions on their religious attitudes and practices twice each year.
It found that church membership is strongly correlated with age, as 66 percent of traditionalists, or U.S. adults born before 1946, belong to a church.
That compared with 58 percent of baby boomers, 50 percent of those in Generation X, the generation of Americans born between the mid-1960s and the early-1980s. and 36 percent of millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996.
“The U.S. remains a religious nation, with more than seven in 10 affiliating with some type of organized religion,” the Gallup report says.
“However, far fewer, now less than half, have a formal membership with a specific house of worship.
“While it is possible that part of the decline seen in 2020 was temporary and related to the coronavirus pandemic, continued decline in future decades seems inevitable, given the much lower levels of religiosity and church membership among younger versus older generations of adults.”
THE RELIGION CORNER: The Spook Who Knocked at the Door
We must keep going through the storms of life. Let’s take a look at what happened down there in Georgia at the State House. The police arrested State Rep. Park Cannon, once she catches her breath, this could be her Rosa Parks moment.
This incident reminded me of the movie entitled The Spook Who Sat by the Door, a movie that was pulled from theaters for various reasons. A movie made during the 1970s, about group empowerment for change, it had a message that many didn’t think people wanted a wider audience to hear in the ’70s, especially at the high point of the Black Power movement.
Sounds very much like what just happened at the State House in Georgia, when Gov. Kemp was surrounded by his boys, all wearing black suits, with the Callaway Mansion painting as the centerpiece. A mansion which represents a slave plantation where the family owned hundreds of slaves. Research shows the mansion, with slave houses in the woods, hidden from sight. Yet that painting was purposely used.
In searching for the definition of the word spook, several definitions show up, for example, to spook a horse, is when the horse acts aggressively out of fear; or it talked about ghosts; then there was this use, when the word ‘spook’ is often referring to an offensive slang word, used as a disparaging term for a Black person. This is the one that fits.
Let us remember the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on this weekend, as we remember he was shot and killed on April 4, 1968, 53 years ago. In his letter from the Birmingham Jail, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Let me be correct as a journalist, and quote NBC News who reported this story on Friday, March 26, 2021, that Georgia state troopers arrested Democratic state Rep. Park Cannon on Thursday after she knocked on Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s statehouse office door as he signed a controversial elections bill into law in a closed-door ceremony.
Video of the incident shows Cannon being handcuffed after she knocked on Kemp’s door. All she wanted to do was to give argument for transparency of the bill signing. She was then forcibly removed from the state Capitol by two officers and surrounded by more while repeatedly identifying herself as a legislator, and was placed into a police car, and charged with two felonies.
My prayer for Rep. Cannon is that she will utilize this national moment, and continue to tell our story. Scripture tells us, in the book of Matthew 7:7-9. It says “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.”
Rep. Cannon did knock, but was treated as if she was indeed the spook who knocked on the door! With more than forty states changing voter laws, nationally, we all must get on board to help get HR1 passed, which is the John Lewis Voting Rights Bill.
According to Roll Call, it said, “Already in 2021, more than 250 bills in 43 states have been introduced by Republican state legislators that create more unnecessary barriers to voting. From cutting early voting, to increasing purges of voter registration lists, to limiting absentee voting options, these bills are shameless, partisan attempts to silence us.” And the list goes on and on.
Let us stay focused, remain vigilant, and we must get this voting mess straightened out. Don’t let them take us back to Reconstruction, which happened right after the Emancipation Proclamation, but when too many Black men got elected to the House and the Senate, then came Jim Crow! That’s where we are, folks.
Lyndia Grant is a speaker/writer living in the D.C. area. Her radio show, “Think on These Things,” airs Fridays at 6 p.m. on 1340 AM (WYCB), a Radio One station. To reach Grant, visit her website, www.lyndiagrant.com, email [email protected] or call 240-602-6295. Follow her on Twitter @LyndiaGrant and on Facebook.
European Union official sounds alarm over threats to Great Barrier Reef
A senior European Union official has sounded the alarm over the rapid decline of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef while backing calls for all countries to make more ambitious cuts to greenhouse gas emissions.
The EU’s commissioner for environment, oceans and fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevičius, told Guardian Australia he was deeply concerned by the threats facing the Great Barrier Reef. “As long as we do not change our behaviours, things will not improve,” he said.
Sinkevičius hopes Australia will sign up to the 84-country Leaders’ Pledge for Nature – a document that calls for a “green and just” recovery from the Covid-19 crisis and stronger political will to act against the “crises of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation and climate change”.
The leaders’ pledge backs the objective of achieving net zero emissions by 2050. That is a target the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has said is his preference, but he has resisted making a formal commitment amid divisions within his government over climate policy.
Sinkevičius spoke to Guardian Australia after the EU joined the International Coral Reef Initiative, a grouping of countries and organisations that aims to preserve coral reefs and related ecosystems. Australia was one of eight governments that co-founded the initiative in 1994.
“I am deeply concerned by the threats facing the Great Barrier Reef,” Sinkevičius said. “Perhaps no coral reef on the planet is better known, certainly here in Europe, than the Great Barrier Reef.”
Sinkevičius said coral reefs in general, and the Great Barrier Reef in particular, were “emblematic of rich marine life”.
“Yet the rapid degradation of these beautiful and essential underwater worlds is also a very stark reminder of the pressures that human activity is placing on our shared planet, not least our oceans,” he said.
“Coral reefs are under threat because of our activity as humans, our unsustainable ways of living, producing and consuming. As long as we do not change our behaviours, things will not improve. This is in our hands, and we must seize responsibility and rectify these negative impacts.”
The world heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system but is under increasing pressure from climate heating that caused mass bleaching events in 2016, 2017 and 2020. A government report card released in February found the marine environment along the coastline remained in poor health.
Asked whether concerns about the Great Barrier Reef should help motivate all countries to increase the level of ambition in their greenhouse gas reduction commitments, Sinkevičius said: “I would hope so.”
He said the European Commission’s European Green Deal included a pledge to make Europe the first carbon-neutral continent by 2050 – a goal he described as “ambitious, yet one that is absolutely necessary”.
Sinkevičius said he had been “happy to see its wider impact in engagements with partners around the world” and had been pleased to see that China and the US had set deadlines for net zero emissions – 2060 and 2050, respectively.
But he said it was “also important to acknowledge that our emissions have already had an impact on climate”.
“Such impact will continue for decades, even if global and European efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions prove effective. Hence substantial adaptation efforts are therefore still required. Our cooperation in the International Coral Reef Initiative and other fora will remain essential in this regard.”
Sinkevičius said the EU looked forward to close cooperation with Australia, currently a co-chair of the reef initiative.
He said the EU was already working with Australia on research initiatives, including providing at least €280m ($432m) over three years to a project led by the Institut de recherche pour le développement in France.
The project, in partnership with the Australian Institute of Marine Science, is examining the genetic response of corals to ocean warming.
Sinkevičius said the EU and Australia were “longstanding supporters of conserving the unique ecosystems and rich marine biodiversity of the Southern Ocean, including the reefs of cold-water corals and seamounts that form key habitats for an array of creatures found nowhere else on Earth”.
The commissioner called for an ambitious agreement on a post-2020 global biodiversity framework at the next meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15), due to be held in October in the Chinese city of Kunming.
The EU is pressing for “ambitious, and where feasible, measurable and time-bound targets to effectively address the drivers of biodiversity loss”.
Sinkevičius said the EU was “striving for overarching objectives to galvanise support at the highest political level and among the wider public – similar to the 1.5C target for climate change”.
“We are at a turning point, and the upcoming COP15 must be the Paris moment for biodiversity,” he said.
He said the UN Biodiversity Summit held in September “was an important event to build momentum as well as to foster strategies to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic that are green and consistent with climate and biodiversity objectives”.
“The EU invites Australia to join the Leaders’ Pledge for Nature published in September 2020 and already endorsed by 84 countries,” he said, referring to a pledge whose supporters include Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
“In addition, the EU also invites Australia to join the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, which is raising the global ambition to achieve at least 30% protection of land and oceans.”
The High Ambition Coalition, whose members comprise 57 countries or blocs including the UK and France, calls for that goal of protecting at least 30% of world’s land and ocean to be achieved by 2030.
“Mobilising resources ahead of the COP15 will be of key importance and we also count on Australia to join international efforts to ensure adequate support to developing states,” Sinkevičius said.
Australia’s minister for emissions reduction, Angus Taylor, told an international event late on Wednesday that Australia was “firmly committed to getting to net zero as soon as possible and preferably by 2050”.
But, Taylor said, Canberra’s focus was “very much on the ‘how’” of such a transition. The minister pledged $1m towards a clean energy transitions program overseen by the International Energy Agency.
Top EU diplomat calls for stronger Turkish-EU ties
BRUSSELS- Anadolu Agency
The <a title="EU" href="/index/eu">EU</a> foreign policy chief on March 30 called for the building of bridges between the bloc and <a title="Turkey" href="/index/turkey">Turkey</a>.
“The EU has a strategic interest in the development of a cooperative and mutually beneficial relationship with Turkey,” Josep Borrell wrote on his blog dedicated to EU foreign policy.
Referring to last year’s tensions over the Eastern Mediterranean, Borrell said “the situation remains fragile, but the EU welcomes these forthcoming developments and gestures on the part of Turkey and has responded by extending its hand.”
During a virtual summit, EU leaders last week discussed a report on the future of Turkish-EU relations, prepared by Borrell and the European Commission, and decided to continue negotiations on a constructive agenda.
According to Borrell, the economy is one of the most important areas of cooperation since Turkish exports to the EU total €69.8 billion ($81.8 billion) and the country receives €58.5 billion ($68.6 billion) of its foreign direct investment (FDI) from EU countries
4 areas of differences
At the same time, he acknowledged that the bloc and Turkey have tensions over four main questions, namely the Eastern Mediterranean, the Cyprus issue, regional conflicts such as Libya and Syria, and democratic standards.
“The old disputes deeply affect security interests of the European Union and can no longer be considered just bilateral matters between Turkey and some member states,” he argued.
Turkey has resisted efforts by Greece to turn the dispute with Turkey over maritime borders into a dispute with the EU.
He also said “democratic standards remain a key element, not just for the EU, but also for the people in Turkey.”
It is time to overcome the differences in a constructive way, and “to build this bridge,” Borrell suggested, adding: “I believe we can do this.”
Implying the possibility of Turkey’s EU accession, he said: “Turkey is an important regional power and its historical destiny could well be to join the rest of Europe in the unique peace project that we are building under the banner of the European Union.”
Ursula von der Leyen and Charles Michel, the heads of the European Commission and European Council, will visit Turkey next Tuesday to discuss with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the future of Turkish-EU ties.
More climate action needed during ‘make-or-break year’ for people and planet
With countries across the world having agreed through the Paris Agreement to a goal of limiting temperature increases to 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels to mitigate global warming, Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed spelled out at the Climate and Development Ministerial Meeting: “We now need to spare no effort to achieve it in this ‘make-or-break year’”.
‘Moral, economic and social imperative’
She painted a picture of climate financing to Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States at 14 and two per cent respectively; one person in three not adequately covered by early warning systems; and women and girls – who make up 80 per cent of those displaced by the climate emergency – often excluded from decision-making roles.
She said the need to adapt and be resilient, was “a moral, economic and social imperative”, pointing out that it receives just one-fifth of total climate finance. She said “we cannot wait until 2030 or 2050 to rectify these failings”.
Year of action
The UN has identified five concrete and achievable actions to help countries throughout the year respond to the climate emergency and “secure the breakthrough that the Secretary-General has called for”, said the Deputy UN chief.
Firstly, donors need to increase their financial support to climate adaptation by least 50 per cent by June, when the United Kingdom hosts the G7 Summit of industrialized countries, followed by national and multilateral development banks once the UN climate conference (COP26) convenes in November.
Access to climate support must be “streamlined, transparent and simplified”, especially for the most vulnerable and for a “significant scale-up” of existing financial instruments designed to handle disasters, along with new instruments to “incentivize resilience-building”.
Next, the deputy UN chief said that developing countries needed to have the tools at their disposal to embed climate risk in all planning, budget, and procurement strategies.
“Risk information is the critical first step for risk reduction, transfer and management”, she said.
The final action highlighted, was to support locally and regionally led adaptation and resilience initiatives in vulnerable countries, cities and communities, at the frontlines of climate disruption.
Information is the critical first step for risk reduction, transfer and management — UN deputy chief
“We must support efforts that provide local actors, including indigenous people, women and youth, with a much greater voice in the decisions that most affect them”, Ms. Mohammed said.
Debt relief
Noting that a “decade of transformation” cannot be delivered with soaring debt levels, she welcomed calls for a massive injection of liquidity and extensive debt relief to provide vulnerable countries with extra resources.
“Equally important will be transforming the international debt architecture so that it ensures all can emerge from this crisis with an equal chance of building back better and differently”, she said.
In closing, the deputy UN chief urged ministers online to seize the opportunity to “push again today for a concrete outcome that is bold, decisive and ambitious” to ensure “an inclusive and climate resilient transition”.
“I very much look forward to working with you all to achieve the success people and planet deserve at COP26.”
Fast-track clean energy
At the same time, top international energy and climate leaders met at the International Energy Agency (IEA)-COP26 Net Zero Summit to discuss how to accelerate clean energy momentum and examine how countries can more effectively work together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero.
The meeting took stock of the growing list of commitments from countries and companies to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement and focused on implementing the necessary actions to turn the growing number of net zero targets into a reality.
To sort out future measures, participants from more than 40 countries shared insights on what has worked so far.
The event was designed to increase momentum towards COP26 and informed the preparation of IEA’s upcoming Special Report “The World’s Roadmap to Net Zero by 2050”.
Click here if you want to watch the summit in its entirety.
TU Eindhoven leads EU funded project to produce sustainable aviation fuel
Using low-cost and abundant feedstock, the EU funded project HIGFLY sets out to produce sustainable aviation fuels that can greatly reduce greenhouse emissions from airplanes.
The corona pandemic has delivered a severe blow to the airline industry, but expectations are that flying will remain an important part of our mobility, with all the associated negative impacts on the environment. TU/e scientists, together with researchers from TNO, major aviation players Boeing and SkyNRG, and other partners from Spain, Germany and UK, are launching HIGFLY, a new research project that aims to create cost-efficient sustainable aviation fuels (also known as SAFs) from waste biomass. “We want to contribute to an airline industry that emits lower amounts of greenhouse gas into the environment. Aviation fuels made from second generation feedstocks can play a huge role in this”, says TU/e researcher Fernanda Neira d’Angelo, who is the coordinator of the HIGFLY project.
According to the EU, direct CO2 emissions from aviation account for 3 per cent of the EU’s CO2 emissions. Globally, aviation accounts for 2.5 percent of CO2 emissions. This may not seem like much, but consider that if global commercial aviation were a country, it would rank number six in the national CO2 emissions, between Japan and Germany.
THE PROMISE OF SUSTAINABLE AVIATION FUELS
To meet the CO2 emission reduction targets set by the aviation sector (50 percent reduction by 2050 compared to 2005 levels), the use of sustainable aviation fuels (SAFs) needs to increase sharply. Although some airlines, including the Dutch flagship KLM, have been experimenting with SAFs, current global consumption is still less than 0.5 per cent of the overall aviation fuel consumption.
While demand for SAFs is expected to increase over the next decade, their uptake is held back by cost as the price of SAFs is approximately two to five times that of conventional aviation fuel.
Another crucial aspect is the sustainability of the feedstocks used, to guarantee that the net impact of using sustainable aviation fuels is far less negative than with fossil fuels. It is key to use resources that do not sacrifice food security, environment or biodiversity.
HIGFLY
The HIGFLY project, a collaboration between TU/e, TNO, SkyNRG, Boeing, and five more partners from Spain, Germany, and the UK aims to change all that. This consortium made up of academia, research institutes, and industry will develop new and more efficient technologies to produce advanced sustainable aviation fuels using low-cost and abundant second-generation (i.e. non-food) biomass from a broad feedstock pool, such as residues from forestry and farming.
The production of SAFs from biomass involves a reactor where the biomaterial is transformed into molecules that can be used as a precursor for sustainable jet fuel, using novel catalysts and solvents. This product is then separated using ceramic membranes, saving around 35 per cent of the energy during the most energy consuming steps of the process.
According to TU/e researcher and project coordinator Fernanda Neira D’Angelo, the approach taken by HIGFLY is unique. “The technology we are proposing is different than that used by others to produce SAFs. We use furanics as a key precursor in the fuel production process. Combined with our novel catalysts, solvents, and membranes, this promises to make the HIGFLY process not only very efficient, but it also has the potential to reduce CO2 emissions far more effectively than other approaches, with expectations of a decrease in the range of 70 to 90 percent.”
EU FUNDED
HIGFLY has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (under grant agreement N°101006618). Of the total 4 million euro EU grant, one million euro will be used to support TU/e in technology development. The project will run for a total of four years and the first preliminary results are expected in 2022.
Besides TU/e, TNO, SkyNRG and Boeing, the HIGFLY consortium brings together the following organizations and companies: Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC-ITQ), Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung, Johnson Matthey, Institut für Energie- und Umweltforschung (ifeu), and KNEIA.
Google pledges $29 million to new EU fund to tackle fake news
Google will contribute €25 million ($29.3 million) to the newly set up European Media and Information Fund to combat fake news, the company said on Wednesday.
The contribution comes amid criticism that the technology giant isn’t doing enough to debunk online disinformation, which surged during the COVID-19 pandemic and during the U.S. election last year.
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Opinion: Congress is fed up with Big Tech. Now what?
The chief executives of Google, Facebook
FB,
and Twitter
TWTR,
were grilled by U.S. lawmakers last week over the proliferation of disinformation on social media platforms.
Google, which is owned by Alphabet
GOOGL,
is the first tech company to contribute to the European Media and Information Fund that was launched last week by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the European University Institute.
The fund, which has a duration of five years, will provide grants to researchers, fact-checkers, not-for-profits and other public interest-oriented organizations working on disinformation research and strengthening media literacy and fact-checking.
“While navigating the uncertainty and challenges of the last year, it has proven more important than ever for people to access accurate information, and sort facts from fiction,” said Matt Brittin, head of Google’s business & operations, in a blog post.
Brittin cited a recent report that showed that fewer than one in 10 Europeans have participated in any form of online media literacy training.
Google’s contribution comes as tech giants face intense regulatory pressure in the European Union over online content. The European Commission — the executive branch of the 27-member bloc — presented sweeping proposals in December 2020 outlining new responsibilities for digital platforms over content they host.
New rules in the Digital Services Act, which requires the approval of the European Council and European Parliament, include the removal of illegal goods, services and content; advertising transparency measures; and obligations for large platforms to take action against the abuse of their systems.
More on this: Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon could face multibillion-dollar fines under new EU tech regulations
Tech companies could face severe fines for noncompliance, with a very large online platform facing fines of up to 6% of global revenue for a serious breach of the rules. An oversight structure will also be established, with the ability to directly sanction platforms that reach more than 10% of the EU’s population of 45 million users.
The Digital Services Act is expected to directly impact Alphabet, which owns the world’s two most popular search engines in Google and YouTube, and Facebook, the largest social media network with more than 2.5 billion monthly active users.
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Nature Bio Foods BV inaugurates futuristic organic food processing plant in Netherlands
Nature Bio Foods BV (NBF BV), a 100% subsidiary of Nature Bio Foods (NBF) India, one of leading organic food producers and a subsidiary of LT Foods on Wednesday announced the inauguration of its futuristic organic food processing plant at Maasvlakte near Rotterdam, Netherlands.
The new state-of-the-art integrated organic ingredients processing facility of Nature Bio Foods is another step in the company’s efforts to provide organic food ingredients to customers through a sustainable supply chain.
Nature Bio Foods BV offers a vast bouquet of quality organic food ingredients, which are directly sourced from sustainable organic farms of India, Africa, and other Asian countries. NBF in the past few years has set-up its distribution channels in the US and Europe to fortify its business model and other existing networks across geographies.
Strengthening its establishments further, Nature Bio Foods has setup now food processing capabilities in EU which would allow it to reach its customers and brands directly.
The inauguration of the new state-of-the-art line was presided over by the Ambassador of India to the Netherlands Mr. Pradeep Kumar Rawat.
Commenting on the occasion, chairman Mr. V K Arora said, “Nature Bio Foods has had an impeccable legacy in supplying quality organic food ingredients to its customers in some of the most regulated & demanding markets across the globe. We take immense pride in adding yet another induction of latest technology in our Rotterdam facility which is in-line with the long-term vision of the Company to expand and strengthen its organic business in Europe.”
Buddhist Times News – 1st Century Buddhist remains found at Vaikunthapuram
By — Shyamal Sinha
Buddhist relics said to be 2,100-year-old were found at Vaikuntapuram in Thullur mandal of Guntur district on Tuesday. They surfaced during diggings at Bhavaghni Ashram in the village. An archeologist, who examined the findings, said the locals found a conical polished cup, terracotta tiles once used in the roofs of ‘Buddhist viharas’, a piece of well-polished muller granite and a broken parasol that enshrined a stupa of the Satavahana period.
Seeing the artefacts, asram people contacted Dr. E. Sivanagi Reddy, Buddhist archaeologist and CEO, Cultural Centre of Vijayawada and Amaravati, who has examined the finds.
Since then, Sivanagi Reddy has found a conical cup of polished ware inserted into a redware stand of Iron Age (1000 BC), pit shreds of redware, terracotta tiles that once covered roofs of Buddhist viharas, a well polished black granite muller, and a broken chatra (parasol) that enshrined a stupa of Satavahana period.
The Buddhists archaeologist says a surprise discovery is a Brahmi inscription, which mentions that the chatra was donated by one household Pusana. He said Dr. K. Muniratnam Reddy, Director, Epigraphy Branch, Archaeological Survey of India, has confirmed that the script in Prakrit language belongs to 1st Century BC.
Dr. Sivanagi Reddy said Bhavagni Asram authorities have told him that the Buddhist finds will be displayed by them in their proposed museum at Vyasabhagavan Temple now under construction. He stated that Buddhist remains in Vaikunthapuram had originally been reported by then British archaeologists 125 years ago.
