Sunday, November 21, 2010

CURRENT AFFAIRS OCTOBER 2010

ECONOMIC AFFAIRS

Exports surge 23 % to $16.64 b in August

  • India's exports continued to surge for the tenth successive month growing by 22.5 per cent to $16.64 billion in August as compared to the same period last fiscal.

  • However, imports also jumped by 32.2 per cent year-on-year to $29.67 billion in August, according to the government data released here on Friday.

  • During April-August this fiscal, exports posted a growth rate of 28.6 per cent to $85.27 billion on a year-on-year basis. Imports grew by 33.1 per cent to $141.89 billion.

  • The trade deficit for the period stood at $56.62 billion, outstripping the deficit of $40.28 billion logged in the same period a year earlier. In August, the trade deficit widened to $13.03 billion as compared to the year-ago period.

  • The government is aiming for around 15 per cent export growth in the current fiscal year to March 2011 after a drop of nearly 5 per cent in the previous year and is confident that it will be able to touch the $200-billion export target set for 2010-11. India's exports rose more than 30 per cent each month between November and June. Hailing the 22.5 per cent growth, Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO), President A. Shakthivel said it reiterated FIEO's view that India's exporters were on our course to realise the export target or even surpass it to reach $210 billion.

IDBI Bank to finance MSMEs with SIDBI

  • IDBI Bank on Friday announced a number of new initiatives, products and services on its 7th Foundation Day, including joint-financing of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) with Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI).

  • With IDBI Bank's increasing focus towards the MSME sector, it has entered into a special partnership with SIDBI for joint financing of MSME clients across the country, IDBI Bank Chairman and Managing Director R. M. Malla said, while elaborating on the Foundation Day initiatives.

  • IDBI Bank has extended 7-day banking services to customers in select branches in five cities, that is, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Pune and Bangalore.

  • The bank will also offer extended banking hours from 8 am to 8 pm in these five cities with a view to providing convenience to its customers. A specifically designed ‘Women International Debit card' is also being launched for its ‘Super Shakti' account holders.

Deora to pitch for India buying BP's Vietnam assets

  • India will seek to “seal the deal'' for buying BP plc's stake in Vietnam gas fields when the British energy firm's newly appointed Chief Executive Officer Robert Dudley visits India next week.

  • ONGC Videsh (OVL) wants to buy BP's 35 per cent stake in the $1.3-billion Nam Con Son gas project in Vietnam. Mr. Deora is likely to pitch for India buying BP's Vietnam assets. OVL has roped in Vietnam's PetroVietnam for buying BP's stake in two offshore gas fields, a pipeline and power project — together referred to as Nam Con Son.

  • Block 06.1, where the Lan Tay and Lan To fields currently produce about 14 million cubic metres of gas a day, was originally allocated to OVL, but due to the foreign exchange crisis of the 1990s, it had to farm-out some of its stake to BP. Lan To is now under development.

  • OVL has so far invested $217 million on the gas fields and has government approval to invest up to $377.46 million, the official said

Mercedes to enter financing business

  • Mercedes-Benz on Friday said it was planning to enter the financing services business in India, a move aimed to further boost the sales of German luxury carmaker. “We are in the preparation phase for a Daimler Financial Services operation in India to support all the Daimler commercial vehicle and passenger car brands in the market,” said Mercedes Benz India Managing Director and CEO Wilfried Aulbur, without revealing when the operations will begin

Pratibha Patil calls for expanding the SCI fleet

  • President Pratibha Patil on Saturday called upon the Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) to expand its fleet within a timeframe, lay emphasis on technology and meet the country's growing requirements.

  • The President was speaking at the golden jubilee celebrations of the SCI. Much in tune with the exhortation of Ms. Patil, Minister of Shipping G.K. Vasan announced the acquisition of 118 new vessels by 2020.

  • He said that orders for 28 vessels had been placed, eight of which would be inducted into the SCI fleet by the end of the current financial year. The SCI will be acquiring 50 more vessels by 2015 and 40 more by 2020.

  • While congratulating the Navratna public sector undertaking (PSU) on completing 50 years and establishing the country as a strong maritime nation, Ms. Patil hoped that the SCI would play a crucial role in meeting the country's energy requirements, expected to grow manifold in the coming years. She urged the SCI to gear up, underlining that India was dependent on import of oil, gas and coal.

Aircel to invest $500 m in 3G

  • After bagging 3G spectrum for 13 telecom circles, Aircel is now planning to launch the advanced third generation mobile services early next year.

  • Aircel, a joint venture between Malaysia's Maxis Communications and India's Apollo Hospital Enterprise, where the former holds a majority stake of 74 per cent, is betting big on 3G services for which it has already started upgrading infrastructure and is also chalking out unique bouquet of services for its subscribers.

  • Aircel has won 3G spectrum for 13 circles – Delhi, Mumbai, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Goa, Rajasthan, Punjab, UP (West) and UP (East).

Bridge & Roof in talks with BHEL for tie-up

  • Public sector Bridge and Roof Company (B&R) has begun talks with Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) for a tie- up, which will be utilised in the pre-tender stage, Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Jha said.

  • he said the tie-up, if it takes place, would bring benefits in the form of reduction in project cost and execution time. BHEL is one of B&R's major clients and the company is now implementing nearly Rs.1,300-crore worth project for BHEL.

  • B&R offers civil, structural and mechanical construction services as well as EPC and turnkey packages for oil terminals. It operates in various industrial sectors including hydrocarbon, fertilizers, chemicals, power projects including nuclear power projects, steel plants and railways.

Centre in favour of more banks

  • In line with the Reserve Bank of India's plans to open up the banking sector, the government on Monday said it was in favour of more banks coming up in the country, although the granting of new licences should be linked to the criterion of having branches in un-banked areas.

  • In August, the RBI came out with a discussion paper on new banking licences and regulations to foster greater competition in the sector.

  • It had sought feedbacks on the paper, as also the business model for new banks by September 30, with a view to promoting financial inclusion.

  • India has 27 public sector banks, 22 private sector banks, 31 foreign banks, 86 regional rural banks, four local area banks, 1,721 urban cooperative banks, 31 state cooperative banks, and 371 district central co-operative banks.

Website launched for feedback on XII Plan

  • Seeking feedback from the general public, probably for the first time in its history of formulating five-year plans, the Planning Commission on Monday launched a website to elicit suggestions on the ‘Approach Paper' to the XII Plan (2012-17) so as to make the final document more inclusive and effective.

Sanofi makes hostile bid for Genzyme

  • French drug-maker Sanofi-aventis on Monday made a $18.5-billion hostile takeover offer for Genzyme Corp, attributing the move to the American entity's refusal to engage in ‘constructive discussions'.

  • The French firm had gone public with its offer to buy Genzyme in August, when it had also hinted at the possibility of an unfriendly takeover attempt. Sanofi-aventis said it tried to engage in “constructive discussions with Genzyme,” but the latter's continued refusal to do so led to the hostile offer. A meeting between the two companies' CEOs on September 20 on the proposed deal had failed. The transaction is valued at about $18.50 billion.

CA Technologies opens centre in Hyderabad

  • CA Technologies, a leading IT management software and solutions company, has decided to spend $600 million on R&D (research and development) during the current year with focus on becoming one of the top companies in cloud computing and virtualisation management segments.

  • The New York-based company has opened a state-of-art India Technology Centre at Hyderabad

Mahindra & Mahindra to set up tractor unit in Telangana

  • Giving a major fillip to industrialisation in the backward Telangana region, Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) will soon set up a tractor manufacturing unit at its Zaheerabad facility in Medak district of Andhra Pradesh.

  • M&M has proposed to invest Rs.300 crore on the tractor manufacturing facility over the next three years that will provide direct employment to about 2,000 people and indirect employment to another 5,000 persons.

Elder Health Care ties up with Japanese firm

  • Elder Health Care, part of the Rs.800-crore Elder group, has entered into an in-licensing agreement with Japan's leading advanced skincare, body care and cosmetic manufacturing company, POLA Chemical Industries of POLA-ORBIS group, to introduce POLA's skincare and cosmetic products in India.

New director for Cisco Services India

  • Cisco Services, the consulting and technical support arm of Cisco Systems, has announced that Srivalsan Ponnachath has joined as director, Cisco Services India.

Tata Motors buys Italian design house for Rs.11 crore

  • Tata Motors on Monday said it had acquired 80 per cent stake in Trilix Srl, an Italian design and engineering firm, for euro 1.85 million (Rs.11.29 crore). Both companies have in the past worked together on several projects, Tata Motors said in a statemen

Cabinet approves 10 % divestment in SCI

  • The Centre on Tuesday embarked on a two-pronged strategy, allowing disinvestment of 10 per cent of its stake in Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) and allowing it to raise additional equity of like quantum.

  • The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on Tuesday approved the continuation of 30 per cent reservation quota of the requirement of Bharat Sanchar Nigam and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam for procurement of equipment from debt-ridden ITI, Bangalore-based public sector undertaking under the Ministry of Communication and IT.

BMW launches financial services arm

  • The BMW Group launched BMW Financial Services as a new business entity in India. It is headquartered in Gurgaon. It will offer solutions for retail automobile financing for BMW and multi-make customers and financing for fleet owners. The group will invest $50 million (Rs. 203 core) in BMW Financial Services in India, says a release.

Global recovery at a sluggish pace: IMF

  • The economic recovery under way has been proceeding broadly as expected, but downside risks remain elevated and the global financial system is the Achilles' heel of this recovery, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

  • In releasing two key documents on the state of the global economy — the October 2010 World Economic Outlook (WEO) and the Global Financial Stability Report (GFSR) — the IMF provided a cautious outlook that comprised both gradual improvements in economic conditions and significant uncertainty in Western economies.

India-EU trade agreement by December: Sharma

  • The much delayed India-EU Free Trade Agreement for opening up trade, investment and services is likely to be signed by December as bilateral negotiations have been put on the fast track, Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma said.

  • He is heading India's high-level delegation of industry to Germany steered by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (FICCI).

  • India had started negotiations with its largest trading partner in June, 2007, which were to conclude by the end of 2008. However, differences on the inclusion of items, which Indian negotiators described as non-trade issues, bogged down the talks.

  • India and the EU had bilateral merchandise trade worth $75 billion in 2009-10.

Maran buys 5 p.c. in SpiceJet as part of deal

  • Kalanithi Maran promoted KAL Airways has bought 5 per cent equity in low-cost air carrier SpiceJet for Rs.91.52 crore, as part of the deal to acquire 37.7 per cent stake in the company signed this June.

  • This was an off-market transaction, following which the Chennai-based industrialist's direct stake in SpiceJet has now increased to 17.72 per cent, the company said in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.

  • The airline, India's second largest low-cost carrier.

Horlicks gets new brand identity

  • GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare (GSKCH), a leading player in the health food drinks industry and an associate of GlaxoSmithKline of the U.K., unveiled its Horlicks brand in a new avatar.

Bajaj Allianz launches JiyoFit initiative

  • Bajaj Allianz has launched a new initiative ‘JiyoFit' that helps customers maintain a healthy lifestyle and incentivises them in adopting healthy practices and being fit. The JiyoFit card will also serve as an identity card at Bajaj Allianz network hospitals. The JiyoFit program will provide Bajaj Allianz customers additional benefits of the association with Yes Bank and Visa, says a release.

  • The world should have their shares,” Mr. Pranab Mukherjee told PTI here on Wednesday.

Tata Communications expands into cloud computing space

  • Tata Communications on Thursday launched InstaCompute and InstaOffice to offer productivity enhancing services to Indian businesses. This marks the company's expansion in to the cloud space to deliver self-service, pay-as-you-use IT application and data centre infrastructure services, accessed through the Internet.

  • Instant data centre infrastructure, InstaCompute, provides secure and elastic, on-demand computing and storage resources to businesses over the network, as and when they need them. Computing and storage is based in India, can be paid for in Rupees or global currencies and provides the user with governance and cost controls.

  • InstaOffice (powered by Google Apps) brings global Internet-based collaboration and office tools to Indian companies, with on-demand ease of use and pricing. InstaOffice tools include email and calendar, instant messaging, voice and video chat, as well as office document applications which are accessible to businesses when and where they need them.

$1-billion innovation fund mooted for inclusive growth

  • A $1-billion fund to facilitate innovations for inclusive economic growth in India has been proposed.

  • The proposal, yet to be approved by the Centre, was agreed to at a recent meeting of the National Innovation Council , according to Sam Pitroda, Adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Information Infrastructure and Innovations.

Pranab rules out cap on FDI

  • Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday ruled out any cap on foreign direct investment in India.

  • Addressing the Woodrow Wilson Center here, Mr. Mukherjee added that while it was the responsibility of the Reserve Bank of India to “watch the situation and as and when it is necessary to intervene appropriately,” he did not believe that the inflow of FII or FDI had distorted market sentiments. “Therefore there is no question of putting any cap,” on such flows, he said.

IMF warns countries against currency wars

  • The head of the International Monetary Fund on Friday warned global finance ministers that they should not use the value of their currencies as an economic weapon.

  • IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said that the global economy was continuing to struggle as it tries to emerge from the worst recession since the end of World War II.

  • “We are gathering at a pivotal moment facing a very uncertain future,” Mr. Strauss-Kahn said in remarks to the annual meetings of the 187-nation IMF and its sister lending organisation, the World Bank.

34 blocks on offer under NELP-IX

  • The government will offer 34 areas, including eight in deep-sea, for exploration of oil and gas in the ninth round of auction under the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), Oil Minister Murli Deora said on Friday.

  • NELP-IX will be announced on October 15 and the first road show will be held in Mumbai on October 18. The last date for bidding is March 18.

  • The NELP rounds have secured $14 billion investment, he said, adding that the last round, NELP-VIII, attracted investment commitment of $1.1 billion.

  • Reliance Industries' Dhirubhai—1 and 3 gas finds in the D6 block in Krishna Godavari basin off the east coast has been the biggest success of NELP. The block is currently producing 60 million standard cubic meters of gas per day, which has increased the domestic gas production by about 72 per cent over that of 2008—09, he said.

Kharif acreage up by 6.9% this year

  • Thanks to good monsoon, the area under rice cultivation this kharif season has gone up by 6.4 per cent. Last year, paddy cultivation had suffered owing to drought in 399 districts during the same period.

  • As per the official data released by the Ministry of Agriculture, paddy had been sown in 35.8 million hectares till October 7, compared to 33.14 million hectares in the corresponding period last year, showing an increase of 2.7 million hectares over the same period.

  • Kharif crops have been sown in 102.19 million hectare area as against in 95.75 million hectares last year, registering an increase of 6.9 per cent.

  • There has been a major enhancement in the cultivation of pulses that have been sown in 11.59 million hectares this year. This is 1.8 million hectares more than that in the corresponding period last year.

  • The area under coarse cereals is also higher by 2.91 per cent at 21.2 million hectares against 20.6 million hectares sown last year.

  • The area under sugarcane is higher by 20.41 per cent, while the area under cotton increased by 8.9 per cent and jute acreage went up by 9.68 per cent over last year.

  • The cultivation of oilseeds has shown a marginal increase of 0.32 per cent. The oilseeds acreage is 17.5 million hectares this year compared to 17.4 million hectares sown last year.

No change in open offer price for Cairn: Vedanta

  • In the wake of Cairn Energy forming a panel to secure the interest of minority shareholders in the sale of its Indian interest, its suitor Vedanta on Monday ruled out raising the open offer price for minority stakeholders.

  • Its open offer itself failed to take off on Monday in the absence of clearance from the Securities and Exchange Board of India.

  • Vedanta is paying up to $8.48 billion for 40-51 per cent stake in Cairn India that operates the country's largest oilfields, and its group firm Sesa Goa was to make an open offer on Monday for an additional 20 per cent stake at Rs.355 a share to minority shareholders of the target firm.

Bridgestone to invest Rs. 2,600 cr

  • Japanese tyre major Bridgestone is planning to produce truck and bus radial tyres at its facility in Kheda, near Indore in Madhya Pradesh. The company is also planning to set up a new factory at Chakan near Pune to increase the capacity of PSR (passenger car radials) and truck tyres.

  • Addressing presspersons here on Monday, Hiromi Tanigawa, Managing Director, Bridgestone India, said the total investment in both the facilities would be of the order of Rs. 2,600 crore.

SBI Life launches Saral Maha Anand

  • SBI Life Insurance launched its new unit-linked insurance plan, Saral Maha Anand. The product, with a minimum annual premium of Rs. 15,000, has been designed to cater to investment and protection needs of the middle and low-income segments. The premium can be paid monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or annually. The product is exempted from medical examination and offers four fund options — Index, Equity, Balanced and Bond — says a release. Investors in the 18-55 age group can invest in the product.

IIFCL to buy Rs.1,500 cr loans from Union Bank

  • State-owned infrastructure lender India Infrastructure Finance Company Ltd. (IIFCL) on Tuesday inked a pact to buy loans worth Rs.1,500 crore from Union Bank of India (UBI) so that the state-run bank can utilise the funds for other projects in the crucial sector.

  • This is the first-ever major agreement on ‘takeout' financing in the country, a procedure under which loans made by banks to infrastructure firms are sold to other institutions so that the banks recover their much-needed funds ahead of the payment schedule under the loan agreement.

  • This is done to address the asset-liability mismatch, because loans are made to infrastructure projects on a long- term basis, whereas deposits of banks are generally of a short or medium tenor.

  • The company would do takeout financing of Rs.25,000 crore over three years, he added.

  • “Out of the Rs.25,000-crore takeout financing, we can expect Rs.100 crore of profit,” he said.

  • Mr. Goel said memorandums of understanding had also been signed with Allahabad Bank, Indian Bank, Punjab National Bank and UCO Bank for takeout financing.

RBI chief to head FSDC sub-panel

  • Even as the Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) is to be headed by the Finance Minister, the government on Tuesday sought to allay the apprehensions of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) over the autonomy of regulators by appointing the apex bank's Governor as the head of a sub-committee of the body being set up to maintain financial stability.

  • “It [formation of FSDC] will be announced shortly,” Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said after his meeting with various regulators in the financial sector, namely, the RBI, SEBI (for markets), IRDA (for insurance) and PFRDA (for pensions) on the proposed FSDC.

  • “The Council would have one sub-committee which would be headed by RBI Governor,” a Finance Ministry statement later said.

  • Following the turf war between SEBI and the IRDA over the jurisdiction on mutual funds, the RBI Governor's position was elevated in a recently formed joint panel that was set up to resolve the controversy.

  • The apex bank's Governor was made Vice-Chairman of the committee, a higher position from the earlier status of just being a member.

Industrial growth slumps to 5.6%

  • To the disappointment of the government and concern of India Inc., the growth in industrial production plummeted to 5.6 per cent in August — the lowest in 15 months — from 10.6 per cent in the year-ago period, mainly owing to negative growth in capital goods stemming from a slump in manufacturing output. The official data on the Index of Industrial Production released here on Tuesday revealed that the manufacturing sector, which accounts for nearly 80 per cent of the IIP numbers, witnessed a sharp dip in growth to 5.9 per cent during the month from 10.6 per cent in August 2009. Worse still, the capital goods segment strayed into negative territory and slipped by 2.6 per cent as compared to a robust growth of 9.2 per cent posted in the same month last year.

  • The lowest growth in factory output in previous months was in May last year at 2.7 per cent. The slump in August this year, however, may be viewed as a one-off aberration as economic analysts had earlier projected a likely dip in industrial growth to single digit owing to the high base effect of August 2009. Moreover, the marginal growth of 3.7 per cent posted by the six infrastructure industries during August this year was also seen as a signal of lower overall industrial output growth for the month.

India explores joint venture with Russia for silicon wafers

  • India will be seeking Russia's assistance in setting up a national disaster management centre modelled on a Russian facility, Union IT and Communications Minister A. Raja said.

  • The Minister was ‘highly impressed' by the high-tech National Emergency Management Centre he visited here. The centre gathers online information about natural and manmade disasters all over Russia and coordinates relief and mitigation efforts.

  • The two sides agreed to explore the possibility of setting up a joint venture in India to produce silicon chips and telecom equipment. The idea came up during the Minister's visit to the Moscow-based Micron Company, which boasts an integrated chip-making facility.

  • Priority areas

  • “We are looking to Russia, which is among the few countries manufacturing 3G and WiMax chips, to assist India in achieving self-sufficiency in this field.

Vodafone selects Nokia Siemens, Ericsson for 3G

  • Telecom service provider Vodafone Essar on Wednesday announced that it had finalised equipment maker Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) and Ericsson for deploying and managing its countrywide 3G network infrastructure.

  • According to the contract, the two vendors will enable swift 3G deployment, create synergy between GSM and 3G networks and maintain high speed packet access (HSPA) networks in the circles where Vodafone had bagged 3G spectrum, Vodafone said in a statement here.

  • Vodafone has spectrum to offer 3G services in nine circles across the country, including in Delhi and Mumbai. While Ericsson has been selected to provide exclusive 3G services in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata, NSN will implement and manage its 3G network in the balance six circles of Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh (East), rest of Bengal and Haryana.

  • Vodafone will utilise this latest HSPA technology to deliver services such as video telephony, mobile broadband, mobile TV and others.

RBI divests stake in Nabard

  • Amid debate over whether the Reserve Bank of India should hold stake in lending institutions or only be a regulator, the central bank has sold almost all its holding in the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), to the Central Government.

  • “The RBI divested its stake amounting to Rs.1,430 crore in Nabard on October 13. With this, the RBI's holding in Nabard has come down to one per cent of shareholding in the bank. The Central Government now holds 99 per cent of the stake,” the central bank said in a statement here.

  • The move comes more than three years after the central bank sold its entire stake in the country's largest lender State Bank of India to the government.

  • Cabinet nod

  • The RBI held 72.5 per cent of equity in Nabard, amounting to Rs 1,450 crore. The remaining shareholding worth Rs.550 crore was with the Centre.

  • Now, the only major institution where the RBI holds a stake is the National Housing Bank (NHB). The central bank holds 100 per cent stake in the housing finance regulator.

  • Nabard is the apex rural and farm development bank, whose role is to promote credit growth in these areas.

  • The move was in line with the Narasimham Committee II report which held that it was inconsistent with the principles of effective supervision that the regulator was also an owner of a bank.

Tata Aria launched

  • Tata Motors has launched Tata Aria, a luxury car having features of a ‘sedan' and SUV (sports utility vehicle), in Kerala. It has in-dash GPS-based navigation system, which offers guidance to find the destination, and traction control system to maintain stability under situations of sudden acceleration. Other features include height-adjustable driver's seat, anti-lock braking system, automatic climate control system, darkness sensing lights and rain sensing wipers.

India launches IX round of oil, gas assets auction

  • India on Friday kicked off the IX round of auctioning under the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP), offering 34 oil and gas blocks, including eight deep water ones, sans tax exemptions to investors.

  • “The New Exploration licensing Policy round IX is being launched in the background of positive economic conditions, including revision of the administered price mechanism (APM) gas price and market determination for price of petrol,'' Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora told reporters at the launch programme here. The 34 blocks, which include 15 re-cycled blocks, cover a sedimentary basin area of 88,807 sq. km. The deadline for making a bid for the blocks is March 18, 2011. The previous eight rounds of NELP in 235 blocks have fetched an investment of around $14 billion.

  • The IX round of auction comes amid indications that the government is doing away with tax incentives under the new Direct Tax Code (DTC) proposed to be implemented from April 1, 2012.

  • “Investors basically want clarity in NELP IX. The position is absolutely clear,'' Petroleum Secretary S. Sundareshan. The DTC, once in force, would apply to all production sharing contracts in the future including under NELP IX, he added. Till it does, the production sharing contracts will be governed by the existing income-tax laws.

  • Under the current Income-tax Act, companies that started crude oil production before April 1, 1997, are exempted from paying taxes on profits for seven years. Refineries, which started operations after October 1, 1980, and before March 2012, are also eligible for the same level of incentive.

  • However, no tax breaks are given to natural gas finds, except for the gas that is to be produced under NELP VIII blocks and the four coal bed methane (CBM) blocks. The first roadshow for NELP IX will be held in Mumbai on October 18. “The discoveries made under the NELP have resulted in in-place hydrocarbon reserve accretion of a staggering 642 million tonnes of oil and oil equivalent gas,'' Mr. Deora said.

  • The VIII round, which closed on October 12, 2009, attracted investment commitment of $1.34 billion for 36 blocks that received offers. Under NELP VIII, 70 areas or blocks for exploration were offered, the biggest licensing round in India. Of the 36 areas bid for, the government had awarded 33 blocks to successful bidders.

RBI panel to study functioning of MFIs

  • The Reserve Bank of India on Friday announced constitution of a sub-committee to look into the functioning of micro finance institutions (MFIs), as they have drawn flak for using strong-arm tactics to recover loans.

  • The MFI tactics have even prompted the Andhra Pradesh Cabinet to approve an ordinance to rein them in.

  • “We have constituted a sub-committee to look into the functioning of the MFIs sector and what bearing they have on RBI policy to take further action,” RBI Governor D. Subbarao told reporters here after the meeting of the central bank board.

Tata gifts $50 m to Harvard Business School

  • India's Tata Group has given a huge $50 million to the prestigious Harvard Business School (HBS) here to fund a new academic and residential building on its campus, the largest gift received by the institute from an international donor in its 102-year-old history.

Nippon Pipe to set up unit in Rajasthan

  • Nippon Pipe India Pvt. Ltd. of the Nippon group will set up a steel tube components project for automobiles and motorcycles in the Japanese Zone at Majrakath in Neemrana in Rajasthan. This is the first such project by a Nippon subsidiary in India.

  • Nippon Pipe is a subsidiary of Siam Nippon Steel Pipe Company India Ltd., Thailand, which, in turn, is a subsidiary of Nippon Steel of Japan.

  • The Japanese Zone has been developed by the Rajasthan State Industrial Development and Investment Corporation Ltd. (RIICO).

  • The annual installed capacity of the unit would be 10,000 tonnes in 2012, which would increase to 25,000 tonnes in 2015. In the Neemrana's Japanese Zone, 22 companies (including Nippon) have been allotted 303 acres.

Mumbai gets world's largest diamond bourse

  • The Bharat Diamond Bourse (BDB), the world's largest, was inaugurated here on Sunday by Union Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma.

  • “As on today, in 2009-2010, the export of diamonds in this industry from Mumbai is Rs. 61,000 crore and I am hopeful that within a year, this bourse will achieve a turnover of over Rs. 1,00,000 crore,” he said.

  • The BDB has been set up to establish infrastructure for promotion of diamond export, including jewellery, and provide all support and service facilities to eventually make India an international trading centre for gems and jewellery.

  • Spread over a 20-acre plot, the complex is designed to house around 2,500 small and large diamond traders in addition to a Custom House, banks and other service providers who will cater for the gem and jewellery trade.

Policy on shale gas before the end of 2011

  • The Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry is likely to sign a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. in the area of technology related to extraction of shale gas during the forthcoming visit of President Barack Obama to India.

BIPA with Sudan comes into effect

  • The Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPA) between India and Sudan came into effect from Monday with the exchange of instruments of ratification (IoR) between the two countries.

  • According to an official statement here, BIPA seeks to promote and protect investments from one country in the other country. Such agreements facilitate bilateral investment flows and grant benefits of national treatment (NT) and most favoured nation (MFN). So far, India has inked BIPA with 79 countries of which 68 are already in force. Sudan is the 69th nation with which the provisions of the agreement have now come in to effect.

Sub-panel to submit report on MFIs in three months

  • Amid growing criticism over the use of coercive ways of micro finance institutions (MFIs) to recover loans, the Reserve Bank of India on Tuesday said its sub-panel looking into the functioning of such lenders would submit its report in three months.

  • “The sub-committee will submit its report in three months,” the central bank said in a statement.

  • The RBI has set up a sub-committee of the Central Board of Directors of the central bank to study the issues and concerns of the microfinance sector, including interest rates charged by the lenders in this area. “Y. H. Malegam, a senior member on the Central Board of Directors of the Reserve Bank of India, will chair the sub-committee,” the statement added.

IOC to commission Paradip refinery by early 2012

  • Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) on Tuesday said its Rs.29,777-crore Paradip refinery in Orissa would be commissioned by March 2012 and cater more to the domestic market rather than exports due to rise in domestic fuel demand.

  • “The refinery will start producing fuel by March 2012 when it will commission the primary units like the crude distillation unit.

  • The 1,100-km pipeline will carry fuel produced in the unit to consumers in Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh.

Dr. Reddy's to launch Lansoprazole in U.S.

  • Dr. Reddy's Laboratories (DRL) will be launching Lansoprazole delayed-release capsules (15 mg and 30 mg), a bio-equivalent generic version of Prevacid delayed-release capsules, in the U.S. market, says a release. Launch preparations are complete and shipments will commence shortly, adds the release.

Emaar-MGF bank guarantee ordered to be confiscated

  • The Rs.183-crore bank guarantee furnished by Commonwealth Games Village builder Emaar-MGF was on Wednesday ordered to be confiscated on charges of irregularities, as the Enforcement Directorate prepared to question top officials of the Organising Committee for alleged foreign exchange violations.

  • A Rs. 760-crore bailout package given by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to Emaar-MGF, a private builder, also came under the scanner.

Eurocopter forms subsidiary

  • Eurocopter, which belongs to European consortium EADS, on Wednesday, announced the setting up of a new subsidiary in India, sensing a huge business potential and aiming to capture 50 per cent of the market share in helicopters.

  • Established as the 25th worldwide subsidiary and 10th in Asia, Eurocopter India Private Ltd. has decided to take an aggressive plunge. It hopes to expand its market share from the current 30 per cent to 50 per cent by 2015.

  • “The Indian helicopter sector has been growing at an annual rate of 20 per cent and our ambition is to become the country's number one supplier for the civilian, government and para-public markets,'' Executive Vice-President (Commerical Helicopters) Joseph Saporito told a news conference here.

  • Eurocopter is also competing for the Indian Army/Air Force bid to procure 197 light utility helicopters.

  • At present, Eurocopter said, its AS365 Dauphin was serving for off-shore, para-public and government transport, while it offered the EC135, EC145 and AS350 Ecureuil for medical emergency and law enforcement duties including in naxal-affected areas.

LIC, SBI among largest bidders for CIL pie

  • Government-owned companies in the banking and insurance segments have together put in bids worth nearly Rs.30,000 crores in the initial offer of Coal India, which closed for qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) on Wednesday after getting a 22 per cent oversubscription for this segment.

  • On the third day since its opening, the issue was subscribed 10 times generating over Rs.1.50 lakh crore against the targeted amount of Rs.15,500 crore. The IPO, whose response has taken everyone by surprise, closes on October 21. The allotment will be on a proportional basis. The issue is set to get listed on November 4, a day ahead of Diwali.

Vodafone Essar to launch 3G by early 2011

  • Third-largest mobile carrier Vodafone Essar will launch third-generation (3G) services in the January-March quarter of 2011 and plans to spend up to $500 million over the next few years on its 3G network, according to Managing Director Martin Pieters.

  • Vodafone is the second mobile operator to announce specific plans for 3G after Tata Teleservices, which earlier announced plans to launch the service on November 5.

  • Vodafone owns 67 per cent of Vodafone Essar, with the Essar group holding the balance. The Essar group has an option to sell its entire stake to Vodafone for $5 billion by May 2011.

Rs. 11,218 cr tax notice slapped on Vodafone

  • The Income-tax department on Friday asked telecom major Vodafone to pay Rs.11,217.95 crore in taxes within a month for the acquisition of Hutchison's stake in its telecom joint venture with Essar in India in 2007.

  • “The IT department on Friday issued an order raising a tax demand of Rs.11,217.95 crore on Vodafone International Holdings BV, treating it as an assessee in default under Sec. 201(1) of the Income-tax Act, 1961, (the Act), for failure to deduct tax as required under Sec. 195 of the Act before making a payment of $11.076 billion (around Rs.55,000 crore) to Hutchinson Telecommunications International Ltd. The tax demand is to be paid within 30 days of the receipt of the notice of demand,” an official statement said.

Polaris launches learning centre


  • Polaris Software Lab, a leading financial technology company, on Friday announced the launch of first phase of The School of Financial Technology, with the acquisition of a 50-acre facility owned by Catalytic Software Ltd., (CSL) Hyderabad, principal shareholder of CSL being Catalytic Software, headquartered in Seattle, U.S.

FDI dips to $1.33 billion in August

  • Foreign direct investment (FDI) dipped by almost 60 per cent to $1.33 billion in August this year from $3.26 billion in the year-ago period, says the latest government data. Significantly, this is the lowest FDI inflow in this fiscal.

  • Industry Department data reveal that in the first five months of 2010-11, the inflows declined by 35 per cent to $8.88 billion from $13.76 billion in the same period last year. Notably, though there was a smart recovery in the domestic economy and exports, inflow of overseas investment has been on the decline since June.

  • The overseas investment in June was at $1.38 billion, while that in July was $1.78 billion. The FDI in the first two months of this fiscal, April and May was $2.17 billion and $2.21 billion respectively. Interestingly, a recent UNCTAD survey projected India as the second most important FDI destination only after China for multinational corporations.

  • As per the data, the sectors which attracted higher inflows were services, telecommunication, construction activities and computer software and hardware.

Pepsico granted relief

  • The Gujarat high court has granted relief to the soft drink manufacturing company, Pepsico India Holding Limited, and quashed a criminal complaint against the company for having provided drinks “unfit for human consumption.”

Exports at 2-year high

  • Reaching a two-year high, exports registered a jump of 23.2 per cent at $18.02 billion in September compared to the same month last year, while the massive rise in imports raised concerns over widening of the trade gap.

  • Asserting that India was on track to surpass the $200-billion exports target, Union Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma said on Monday that during the April-September period of this fiscal, exports aggregated $103.30 billion, a 27.6 per cent increase compared to last year.

New ULIP from ING Life

  • ING Life India, an ING Group company, has announced the launch of its new unit linked insurance product, ING Prospering Life.

  • The new scheme has several features allowing customers to maximise their returns even while having adequate protection. It has a variety of fund options and fund strategies providing customers the convenience and control to maximise their returns.

Tata Steel forms venture with NML

  • Tata Steel has incorporated a joint venture company in accordance with the terms of a joint venture agreement it had signed with New Millennium Capital Corp (NML) of Canada in November last.

  • Tata Steel had entered into the agreement through its wholly-owned subsidiary Tata Steel Global Minerals Holdings Pte. Ltd.

  • The joint venture company (JVC) — Tata Steel Minerals Canada Ltd. — will acquire all the direct shipping ore (DSO) mining claims and related assets and carry out detailed engineering and construction of facilities and will be responsible for the operations of the DSO project. At closing, Tata Steel will own 80 per cent of the joint venture and NML the balance.

  • NML controls the emerging Millennium Iron Range, located in the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador and in the Province of Quebec, which holds the world's largest undeveloped magnetic iron ore deposits.

Tata buys into U.S. beverage firm

  • Tata Global Beverages has said that a U.K.-based subsidiary has acquired a minority stake in the equity of ‘Activate', a U.S.-based performance beverage and bottled-water company.

  • In a statement to the stock exchanges TGB (erstwhile Tata Tea) said the subsidiary had an option to increase its stake in the next 12 months.

Bank of India ties up with Karvy

  • Karvy Stock Broking Ltd. has partnered Bank of India (BoI), for providing state-of-the-art online trading services to the bank's customers enabling them to make investments in equities anytime, anywhere. BoI's customers with savings/current accounts along with depository participant account either with NSDL/CDSL could avail themselves online trading account from Karvy.

India-China trade set to reach $60 billion target, says Zhang

  • China's Ambassador to India Zhang Yan on Wednesday asserted that trade between Indian and China was set to achieve the $60 billion target fixed by the two sides by the end of this year.

  • Trade between the two Asian giants had already reached $45 billion in the first nine months of 2010, a 50 per cent increase compared to the same period last year.

ONGC interests will be protected in Cairn deal'

  • Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Murli Deora on Wednesday asserted that interests of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) would be fully protected while considering the application for acquisition of Cairn India by Anil Aggarwal-owned Vedanta Group.

  • The Petroleum Ministry has maintained that Cairn Energy, which had on August 16 announced the sale of 40 to 51 per cent stake in Cairn India to Vedanta for $8.48 billion, has to seek specific approval for transfer of control in each of the ten properties it has in India.

  • On its part, Cairn Energy had in mid-September applied for specific approvals in seven exploration blocks it had won under the New Exploration Licensing Round (NELP) since 1999 and sought an overarching consent in the case of its three pre-NELP producing properties including the giant Rajasthan fields as contracts for them do not have specific prior-approval clause.

Biocon to invest $161 m in Malaysia

  • India's biotechnology major Biocon on Wednesday announced an investment of $161 million in Malaysia for setting up of a bio-manufacturing and research and development facility, marking the biggest foreign direct investment in this sector in the country.

  • The facility will be established in Bio-XCell, a biotechnology park in Iskandar, through a strategic partnership with Malaysian Biotechnology Corporation, according to the decision announced during the visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here. The facility, targeted to be operational by 2014, would focus on research and development and production. The documents between the two parties were exchanged in the presence of Dr. Singh and Malaysian Prime Minister Mohd Najib bin Tun Abdul Razak.

The most expensive car Bugatti Veyron is here

  • Volkswagen Group company Bugatti Automobiles on Thursday launched its super premium sports car ‘Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport', the most expensive car in India so far with a price tag of Rs.16 crore onwards. Packed with many exclusive safety and luxury features, the sports car will reach the top speed of 407 km an hour and speed of 360 km an hour with the roof off.

Centre's fiscal position shows improvement in April-August

  • The Centre's fiscal position has improved in the first five months of the current fiscal, mainly owing to buoyant revenue collections coupled with a sharp increase in non-tax through sale of 3G spectrum.

  • In its quarterly report on ‘Public debt management' for the July-September period this fiscal released here on Friday, the Finance Ministry said: “The fiscal position of the government during April-August 2010 showed improved performance in terms of key deficit indicators due to buoyant revenue collections.”

  • The report said that while the increase in non-tax revenue was mainly on account of telecom receipts, “tax revenue was added by buoyancy in excise collections which showed a growth of 43.3 per cent during April-August 2010.”

  • It may be recalled that the government mopped up a whopping Rs.1.08 lakh crore from the sale of 3G spectrum and broadband wireless access (BWA), way higher as compared to the target of Rs. 35,000 crore. Alongside, with the revival in consumer demand and increase in excise duty by way of stimulus withdrawal, indirect tax collection also turned buoyant.

Swiss firm to set up grain management academy

  • Swiss grain processor company, Buhler, that provides machinery and technology for rice, pulses and wheat processing industry in India, plans to set up an academy near Bangalore to upgrade skills and offer world-class training in food grain management sector.

  • The company, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary, is to invest in India Rs.100 crore in an integrated manufacturing unit and other expansion projects in the next four years as part of its plans to achieve a turnover of Rs.1,000 crore by 2014.

RBI to examine recovery mechanism of MFIs

  • The Reserve Bank of India appointed sub-committee will examine the recovery mechanism of microfinance institutions and their interest rate practices, amid criticism of these lenders charging exorbitant loans rates and using strong arm tactics for recovery.

  • “To examine the prevalent practices of MFIs regarding interest rates, lending and recovery practices, to identify trends that impinge on borrowers' interest,” the RBI said in a notification.

  • Earlier this month, the Reserve Bank had appointed a sub-panel, under the Chairmanship of Y. H. Malegam, to look into the functioning of MFIs. The committee will submit its report in three months. The RBI will examine the conditions under which loans to MFIs could be classified as priority sector lending and give appropriate recommendations.

  • At present, MFIs charge up to 34 per cent interest rate a year on loans.

PFC to help NPCIL set up nuclear plants

  • The Power Finance Corporation (PFC) and the Nuclear Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL) have entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to facilitate NPCIL to set up nuclear power projects. The MoU was signed in New Delhi on Thursday by PFC Chairman and Managing Director Satnam Singh and NPCIL Chairman and Managing Director S. K. Jain.

  • Under the MoU, PFC plans to offer debt financing, equity financing and consultancy services to NPCIL to facilitate the latter's large capacity addition programme. While PFC is a leading financier in the electricity sector, NPCIL is the only player operating nuclear power reactors in the country.

  • NPCIL now operates 19 nuclear electricity reactors in the country with an installed capacity of 4,560 MWe. Three reactors, with a total capacity of 2,220 MWe, are in an advanced stage of construction. They are two units of 1,000 MWe each from Russia under construction at Kudankulam in Tamil Nadu and an indigenous pressurised heavy water reactor (PHWR) of 220 MWe at Kaiga in Karnataka. In addition, excavation is under way for 700 MWe indigenous PHWRs, two each at Kakrapar in Gujarat and Rawatbhatta in Rajasthan. The NPCIL's installed capacity will reach 9,580 MWe by 2017, 20,000 MWe by 2020 and 60,000 MWe by 2032, says a press release from NPCIL.

  • PFC's asset base, cumulative loan sanctions and disbursements as on June 30, 2010 stand at Rs.85,597 crore, Rs.2,88,932 crore and Rs.1,47,056 crore, respectively, says the release.

NATIONAL EVENTS

Bill coming to set up regulatory body for medical education

  • Putting to rest uncertainty over the fate of the proposed National Council for Human Resources in Health (NCHRH), a separate regulatory body for medical education, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said a bill to set up the council would be introduced in Parliament soon.

  • The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, after extensive consultations, has prepared a draft Bill for setting up the council. The Bill will seek to create an enabling environment that will address issues of quality, quantity and equitable distribution of medical education resources, Dr. Singh said at the convocation of the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here.

  • The Ministry has been demanding a separate regulatory body for medical education, while a task force, set up by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, has also prepared a draft Bill for a National Commission on Higher Education and Research (NCHER) that seeks to bring medical education and legal education under its purview. The Ministries have been involved in the turf war for several months now. While all this was on, the Union Law Ministry also drafted a Bill for establishing a separate regulatory body for legal education.

  • Announcing the government's vision of making the AIIMS one of the 10 best medical universities in the world by 2020, Dr. Singh said though not an easy job, the government would support all endeavours in this direction.

  • Describing as a good document the Valiathan Committee Report — set up following the agitation against Other Backward Classes reservation to revamp the premier institution — the Prime Minister said the government would consider the recommendations expeditiously and do what was best in the interest of the Institute.

Sharad Pawar urges northeast to raise food production

  • Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar urged the north-eastern States to produce more to ensure food security. His Ministry had taken the initiative, in consultation with the governments of the region, to design plans for each State keeping in view their distinct physiography, topography, climatic and soil conditions, he said.

  • Mr. Pawar underscored need to wean away farmers in the hills from jhum cultivation. He asked them to adopt agriculture practices that did not cause any harm to the soil and environment. Special programmes would be initiated by the Ministry in this regard. It would meet every six months to assess the agriculture scenario in the region and initiate corrective steps to step up production.

Sanskriti Express to offer glimpses of Tagore's life

  • Indian Railway's tableau on wheels featuring the life and times of one of India's most famous cultural icons, Rabindranath Tagore, is all set to roll into on Gandhi Jayanthi day.

  • The ‘Sanskriti Express', flagged off from Howrah on May 9 to mark the 150th birth anniversary fete of Tagore, is scheduled to reach Chennai Central .The five-coach exhibition will offer glimpses into the various facets of Tagore – as poet, philosopher, painter and musician.

  • The coaches have names that evoke association with the Nobel Laureate.

Antony launches e-governance projects

  • Stressing on the need for a quick and timely payment of pension to those who retire from the armed forces, Defence Minister A.K. Anonty urged the department to use technology for the purpose.

  • Launching three e-governance projects of the Defence Accounts Department here on its foundation day, the Minister hoped this would ensure quick and accurate disbursement of pension. The three web-enabled online automation projects are: titled ‘Suvigya,' ‘Aashraya,' and ‘Sankalan'.

Judge visits Gulberg Society

  • B. U. Joshi, judge of the Special Court hearing the Gulberg Society massacre case of the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat, visited the site for a spot survey.

  • At least 69 people, including the former Congress member of the Lok Sabha, Ehsan Jaffrey, were killed in the massacre in the Chamanpura locality of old Ahmedabad city on February 28, 2002.

EC rejects Press Council's proposal on paid news

  • Asserting that the Election Commission (EC) will have to work within the Constitutional provisions, relevant acts and electoral laws, it rejected the view of the Press Council of India that its recommendations on “paid news” should be binding on the EC.

  • It turned down another proposal of the PCI for deputing journalists/senior citizens as election observers to monitor paid news. There was no need for this as the EC, through its circular on June 8, 2010, already directed the setting up of district-level committees and State-level committees to monitor such news during the polls.

  • Mr. Quraishi said expenditure observers would be suitably briefed about the issue to exercise vigilance and coordinate with the district-level committees.

  • He wanted the PCI to forward a district-wise list of independent journalists/citizens for inclusion in the committee to scrutinise paid news.

Opioid substitution therapy being promoted in Manipur to check drug abuse

  • After blockades and bandhs, the most-talked-about subject in the insurgency-hit Manipur, perhaps, is drug abuse in its latest ‘avatar' of Opioid Substitution Therapy (OST), said to be a medically-safe drug administered in a safer mode under medical supervision.

  • The OST, also known as the oral substitution therapy, is proven to have reduced possible harm like opioid abuse and overdose, the spread of HIV, and other blood borne viruses like hepatitis-C and infections like abscesses for the drug users.

  • NACO's support

  • Initiated by the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID), the OST programme was made operational in Manipur in March 2006 on a pilot basis. In January 2008, the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) supported the programme by funding it partly and integrating it into the existing target intervention programmes as a component of harm reduction. Heroin and spasmo proxyvon (locally know as No 4 and SP respectively) are the commonly used drugs in the State.

Water released from Vaigai Dam

  • Water was released from the Vaigai Dam for irrigation of 1.50 lakh acres of agriculture lands in Madurai, Dindigul and Sivaganga districts here on Saturday.

  • Minister for Adi Dravida Welfare A. Tamilarasi released the water.

  • A total of 1,50,043 acres of land – 1,42,008 acres in Madurai district, 1,996 acres in Dindigul district and 6,039 acres in Sivaganga district – would be benefited.

Universal PDS alone will be successful: Jayati Ghosh

  • All successful programmes of public distribution across societies have been those which provide universal or near-universal access, economist and columnist Jayati Ghosh said on Saturday

  • “This provides economies of scale; it reduces transaction costs and administrative hassles involved in ascertaining the target groups and making sure it reaches them; it allows for better public provision because even the better-off groups with more political voice have a stake in making sure it works well; it generates greater stability in government plans for ensuring food production and requirement.” Dr. Ghosh was delivering the sixth Brajamohan Sarma memorial annual lecture ..

  • Among the States of India those that “have a better record of public food distribution are those that have gone in for near-universal access.” Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh defined Below the Poverty Line (BPL) in such an inclusive way that the vast majority of the population was included. This made their schemes close to universal..

  • Dr. Ghosh argued that the notion that a universal scheme that provided subsidised food to all households was too expensive was not tenable. If all households in the country were provided 35 kg of foodgrains, that would come to around 90 million tonnes and at current levels of subsidy the cost would be Rs. 1,20,000 crore. “This may seem like a lot, but the current food subsidy already amounts to around Rs. 50,000 crore, so this is an additional Rs.70,000 crore-or around 1.5 per cent of the GDP. Surely this is not too much to allocate to ensure that no one goes hungry in what should be a civilised society.” In any case, compared to nearly 3,00,000 crore given away as tax benefits and other concessions to the corporate sector over the past year, this Rs. 70,000 crore “becomes a trivial amount.”

Meira to lead team for IPU meet

  • A delegation of Parliamentarians to the 123rd assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) is being led by Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar.The assembly will be held in Geneva from October 4 to 8..

DVC gives 200 MW for the Games

  • The Commonwealth Games, which kicks off on Sunday, has already started getting 200 MW of power supply.

  • Stating that the DVC (DAMODAR VALY CORPORATION) had achieved production of 2,500 MW power since its setting up, he said the public sector has set a target to take it to 10,000 MW at the end of the 12th Five Year Plan.

  • The Steel Authority of India and the DVC would go for a joint venture to set up a 500 MW power plant in Bokaro and an agreement to this effect would be done soon..

UNESCO team to visit Visva-Bharati varsity

  • A United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) team will be visiting the Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, this week to consider the possibility of declaring it a world heritage site.

  • The Ministry of Culture, through the Archaeological Survey of India, sent a dossier to the UNESCO earlier this year nominating Santiniketan as India's official entry for World Heritage Sites.

  • Santiniketan was nominated as the official entry in 2010 keeping in mind that the country is celebrating the 150 th Birth Anniversary of the National Poet this year.

  • If the nomination is accepted Santiniketan will become the 30 th site in India to be declared so and the third in West Bengal. The Sunderbans National Park and the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, popularly known as the “toy-train” were declared World Heritage sites in 1987 and 1999 respectively.

  • What began as a school in 1901, started by Rabindranath Tagore transformed into a unique experiment in education. After he won the Nobel Prize in 1913, the school was expanded into a university. It was renamed Visva-Bharati defining the poet's vision as a place “where the world makes a home in a nest.”

Cabinet nod for judicial accountability bill

  • The Union Cabinet approved a bill providing for a mechanism to deal with complaints against judges of the High Courts and the Supreme Court.

  • The Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill sets judicial standards and makes judges accountable for their lapses. It will also mandate the judges of the High Courts and the Supreme Court to declare their assets and liabilities, including those of their spouses and dependents.

  • The bill to replace the Judges Inquiry Act retains its basic features, contemplates setting up of a national oversight committee with which the public can lodge complaints against erring judges, including the Chief Justice of India and the Chief Justices of the High Courts.

  • At present, there is no legal mechanism for dealing with complaints against judges, who are governed by ‘Restatement of Values of Judicial Life,' adopted by the judiciary as a code of conduct without any statutory sanction.

  • The five-member committee will be headed by a retired Chief Justice of India, appointed by the President, and have a serving Judge of the Supreme Court and a serving High Court Judge, both nominated by the Chief Justice of India; the Attorney-General; and an eminent person nominated by the President. This marks a change from the earlier proposal, in which the committee was to be headed by the Vice-President and to have the Chief Justice of India, a High Court judge and two distinguished jurists not involved in regular practice of law.

  • On receiving a complaint, the committee will forward it to a system of scrutiny panels. In the case of a complaint against a Supreme Court Judge, the scrutiny panel will consist of a former Chief Justice of India and two sitting Supreme Court judges, and in the case of a complaint against a High Court judge, the panel will have a former Chief Justice of the High Court and two of its sitting judges. The members of the Supreme Court panel will be nominated by the Chief Justice of India, and that of the High Court panels by the Chief Justice of the High Court concerned.

  • The scrutiny panels will have the powers of a civil court. For instance, they can call for witnesses and evidences. They will be required to give their report within three months to the oversight committee. In the case of a complaint against a Chief Justice, the oversight committee itself will conduct the scrutiny.

  • On receiving the report from the scrutiny panels, the oversight committee will set up a committee to further investigate the case. Like the scrutiny panels, the investigation committee will have the powers of a civil court; it will have the power to frame definite charges.

  • If the charges are not proved, the investigation committee can dismiss the case. Otherwise, it will give a report to the oversight committee, which can issue an advisory or warning if the charges are not too serious. If the charges are serious, the committee can request the judge concerned to resign. If the judge does not do so, the oversight committee will forward the case to the President with an advisory for his removal.

  • In such an event, copies of all relevant documents will be laid in Parliament and an impeachment motion moved. In the Lok Sabha, not less than 100 members will be required to move the motion, and in the Rajya Sabha not less than 50 members will be needed.

  • Official sources said that besides declaring their assets, judges would be required to file an annual return of assets and liabilities. All the details would be put up on the websites of the Supreme Court and the High Courts.

  • The bill will also require the judges not to have close association with any member of the Bar, especially those who practise in the same court.

President calls for movement against dowry

  • President Pratibha Patil urged women to stand up against inhuman, backward and retrogressive practices such as male-child preference, female foeticide and dowry. She called for a movement to protect the girl-child and trees to ensure social as well as ecological equilibrium.

  • Addressing the ‘National Conference on Women Empowerment and Save the Girl Child' organised by Harsimrat Kaur Badal, MP and chairperson of the Nanhi Chhaan Punjab Public Charitable Trust, Ms. Patil recalled the sacrifices made by women during the Independence movement.

ED issues Blue Notice against Lalit Modi

  • The Enforcement Directorate has issued a Blue Notice — an international alert to law enforcement agencies — against the former Indian Premier League chairman, Lalit Modi, in its probe into the finances of the T20 cricket tournament.

  • The Blue Notice alert, which will be executed by Interpol, has been issued to gather further information about Mr. Modi's whereabouts and his activities which are not known to the ED as he is in a foreign land, sources said.

  • The objective of a Blue Notice, according to Interpol, is “to collect additional information about a person's identity or activities in relation to a crime.”

Can SC/ST benefits in one State be carried over to others?

  • Is a person belonging to a Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe in a State entitled or not to benefits or concessions allowed to SC/ST candidates in employment in another State? The Supreme Court on Thursday referred this question to a larger Bench.

  • A Bench of Justices B. Sudershan Reddy and S.S. Nijjar, in its order, said: “A very important question of law as to the interpretation of Articles 16(4), 341 and 342 arises for consideration in this appeal: whether the Presidential Order issued under Article 341(1) or 342(1) of the Constitution has any bearing on the State's action in making provision for reservation of appointments or posts in favour of any backward class of citizens, which, in the opinion of the State, is not adequately represented in the services under the State? The extent and nature of interplay and interaction among Articles 16(4), 341(1) and 342(1) is required to be resolved.”

Pranab pushes claim for Security Council seat

  • With an eye on the approaching India visit of U.S. President Barack Obama, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee expressed the hope that India would be made a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and that despite the global economic slowdown the Indian government would neither curb foreign investment flows nor allow itself to slip into an inflationary crisis.

  • He said trade between India and the U.S. had more than doubled between 2004 and 2008 and as Indian companies sought to position themselves better in the global market place, they have invested over $25 billion between 2004 and 2009 in the U.S., “creating jobs and prosperity.”

Monsanto against mandatory labelling of GMO product

  • Monsanto, the biotechnology major, holds the view that mandatory labelling of products made from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in India would make no sense. It favours options such as companies voluntarily labelling products as not containing GMOs, and individuals making a personal decision not to consume food containing GM ingredients.

  • During an interview with The Hindu group of publications, Gyanendra Shukla, Director (Corporate Affairs) of Monsanto India Ltd, said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had determined that GM crops did not differ from non-GM crops, and that products containing GMOs need not be labelled.

  • .Genetic engineering techniques

  • Genetic engineering techniques use DNA molecules from different sources that are combined into one molecule to create a new set of genes. This DNA is then transferred into an organism, giving it modified or novel genes. Demand for labelling GMO products has cropped up in view of fears raised over their safety as food and feed.

  • New version

  • Having introduced Bt ( Bacillus thuringiensis) cotton, known as Bollgard I, in 2002, Monsanto is now testing a version of GM cotton that incorporates the properties of Bollgard II and Roundup Ready Flex cotton. “Currently, 250 companies in India sell Bt cotton seeds, most of them deriving their technology from Monsanto. “

Kejriwal seeks more powers for Gram Sabhas

  • Right to Information activist Arvind Kejriwal has suggested a series of powers to strengthen the Gram Sabhas including decision making powers about village affairs and a right to recall Sarpanch for failing to function according to decisions of the Gram Sabha.

  • The Magsaysay award winner activist suggested creating of an institution of Lokpal for monitoring effectiveness of Gram Sabhas.

What anti-defection law says

  • The 10th Schedule to the Constitution, popularly referred to as the ‘Anti-Defection Law,' was inserted by the 52nd Amendment in 1985.

  • The grounds of disqualification are specified in Paragraph 2 of the 10th Schedule.

  • A member would incur a disqualification under paragraph 2 (1) (a) when he “voluntarily gives up his membership of a party” and under 2 (1) (b) when he/she votes (or abstains from voting) contrary to the directive issued by the party.

  • Two important questions arise in this regard: what would constitute the member ‘voluntarily' giving up of membership of a party? And, what is the full import of 2 (1) (b), wherein voting/abstention from voting against the party is mentioned?

  • The Supreme Court, in the Ravi Naik vs. Union of India case, has interpreted the phrase ‘voluntarily gives up his membership.' It says: “The words ‘voluntarily gives up his membership' are not synonymous with ‘resignation' and have a wider connotation. A person may voluntarily give up his membership of a political party even though he has not tendered his resignation from the membership of that party.

  • “Even in the absence of a formal resignation from membership, an inference can be drawn from the conduct of a member that he has voluntarily given up his membership of the political party to which he belongs.”

  • In another judgment in the case of Rajendra Singh Rana vs. Swami Prasad Maurya and Others, the Supreme Court held that the act of giving a letter requesting the Governor to call upon the leader of the other side to form a Government itself would amount to an act of voluntarily giving up membership of the party on whose ticket the said members had got elected.

India elected to U.N. Security Council

  • India was elected as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday with an overwhelming number of countries endorsing its sole candidature from the Asian group.

  • In polling for 10 seats that took place at the U.N. headquarters in New York, India received the highest number of votes — 187 out of 192 — among all countries in the fray.

BlackBerry: fresh deadline

  • The Centre asked Research In Motion (RIM) to provide the “final solution” to its BlackBerry encrypted email and messenger services for interception by the Indian law enforcement agencies by December 31, 2010. The government had earlier extended the August 31 deadline to October 31, 2010.

  • The Ministry of Home Affairs decided to further extend the deadline till this year-end after meeting representatives of RIM and Department of Telecommunications (DoT). RIM has sought more time in view of technical discussions on the BlackBerry Messenger Service (BMS) and BlackBerry Enterprise Service (BES) with the security agencies.

Working towards permanent seat in expanded UNSC: Krishna

  • Thanking the member states of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that elected India as a non-permanent member of the organisation on Tuesday, Union External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said diplomats working around the clock had ensured that India won well over the two-thirds required to record a win or endorsements from at least 128 members out of the total strength of 192.

  • India had no competitor from Asia group after the withdrawal of Kazakhstan earlier this year.

  • The last time India was part of the UNSC was in 1991-92. It suffered a shock defeat in 1996 when it lost to Japan despite banking on solidarity among developed countries. India will take over as a UNSC non-permanent member from Japan on January 1, 2011, for the seventh time.

  • The UNSC has five permanent members — the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom — who have veto rights. There are also 10 rotating members who have the right to vote, but cannot veto a resolution.

  • However, on the issue of a permanent seat in an expanded UNSC, Mr. Krishna said the five permanent members were not as enthusiastic as developing nations and felt they were delaying the process. On the other hand, the Group of Four (G-4) — India, Brazil and Germany and Japan (with South Africa kept in the loop) — have been trying to hasten the process of reforms.

Padgaonkar, M.M. Ansari, Radha Kumar named J&K interlocutors

  • The Centre on Wednesday named three interlocutors to hold a sustained dialogue with all sections of people in Jammu and Kashmir.

  • Noted journalist Dilip Padgaonkar, Information Commissioner M. M. Ansari, and Delhi Policy Group trustee Radha Kumar have been entrusted with undertaking a sustained dialogue “to understand their problems and chart a course for the future,” an official release said here.

  • It said all three interlocutors had done credible work in public life and brought with them a significant understanding of political and economic issues, specially in the context of Jammu and Kashmir. “The government hopes that after interacting with all shades of political opinion they will suggest a way forward that truly reflects the aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, specially youth.”

India tops Commonwealth countries in underweight children: report

  • In a new report, “Commonwealth or Common Hunger,” Save the Children, an NGO, claims that 64 per cent of the world's underweight children live in the 54 Commonwealth countries, and India has both the highest number and the highest proportion of underweight children.

  • The 54 countries are home to a third of the world's children but two-thirds of the children under five are under-nourished. More than two-thirds of the children who are stunted (88.5 million or 68.6 per cent) and nearly half of those who are underweight (95 million or 48.7 per cent) live in just seven Commonwealth countries.

  • With 43 per cent of India's children underweight and seven million under five severely malnourished, the possibility of the country shining in future sporting events like the Commonwealth Games “appears bleak,” said Save the Children CEO Thomas Chandy.

  • The critical period, when malnutrition can have the most irrevocable impact, is during the first 33 months — from conception to a child's second birthday. After this period, it is much harder to reverse the effects of chronic malnutrition and the effects are life-long or life-threatening.

  • In 2000, 198 countries — including India — committed themselves to halving hunger and malnutrition by 2015. India is one of the seven Commonwealth countries which are not showing adequate progress on what is the first Millennium Development Goal. In fact, India has achieved just 0.9 per cent progress, which is nowhere near achieving the target by 2015, says Mr. Chandy.

Commonwealth Games comes to a colourful end

  • With 38 golds, India took the second place in the medal table for the first time. Badminton ace Saina Nehwal clinched a crucial gold in women's singles on the final day, as India edged past England. The Indian competitors breached the formidable hundred barrier, bagging 101 medals in all. Australia finished on top with 74 golds. They sang and danced well into the night on Thursday as the curtains came down on the 12-day Commonwealth Games that ended in an unprecedented medal haul and number two position for India in the medals tally.

  • India eventually more than doubled its medals tally of the previous Games, in Melbourne, by taking 101 medals including 38 gold medals.

  • The country had finished fourth in 2002 and 2006.

Centre orders probe into CWG issues

  • The Centre on Friday appointed a high-level committee headed by the former Comptroller and Auditor-General, V.K. Shungloo, to look into “all aspects of organising and conducting” the Commonwealth Games, which concluded here on Thursday.

  • According to the Prime Minister's Office, the committee will give its report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in three months. The terms of reference will be announced shortly.

Panel to inspect Mullaperiyar dam in December

  • The five-member Empowered Committee constituted to go into the safety of the Mullaperiyar dam on Friday decided to make an on-the-spot inspection of the dam from December 17 to 19.

  • This was decided by the committee at its third meeting after hearing counsel for the States of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

  • The committee comprises former Chief Justice of India Justice A.S. Anand; Justice K.T. Thomas, retired Supreme Court Judge representing Kerala; Justice A.R. Lakshmanan, retired Supreme Court Judge representing Tamil Nadu; former Secretary to the Ministry of Water Resources C.D. Thatte and retired Chief Engineer, Central Water Commission, D.K. Mehta.

  • He said the committee would inspect the dam on December 17, initially from the Tamil Nadu side and then from the Kerala side

Adult HIV prevalence on the decline in the country: NACO report

  • The estimated adult HIV prevalence in the country has declined from 0.45 per cent in 2002 to 0.29 per cent in 2008, the latest official data has shown.

  • Similarly, the estimated number of people living with HIV also declined from 2.73 million to 2.27 million over the same period. However, there is a significant variation in the trends with the data showing that the HIV epidemic has stabilised in the four high-prevalence States of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

  • In a report by the National AIDS Control Programme (NACO) on its “Response to the HIV Epidemic in India,” it was suggested that an overall decline in HIV prevalence among ante-natal care (ANC) clinic attendees had been noted at all-India level and in the high prevalence States of south and northeast. Barring Andhra Pradesh with a HIV prevalence of one per cent, all States had shown less than one per cent median among the ANC clinic attendees.

Keep minister, MPs out of AIIMS governance: IIM

  • Recommending major changes in the governance system to make the All India Institute of Medical Sciences here a world-class institution, the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, has said there should be no political interference in the functioning and management of the AIIMS. It has also suggested opening up the AIIMS to international faculty.

  • Ideally, the Union Health Minister should not be the chairperson of the AIIMS — the highest decision-making body — and president of the Governing Body, the IIM said in a presentation earlier this week.

  • The Ministry asked the IIM to draw up a governance plan to make the AIIMS more efficient and restore its glory.

  • Too centralised

  • Describing decision-making at the AIIMS as too centralised, the IIM recommend that larger faculty teams be involved by including faculty representatives in the Institute Body as well as in faculty recruitment and selection. Three of them may be included in the Body, in the place of MPs, with a fixed three-year tenure.

Mobile phone can be a livelihood tool: UNCTAD

  • Mobile phones and other forms of communication technology can be used to reduce poverty and improve livelihoods in developing countries, says the latest United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report

  • Better access to information and better chances of communicating through information and communication technologies (ICTs) can help poor people raise their incomes significantly, says the UNCTAD Information Economy Report 2010 titled ‘ICTs, Enterprises and Poverty Alleviation'.

After Lancet's superbug blow, praise for India's rural doctors scheme

  • The Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry might still be awaiting “formal” clearance for its much debated Bachelor of Rural Health Care course that aims to create a cadre of healthcare workers for the rural areas, but the Centre has received global appreciation for “trying to find an innovative solution to a deeply entrenched problem which is not unique to India.”

  • Currently, the shortage of doctors in rural India stems from the unwillingness of most doctors, who were born and trained in urban areas, to move to rural areas. The rural MBBS scheme aims to train people from rural areas in those rural areas, in the belief that they will stay, which offers some hope of providing medical care to large parts of rural India that currently lack it.

Court rejects plea to make property a fundamental right

  • The Supreme Court has dismissed a public interest litigation petition seeking a direction to make ‘right to property' a fundamental right under the Constitution.

  • Though the ‘right to property' was deleted by the 44th Constitution Amendment in 1978, it was challenged only in 2007 in the context of acquisition of large extents of land for Special Economic Zones, and the court issued notice to the Centre.

TRAI curbs coming on unsolicited calls

  • Harassed mobile subscribers may soon get much-needed relief from unsolicited telemarketing calls and SMS as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is planning to come out with a set of regulations to curb this menace.

  • TRAI recently released a consultation paper on ‘Review of Telecom Unsolicited Commercial Communications Regulations' seeking views from various stakeholders on how to tackle the issue. Now it is formalising its recommendations, which will be sent to the government for further action.

  • Though the Department of Telecommunications set up a ‘National Do Not Call Registry' in 2007 for subscribers to avoid unsolicited calls, it failed to produce the desired results.

Cabinet nod for new Enemy Property Bill

  • The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved yet another version of the controversial Enemy Property Bill to replace the ordinance that lapsed on September 6. It is based on a fresh proposal of the Ministry of Home Affairs.

  • The Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Second Bill, 2010, will now be introduced in the winter session of Parliament.

  • The four-decade-old Enemy Property Act bars Indian legal heirs from inheriting the properties of relatives who migrated to Pakistan after Partition. The Custodian of Enemy Property for India, a government department, is empowered to appropriate the property.

Posco paid for study on Posco

  • Claims about the benefits of Posco's $12 billion integrated steel project to Orissa's economy and job market come from a study by an “independent” research organisation — but was paid for by Posco itself.

New Oxford centre for study of Asian heritage

  • Oxford University is to launch a new centre to study the archaeological and cultural heritage of Asia.

  • It is claimed to be the only centre of its kind in Europe.

  • The university said that although Asia had some of the world's richest archaeological and artistic forms of heritage, little was known or taught about this period in Britain.

MSP for wheat, pulses up

  • The Centre on Wednesday announced a modest hike of Rs. 20 per quintal in the Minimum Support Price (MSP) of wheat to be procured from farmers for the Targeted Public Distribution System. The hike in pulses, however, is substantial.

  • The Cabinet Committee on Economic Committee, chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, approved the Agriculture Ministry's proposal for raising the MSP of wheat to Rs. 1,120 per quintal for the 2010-11 rabi season from Rs 1,100 per quintal last year.

  • The MSP of gram has been hiked to Rs. 2,100 from Rs. 1,760 per quintal, while the MSP of masur dal has been raised to Rs. 2,250 from Rs. 1,870 per quintal last year.

  • Announcing the decisions, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram said the MSP of mustard/rapeseed was hiked by Rs. 20 to Rs. 1,850 per quintal, while the MSP of safflower was up to Rs. 1,800 per quintal from Rs. 1,680 per quintal last year.

  • The MSP of barley was fixed at Rs. 780 per quintal against Rs. 750 per quintal last year.

  • The hike in the MSP of pulses points to the government's efforts to raise the total production of pulses to at least 16.5 million tonnes from an average of 14.5 million tonnes.

  • The country imports about 3 to 4 million tonnes of pulses annually to bridge the gap between demand and supply. The shortfall has already resulted in a sharp escalation in the price of pulses in the last two years.

  • Higher support price for pulses in the kharif crop season this year resulted in a sharp increase in the cultivation of pulses with the seasonal production estimated to rise to 6 million tonnes this year as against an output of 4.3 million tonnes last year.

Cabinet nod for amendments to Seeds Bill

  • The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved additional amendments to the Seeds Bill. 2004.

  • The amendments however did not include the clause on price regulation of seeds that is being demanded by members of Parliament .

  • On the demand of the MPs and civil society groups, the government has approved an amendment to raise the maximum penalty for “misrepresentation/ or suppression of facts, procedural violation or non-performance of the seeds “without intention” to one year and Rs. 5 lakh. There was a provision for cancellation of registration as well,

  • The additional amendments also provide for nomination on the proposed National Seed Committee of the chairpersons of the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers' Rights Authority and the National Bio-diversity Authority.

  • The amended Seeds Bill, 2010, seeks to regulate the quality of seeds and planting material, to curb the sale of spurious and poor quality seeds, increase private participation in seed production and distribution and liberalise import of seeds and planting materials.

  • The Bill that seeks to repeal and replace the existing Seeds Act, 1966, also has a provision that no transgenic variety of seed would be registered unless cleared under the provisions of the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986. Such seeds would have to be labelled and conform to specific standards.

NIMHANS to be declared institute of national importance

  • The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the proposal to declare the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, as an institute of national importance.

  • With the Cabinet also approving the introduction of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences Bangalore Bill, 2009 in Parliament, the NIMHANS will be counted in the league of premier institutes such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi; the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGI), Chandigarh, and the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Puducherry.

  • This will facilitate the NIMHANS to develop patterns of teaching, with the flexibility to devise new courses, constantly evolving syllabi.

  • The institute will be able to take up new courses that are required and are not currently part of the Medical Council of India-approved courses.

Indian Statistical Institute celebrates first World Statistical Day

  • Number crunchers at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) here joined the world in celebrating the first World Statistics Day on Wednesday, a day that noted an interesting play of numbers on the calendar, with the date registered as 20.10.2010.

  • The decision to declare October 20 as World Statistics Day was taken by the United Nations General Assembly earlier this year. The ISI has been observing the birth anniversary of its founder, P. C. Mahalanobis, which was declared as the National Statistics Day by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2006.

Conditional maternity benefit scheme launched

  • To improve maternal and child health, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on Wednesday approved the Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (IGMSY) — a monetary scheme for pregnant women and lactating mothers — on a pilot basis in 52 districts in this Five-Year Plan.

  • Each pregnant and lactating woman will receive Rs. 4,000 in three instalments between the second trimester of pregnancy until the child is six months old.

  • Each beneficiary has to open an individual account (if she does not have one already) in the nearest bank or the post office for cash transfer, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram told journalists after the Cabinet meeting, which was chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

  • The scheme, to be implemented through the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme infrastructure and personnel, will cost Rs. 1,000 crore. Some personnel will be hired on a contractual basis.

  • The scheme will be fully funded by the Centre and Rs. 390 crore and Rs. 610 crore have been allocated for 2010-11 and 2011-12 respectively.

  • Under the scheme, cash transfers will be made to all pregnant and lactating women as incentives based on fulfilment of specific conditions relating to mother and child health and nutrition. However, government employees and Central and State Public Sector employees have been excluded from the scheme as they are entitled to paid maternity leave.

  • It is expected that in the initial years, about 13.8 lakh pregnant and lactating women in 52 districts could avail themselves of the benefit.

  • The beneficiaries will be pregnant women of 19 years and above and for the first two live births (benefits for still births will be as per the norms of the scheme).

  • Since the IGMSY will be implemented by the States through the existing ICDS system and supported by additional contractual staff, anganwadi workers and helpers will receive an incentive of Rs. 200 and Rs. 100 respectively a pregnant and lactating woman after all the due cash transfers are made.

  • There will be steering and monitoring committees at all levels to oversee the scheme. A special cell to monitor the scheme will be set up within the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

Naxalism is the greatest threat: Manmohan

  • Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday suggested that the country modernise its defence doctrines to respond to new and non-traditional security threats, while underscoring India's resolve to defeat terrorism.

  • Besides these challenges, Dr. Singh said cyber warfare was another emerging area of concern, while Naxalism and left-wing extremism posed the “greatest threat” to national security.

NAC's compromise proposes wider food security coverage

  • The National Advisory Council (NAC) — which has been working hard over the last month to try and narrow down its differences with the Planning Commission and the government on the contentious issue of food security — is meeting here on Saturday to look at an amended proposal. The NAC's food hardliners have finally accepted, after several informal interactions with the Commission and government representatives, that universalisation of food security will not be possible.

  • Sources told The Hindu that the compromise now being worked out is that legal guarantees for subsidised food grains should not be restricted only to those below the poverty line (BPL). “We are going to propose a much larger coverage of legal entitlements than those defined by the government's poverty figures,” the sources explained.

  • At the last meeting on September 24 — which was attended by Planning Commission Deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia and a slew of secretaries from the ministries of Food, Women and Child Development and Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation — a consensus had emerged on pegging the BPL figure at higher than the 42 per cent suggested by the Suresh Tendulkar panel. The figure, sources said, could now be well over 60 per cent. The attempt is also to ensure that virtually everyone in the rural areas and the poor in the urban areas are covered by legally mandated entitlements.

  • Commission and government representatives had also made it clear at the September 24 meeting that it would not be possible to provide legal guarantees for either food entitlements to those living above the poverty line (APL) or for the proposed eight entitlements to meet the nutritional requirements of those at the bottom of the economic ladder — apart from an inclusive and enhanced Public Distribution System (PDS). The NAC, pushing the envelope on this as well, points out, for instance, that schemes such as Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) — one of the eight entitlements — are ongoing programmes, and so should not be that difficult to provide a legal guarantee for.

  • At an earlier stage of the discussions, the NAC had presented two options to the government. One was a system of entitlements for the majority of the population whereby 80 per cent of those living in rural areas and 33 per cent of those in urban India would be entitled to a monthly 35 kg of food grains at Rs.3 a kg (per family). The second option was a differentiated system of entitlements through which those living below the poverty line (pegged at 42 per cent) would get the same. In both scenarios, those who did not fall into the circle of the most vulnerable would be entitled to 25 kg of food grains every month.

  • WHO questions methodology of Lancet study on malaria mortality

  • Expressing serious doubts over the high estimates of 200,000 malaria deaths in India as reported in the latest edition of The Lancet, the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday questioned the methodology adopted by the authors of the study.

  • The Lancet uses verbal autopsy method which is suitable only for diseases with distinctive symptoms and not for malaria. Malaria has symptoms similar to many other diseases, and cannot be correctly identified by the local population.

  • The use of verbal autopsy for malaria may result in many false positives. In this method, deaths due to fever from any cause are likely to be misinterpreted as malaria in areas with high incidence. In areas with low malaria incidence, the symptoms are difficult to distinguish, and would result in overestimates of malaria deaths, a statement issued by the WHO here said.

  • Malaria is endemic in many States of India. Maximum cases are reported from the North Eastern States, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and a few districts of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. Approximately 50 per cent of malaria cases reported in the country are due to Plasmodium Falciparum (a type of malaria which causes death), the statement said.

Elephant declared a heritage animal

  • The Centre on Friday declared elephant a national heritage animal to step up measures for their protection.

10 years on, ‘Iron Lady' refuses to end her fast

  • On November 2, Irom Sharmila will complete 10 years of her fast demanding repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, in Manipur.

  • The protest started on November 2, 2000. Upset at an “encounter” at Mallom here, in which 10 innocent persons including a middle-aged woman were mowed down by 8 Assam Rifles personnel, Ms. Sharmila began her fast. Two days later, she was arrested on the charge of trying to commit suicide.

  • The law allows authorities to detain her for one year in one-go. At the end of every year she is released. However, instead of going home, she continues fast, and the police to re-arrest her within 48 hours.

  • Ms. Sharmila was honoured by South Korea with the country's highest human rights award. Recently she was given the Rabindranath Tagore award, carrying Rs. 51 lakh in cash and a citation. Despite appeals by many, she has refused to break her fast.

  • The Manipur government withdrew the AFSPA from seven Assembly segments on August 12, 2004. However, this gesture failed to satisfy Ms. Sharmila. She wants says she will continue her fast until the Act is repealed completely in all areas. But the government feels that if the Act is repealed, rebels may feel emboldened.

Population stabilisation target date pushed back to 2070

  • With the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) continuing at 2.8 per cent, the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry has pushed back the target date for achieving population stabilisation to 2070 from 2045, stipulated in the National Population Policy (NPP) 2000.

  • The NPP 2000 laid down meeting the unmet need for family planning and health care infrastructure as an immediate objective; its mid-term objective was to achieve a TFR of 2.1 per cent by 2010 and the long-term goal was to attain population stabilisation by 2045.

  • It is estimated that nearly half the population growth will be from just seven States and 22 per cent from Uttar Pradesh alone. This is against the combined contribution of 13 per cent from the southern States of Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.

Airport licensing mandatory from July 2011

  • No airport in the country will be able to undertake any air transport service from July next if it is not licensed by the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) by June-end, according to a notification issued by the government.

  • The DGCA makes safety audit of airports to grant licence to operators, including the Airports Authority of India (AAI).

  • The licensing procedure has been initiated in keeping with the standards notified by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO).

  • There were 63 airports that needed to be licensed. These include 53 operated by the AAI. The rest of them, including those in Delhi, Mumbai, Cochin, Bangalore and Hyderabad, were owned either by the private sector or joint ventures, he said. While the DGCA had issued Initial Licences to 15 airports, it had inspected 14.

  • Besides, there were 22 defence airports with civil enclaves where civil aviation operations took place. The issue of their licensing had been taken up with the Defence Ministry

Modi working group moots price stabilisation fund

  • In its “first and final” meeting here on Thursday, the Working Group on Consumer Affairs, set up by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in April, reached a near-agreement on a draft Action Plan that recommends setting up of Special Courts under the Essential Commodities Act to try offences and to constitute a “price stabilisation fund” for government intervention when prices become unreasonably high.

  • The plan suggests delisting essential commodities like rice, pulses and edible oils from the Future Markets, to contain inflation.

  • It recommends raising the detention period to one year from six months for black marketing under the Prevention of Black Marketing and Maintenance of Supply of Essential Commodities Act, 1980.

NAC consensus on food security

  • After months of hard bargaining with the Planning Commission and the government, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) on Saturday appeared to have got a consensus on a universal food security system with legal guarantees, even though with differential entitlements.

  • However, the NAC has expanded the concept of below the poverty line (BPL)-PDS beneficiaries, virtually doubling their number to 75 per cent of the population, designating them as “priority households” and making them eligible to receive 35 kg of subsidised foodgrains (Re. 1 per kg for millets, Rs. 2 for wheat and Rs. 3 for rice) every month. The remaining 25 per cent – described as “general households” — will be entitled to 20 kg of foodgrains per household at a price pegged at 50 per cent of the Minimum Support Price (MSP).

  • The NAC-cleared food security framework, which will form the basis of the Bill to be drafted over the next month, also envisages legal guarantees for additional entitlements, beyond the PDS to address the nutritional requirements of the most vulnerable sections of society. Simultaneously, it has recommended a total overhaul of the PDS system.

Chennai to get nowcast soon

  • Now cast to predict the weather a few hours ahead in specific localities will be introduced in all metros, said Ajit Tyagi, Director-General of Meteorology, IMD, here on Saturday.

  • Inaugurating a satellite facility at the aerodrome meteorological office, he said the nowcast model was used successfully in the recently concluded Commonwealth Games to predict weather over each stadium.

Geographic info system

  • Tata Consultancy Services will take up the project to develop a Geographic Information System (GIS) for the city.

  • The GIS database will have applications in urban planning and civic services, including monitoring property tax assessment and collection, the drinking water supply and drainage networks.

  • Accordingly the entire city's infrastructure such as buildings, roads, water distribution network, hospitals, educational institutions, bus stands, transport routes, parks and playgrounds would be mapped.

  • The project has been taken up under the World Bank-funded Tamil Nadu Urban Development Project-III.

Centre banks on horticulture to usher in ‘golden revolution'

  • The Central government is pinning its hopes on the strengthened National Horticulture Mission (NHM) to usher in a “golden revolution” in the sector.

  • Although the Mission had achieved results, as was evident from an improved utilisation of funds, a need was felt to fine-tune the operational guidelines for “holistic development of the sector and for sustainable results.” This would be implementable from the current financial year.

  • With financial assistance from the Centre, an additional area of 16.57 lakh hectares has been bought for horticultural crops in the last five years under the NHM. About 2.78 lakh hectares of senile orchards have been rejuvenated and 2,192 nurseries established. Not only this, scientific infrastructure facilities, disease forecasting units, bio-control laboratories and plant health clinics have been set up with the involvement of the Indian Council of Scientific Research, State agriculture universities and Krishi Vigyan Kendras.

  • Under post-harvest management too, packing houses, cold storage units, controlled atmosphere storage units, refrigerated vans and mobile/primary processing units have been set up. Besides, wholesale and rural markets have been established. Mr. Pawar saw in these developments the setting-in-motion of a self-perpetuating cycle based on increased productivity and improved quality leading to higher incomes for farmers.

  • The guidelines for the new Hub-and-Spoke Terminal Markets in Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode had been revised recently to make it more attractive for private investment, the Minister informed members.

Implement food security scheme in two phases: NAC

  • The framework for food security, cleared by the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council on Saturday, if implemented, will entail an additional expenditure of Rs.15,137 crore annually in the first phase. It is slated to kick off next year and will cost Rs. 23,231 crore annually when the entire population is covered by March 2014.

  • Assuming an offtake of 85-90 per cent, the procurement will have to go up from 55 million tonnes of foodgrains to 57-58 million tonnes in the first phase, and to 63-64 million tonnes in the second phase.

  • (At an earlier stage of the discussions, the NAC was talking of the need to procure 85 million tonnes while pushing for a universal system of entitlements, with all citizens eligible to receive the same amount of foodgrains at the same price.)

  • According to the NAC's new definition, 46 per cent rural households and 28 per cent urban households will qualify as priority households; 44 per cent rural households and 22 per cent urban households will be designated as general households. Rural coverage will be adjusted State-wise, based on the Planning Commission's 2004-05 poverty estimates.

  • The NAC wants the food security programme implemented in two phases — in the first phase, it should be extended to 85 per cent of the rural population and 40 per cent of the urban population.

  • Nutrition programmes

  • It has also recommended legal entitlements for child and maternal nutrition (including nutrition programmes for pre-school children, pregnant and nursing mothers, maternity benefits and midday meals for school children) as well as for community kitchens, and programmes for feeding destitute and vulnerable groups. For the new components, programmes will need to be developed.

Gujjars, Bakerwals demand separate region in J&K

  • Demanding a separate Pir Panchal region or area and a Tribal Hill Council in Jammu and Kashmir, the Gujjars and Bakerwals, both Scheduled Tribe communities in the State, on Sunday urged for strong recommendations from the three-member team of interlocutors on Jammu and Kashmir — in their report to be submitted to Prime Minister of India — for an irreversible provision along with constitutional guarantees to reserved categories while deciding the Kashmir issue.

Sardar Sarovar: 40,000 families still to be resettled

  • Calling for a review of resettlement sites for the people affected by the Sardar Sarovar dam and of the irrigation project itself, Medha Patkar, leader of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) said, there were as many as 40,000 families still in the submergence area, waiting to be resettled.

  • The NBA recently celebrated 25 years of struggle by organising meetings and rallies in Maharashtra and Gujarat.

Narmada Bachao Andolan completes 25 years

  • “In the Narmada valley/The fight is still on” – thus sang the people of Bhadal in Madhya Pradesh, where Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) leader Medha Patkar was heading a prayer meeting as part of the activities marking the completion of 25 years of the people's movement...

Shunglu panel gets broader mandate

  • The high-level committee set up by the Centre to look into the conduct of the Commonwealth Games would have a much broader mandate, going beyond allegations of corruption and misappropriation of funds.

  • Even while focussing on “alleged misappropriation, irregularities, wasteful expenditure and wrongdoings in the conduct of the Games,” the terms of reference of the panel approved on Monday include examination of “weaknesses” in management and issues relating to coordination among various agencies involved in the development of infrastructure and conduct of the Games.

  • The panel, headed by the former Comptroller and Auditor-General of India, V.K. Shunglu, would look at planning and execution of development projects and contracts for service delivery, with reference to time, cost and quality and the role of advisers, consultants and officials of the Organising Committee.

NAC to monitor abolition of manual scavenging

  • The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) on Saturday urged the Centre to coordinate with all State and local governments and also Central government departments, including the Railways, to ensure that the pernicious practice of manual scavenging is fully abolished the latest by the end of the 11th Plan period.

  • This, it said, would require a new survey in every State and Union Territory, with wide public involvement, of the remaining dry latrines and manual scavengers, demolition of all dry latrines, psycho-social and livelihood rehabilitation in modern marketable skills of all manual scavengers and their families, and special programmes for education including higher education and computer education of all children of manual scavengers.

  • The NAC has asked the Ministry of Social Justice to formulate 100 per cent Centrally-sponsored schemes to support the rehabilitation initiatives.

10,000 villages to get power from renewable energy sources

  • Union Minister for New and Renewable Energy Farooq Abdullah on Tuesday announced that 10,000 remote villages across the country would be electrified with renewable energy sources by March 2012 under an innovative initiative that will also generate employment.

India drops to 87th rank in Integrity Index

  • India has fallen three places to 87th in Transparency International's latest Corruption Perceptions Index, in which 178 countries were surveyed.

  • India's integrity score has fallen to 3.3 out of 10 in 2010 while it was 3.5 in 2007 and 3.4 in 2008 and 2009. Transparency International India chairman P.S. Bawa on Tuesday said the recent damaging revelations in the Commonwealth Games contracts seems to have increased the perception about corruption and caused the country to further drop in the CPI ranking.

  • India's score of 3.3 places it slightly above its 91st ranked neighbour Sri Lanka, and below China which is ranked 78th with a score of 3.5. Among the countries that make up the bottom of the table are war-torn Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Myanmar, all of whom have scored between 1.1 and 1.5. The countries in the South Asian region have performed miserably with Bangladesh at 134, Pakistan at 143 and Nepal at 146. Bhutan is the sole exception, scoring a creditable 5.7 and ranked 36th in the world.

  • Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore have the highest Integrity Index of 9.3..

India signs nuclear liability treat

  • India on Wednesday signed the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC), thereby delivering on the last of its commitments stemming from the landmark 2005 nuclear agreement with the United States.

  • The international covenant — which provides a framework for channelling liability and providing speedy compensation in the event of a nuclear accident — was signed at the International Atomic Energy Agency offices in Vienna by Dinkar Khullar, India's Ambassador to Austria. The IAEA is the “depository” of the CSC, which has so far been signed by 14 countries and ratified by four, including the U.S.

  • The CSC will enter into force only when at least five countries with a minimum of 4,00,000 units of installed nuclear capacity ratify the treaty. Even if India ratifies it — and Indian officials say this is unlikely to happen soon — the CSC will not enter into force unless at least one or two countries with a large civilian nuclear programme also do so.

  • With India signing the CSC and the Obama administration issuing the requisite ‘Part 810' licensing certifications, the stage is now set for the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. to begin full-fledged commercial negotiations with General Electric and Westinghouse for supply of two 1,000-MWe reactors. Three rounds of discussions have already been held, Indian officials say, but these have largely been exploratory in nature.

  • India promised the U.S. in 2008 that it would sign the CSC, a treaty that requires signatories to pass a domestic liability law in conformity with a model text. Washington's aim was to ensure that its companies were legally exempted from any liability burden in the event of an accident occurring in an American-supplied nuclear reactor.

  • Though India passed its liability law last month, the U.S. has objected to Sections 17(b) and 46 of the Act which open the door for legal action against nuclear suppliers if an accident is caused by faulty or defective equipment. Washington says these provisions violate the CSC, a charge New Delhi rejects.

  • With GE and Westinghouse lobbyists up in arms, the U.S. side initially suggested that the Manmohan Singh government find a way to delete or negate the two offending sections. When the impossibility of this was pointed out, they suggested that NPCIL be asked contractually to accept the entire liability burden of its suppliers in the event of an accident. This suggestion has also been vetoed.

  • Leaving aside the explosive political implications of a public sector company granting a free pass to an American supplier, legal advisers have pointed out that neither NPCIL nor the government can sign away the provisions for tortious and criminal liability that have been embedded in the new law.

  • The CSC provides no forum for signatories to challenge each other's national laws. Article XVI allows for arbitration as well as adjudication by the International Court of Justice, in the event of a dispute. But the U.S. entered a reservation while ratifying the Convention in 2008 declaring “that it does not consider itself bound by [these] dispute settlement procedures.” When it eventually ratifies the treaty, India is likely to make a similar declaration.

  • That would leave the Supreme Court of India as the only forum competent to rule on the compatibility of the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damages Act, 2010 with India's international obligations stemming from its accession to the CSC.

Adopt realistic approach to finding solution acceptable to all, including PoK: Padgaonkar

  • All people should adopt a realistic approach to finding a solution to the Kashmir problem, and the solution should be acceptable to all parts of the State, including those under Pakistan's

We are not tilting in any direction: Manmohan

  • Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday attempted to dispel the impression that India, traditionally seen and looked up to as a champion of non-alignment, was tilting towards the U.S. and the West.

  • “We are not tilting in any one direction. The foreign policy of India is an expression of our enlightened national interests. Therefore, we seek good relations with all major superpowers — the U.S., Russia, China, Japan. In our continent, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) countries have assumed great importance for the orderly management of increased interdependence with Southeast Asia. We, therefore, look to the Asean countries to promote trade, investment and multifaceted cooperation,” he said.

Protesters block NH 17 in Mangalore

  • Traffic on the busy National Highway No. 17 came to a standstill for over five hours as members of various organisations marched from the Nanthoor junction to Talapady in protest against the pathetic condition of the road on Wednesday.

Shunglu gets Supreme Court judge status

  • V.K. Shunglu, who heads the two-member high-level committee set up to probe the alleged financial irregularities in the Commonwealth Games (CWG), has been given the status of a Supreme Court judge. The government notification, issued by the Cabinet Secretary, has invested Mr. Shunglu, a former Comptroller and Auditor General, with greater authority, and will provide him with greater resources in the form of secretarial and other support staff.

UID numbers soon for schoolchildren

  • All schoolchildren will soon have unique identification numbers (UID), which will help in tracking their movement in educational institutions and academic records.

  • The system will help in tracking students' mobility by creating an electronic registry, right from the primary level through secondary and higher education, as also between the institutions. Imprinting of the UID number on the performance records of students, including mark-sheets, merit certificates and migration certificates, will be helpful to prospective employers and educational institutions.

  • The UID number will also help in dealing with problems such as fake degrees. It could be utilised while dematting of academic certificates, as also education loans and scholarship schemes.

  • Iris scanning would be done for children aged between 5 and 15, while finger print marks would be added subsequently. Infants and children below the age of five will get the number, but their biometric identification will be done only after the age of five.

GAIL to lay sub-sea pipeline

  • GAIL (India) Limited, a government of India undertaking under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, will lay sub-sea pipelines from the gas terminal of Petronet LNG Limited (PLL) at Vypeen in Kochi to National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), Kayamkulam, for transportation of re-gasified LNG (liquefied natural gas).

  • Out of the 120 km pipeline, 117 km will be offshore while 1.5 km each will be on-shore at Vypeen and also Kayamkulam.

  • A feasibility study was conducted earlier by EIL, an engineering consultancy company, for the project to supply LNG by means of pipelines to be laid on the Kochi-Bangalore-Mangalore and Kochi-Kayamkulam routes.

  • The PLL terminal is to be commissioned in the last quarter of the financial year 2011-12, according to the company.

IIM-Kozhikode, IIT-Kanpur to partner with Yale

  • The Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur and the Indian Institute of Management- Kozhikhode on Thursday entered into a partnership with the Yale University for academic leadership development programmes. Under the programme, vice- chancellors and deans will be introduced to best practices of institutional management in the United States.

Superbug study authors blame poor sanitation for bacteria

  • After creating a huge controversy by claiming that foreign patients who were treated in India developed antibiotic resistance, authors of the superbug New Delhi metallo-B-lactamase-1 (NDM-1) bacteria study published in the United Kingdom-based medical journal The Lancet now say that poor sanitation and unregulated antibiotic use presented an immense challenge and should be of great concern to the Indian health authorities and the World Health Organisation.

Proposed rail link passes through elephant corridor

  • Concerns have been voiced about one of the three proposed railway lines in the project to provide railway connectivity to Bhutan, as it would pass through an important elephant corridor in north Bengal.

  • The project, announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his visit to Bhutan in May 2008, is keenly awaited by the people of the country because it will be the first time that rail network will come to Bhutan, said Tshering Wangda, the Consul General,

  • The two other links are proposed to connect Pathsala and Rangia in Assam to Nganglam and Samdrup Jongkhar in Bhutan respectively, he added.

  • However, if the Hasimara-Phuentsholing link is constructed according to the current proposal, it will cause disruption in an elephant corridor in a region where the elephant is already suffering the onslaught of the Railways.

  • “Not an inch of the proposed line will be constructed on the land of the Forest department, but it will pass trough Dalsingpara, which is very close to the Jaigaon forest area and a vital elephant corridor,” said R. P. Saini, field director of the Buxa Tiger Reserve.

NAC favours statutory minimum wages for MNREGS workers

  • Going against the view of the United Progressive Alliance government, the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) has favoured the payment of statutory minimum wages to workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS).

  • The NAC's line is in conflict with the January 1, 2009 notification issued by the Union Ministry of Rural Development, delinking the MNREGS wages from The Minimum Wages Act, 1948, and freezing the former at Rs.100.

  • The notification, issued under Section 6(1) of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, led to a situation where MNREGS workers in several States were paid less than the prevailing minimum wages.

  • In its defence, the Ministry quoted Section 6(1): “Notwithstanding anything contained in the Minimum Wages Act, 1948, the Central government may, by notification, specify the wage rate for the purpose of the Act.”

  • The NAC's contrarian position follows a recommendation made by the Aruna Roy-headed working group on ‘Transparency, Accountability and Governance.' A posting on the NAC website said: “There was general agreement on the recommendations of the working group. There was general agreement that workers should be paid minimum wages as notified under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948.”

India to get its first AC double-decker train

  • India's first air-conditioned double-decker train is expected to be launched on the Howrah-Dhanbad sector before the Diwali celebrations.

  • While a few old double-decker coaches are still operational on the Mumbai-Surat route currently, the new coaches that are built with a “crashworthy design” will also have state-of-the-art facilities for passenger comfort.

  • Developed at the Rail Coach Factory in Kapurthala, eight double-decker coaches were recently brought to Howrah for conducting trial runs before the official flagging-off ceremony.

  • The new coaches – built according to Eurofoma design – will accommodate 128 passengers each and can run at a maximum speed of 160 kmph due to the presence of ‘air-springs' in their under-carriages.

NCDC to become apex institute

  • The National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC)—formerly known as the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) – is all set to become the apex institute for communicable diseases on a par with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, U.S.

  • Established in 1909 as Central Bureau of Malaria at Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh, the institute was renamed Malaria Survey of India in 1927. It was shifted to Delhi in 1938 and renamed as the NICD in 1963 and in July 2009 as NCDC.

.Stephen Schwebel to head Kishanganga arbitration court

  • Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, former President of the International Court of Justice, will head the Court of Arbitration being constituted to resolve the Kishanganga hydroelectric project dispute between India and Pakistan. Judge Schwebel is an expert on international law and dispute settlement.

  • The Rector of the Imperial College London will appoint an engineer and the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales will appoint a legal member as the sixth and seventh members of the court, he said.

  • As per the provisions under the Indus Waters Treaty, signed between India and Pakistan in 1960 under the aegis of the World Bank, the arbitration court has to have seven members, including the chairman. Already India and Pakistan have named two international experts each to represent them.

  • The dispute is over India's 330 Mw hydroelectric project on Kishanganga, a tributary of the Jhelum in Jammu and Kashmir. According to India, the treaty allows it to divert Kishanganga waters to the Bonar Madmati Nallah, another tributary of the Jhelum, which falls into the Wullar lake before joining the Jhelum again. Pakistan has objected to this saying India's plans to divert waters will obstruct the flow of the river affecting its Neelam-Jhelum project downstream.

  • The matter could not be resolved during the Permanent Indus Water Commission-level bilateral talks and Pakistan decided to take the issue to a court of arbitration.

  • INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

    NATO vehicles attacked in Pakistan

  • Oil tankers and vehicles carrying supplies over land through Pakistan for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation-led International Security Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan came under attack in Karachi and near Chaman in Balochistan over the past 24 hours.

  • These attacks come at a time when Pakistan's relations with NATO are particularly strained over repeated violation of the airspace by ISAF aircraft. On Thursday night, the Foreign Office asked its Ambassador in Brussels to lodge a strong protest at the NATO Headquarters over the missile strike at a Frontier Corps outpost in Kurram Agency by two ISAF helicopters.

  • Since NATO supplies have come under attack in Pakistan in the past — mostly in Khyber-Pukhtoonkhwa and once on the outskirts of the federal capital — the attacks in Karachi and Chaman could be coincidental.

  • But, coupled with the blockade at the Torkham border post, these attacks have disrupted NATO supply routes. From Thursday, NATO vehicles have not been allowed to cross over into Afghanistan at the Torkham border post in Khyber Agency. Since a bulk of NATO supplies — excepting weapons — are shipped to Karachi and then ferried over land through Pakistan to Afghanistan, disruption of the facilitating environment is seen as a non-offensive but sure way of conveying Islamabad's displeasure at violation of its territorial integrity.

Musharraf launches party in London

  • Emerging from his two-year political exile with the launch of a new political party, All-Pakistan Muslim League (APML), Mr. Musharraf offered to work for peace with India but made it conditional on a settlement of the Kashmir issue to the satisfaction of Pakistan.

  • On terrorism, he promised a policy of “zero tolerance'' saying his party would “fight it to the finish''.

  • Describing the current Pakistani administration as corrupt and inefficient, Mr. Musharraf said his decision to end his political exile was prompted by realisation that Pakistan was in a deep crisis and needed to be “saved''.

  • His party, he said, would “recreate the vision'' of Pakistan's founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

China's lunar probe launch successful

  • China's lunar probe Chang'e-2 was successfully launched, control centre at the Xichang satellite launch site in southwest China's Sichuan Province announced on Friday.

  • Chang'e-2 arrived at an Earth-Moon transfer orbit after it separated from the carrier rocket, which has a perigee of 200 km and an apogee of about 380,000 km from the earth, according to the centre.

  • The satellite blasted off at 6:59:57 p.m. on a Long March 3C carrier rocket from No. 2 launch tower at the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre.

  • Huang Jiangchuan said unlike Chang'e I, Chang'e II would be directly carried to the lunar orbit by rocket, so a large amount of fuel would be left after its mission, enabling it to do more work.

  • Mr. Huang said scientists and technicians were considering three possible extra missions,

  • The first was staying in the lunar orbit, continuing to transfer data back to the Earth for further research before eventually landing on the Moon as an experiment for future lunar probes.

  • In the second scenario, it would leave the Earth-Moon system, flying into outer space to test China's capability to probe further into space.

  • The third would be a “homecoming,” altering its orbit to become an earth orbiter.

  • The lunar probe will test key technologies and collect data for future landings of Chang'e III and Chang'e IV, and provide high-resolution photographs of the landing area.

  • Chang'e II was built as an alternative to Chang'e I, which was launched in October 2007 and maintained a 16-month lunar orbit. The series of Chang'e probes is named after a legendary Chinese Moon goddess. — Xinhua

U.S. apologises for human experiments

  • The United States has apologised to Guatemala for a series of experiments U.S. researchers conducted on Guatemalan prison inmates and mental hospital patients between 1946 and 1948.

  • U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued statements of deep regret this week after archival research by Professor Susan Reverby of Wellesley College revealed vulnerable Guatemalans were clandestinely infected with sexually-transmitted diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhoea, and chancroid.

Drone strike kills 15 in Pakistan

  • Despite Pakistan cutting off one supply route to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan in protest against airspace violation, drone attacks on Pakistani tribal areas continued on Saturday, killing at least 15 alleged terrorists in North Waziristan..

  • On Friday, ISAF Commander David Petraeus is reported to have telephoned Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to express regret for the NATO attack on a Frontier Corps (F.C.) outpost which killed three personnel and injured three others. He also assured Pakistan that the U. S. would share intelligence.

A boost for Yanukovych

  • Ukraine's apex court has voided changes to the Constitution adopted during the pro-Western “orange revolution” six years ago in a move that strengthens the power of the Moscow-friendly President, Viktor Yanukovych.

  • The Constitutional Court on Friday invalidated the controversial political reform of 2004 that deprived the President of the right to appoint the Prime Minister and the Cabinet and passed this authority to Parliament. The reform prompted a paralysing tug-of-war between the “orange revolution” leaders — President Victor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, which eventually led to the defeat of both in the presidential election in February.

  • The Court ruling restores in Ukraine a presidential system similar to that in Russia and many other former Soviet republics.

  • Since taking office, Mr. Yanukovych has re-oriented Ukraine's foreign policy back to Russia and renounced his predecessor's bid to join NATO.

  • Russian leaders Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin have repeatedly said the presidential system was the best for ex-Soviet states and criticised Kyrgyzstan's decision earlier this year to shift to a parliamentary democracy.

Suu Kyi's camp in the dark on release

  • The political camp of Myanmar's celebrated democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi is in the dark about the military government's supposed moves to allow her to vote in the November 7 election and free her from house arrest about a week later.

  • The reports about the junta's move to free Ms. Suu Kyi are viewed with scepticism in South East Asia.

  • Myanmar is in the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). A few years ago, Myanmar's Foreign Minister told his ASEAN colleagues, at their official meeting in Singapore, Ms. Suu Kyi would be set free upon the completion of her previous term of house arrest.

Russia steps up Arctic presence

  • Russia is stepping up military presence in the Arctic in a bid to reinforce its claims to vast swathes of the energy-rich region.

  • “The Northern and Pacific Fleet are [strengthening] their forces in Russia's part of the Arctic by deploying new warships in the region,” Russian Navy Commander-in-Chief Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti news agency.

  • Admiral Vysotsky said he had sent a proposal to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to deploy battleships in Arctic ports to protect sea routes along Russia's 22,600-km-long Arctic coastline.

  • Judging by figures given by Admiral Vysotsky, Russia's military activity in the Arctic today is higher than it was in the days of the Soviet Union.

Germany celebrates 20 years of unity

  • Germany's President on Sunday paid tribute to the courage of those who fought for freedom, as the country celebrated 20 years since reunification after decades of Cold War division.

  • In his first major set-piece speech, Christian Wulff said: “We remember the momentous day that a people experience only rarely,” when the capitalist West and the Communist East merged barely a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

  • After World War II, the victorious powers, the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union carved defeated Germany into four sections.

  • With the advent of the Cold War, Moscow erected a border between its eastern section and the three western Allied sections, including the Wall that split Berlin in two.

  • On October 3, 1990, just under a year after the Wall was yanked down in a bloodless revolution, the reunification treaty bringing the two halves of the country together came into effect amid joyful scenes.

Kabul, Taliban in secret talks: report

  • A rare window of opportunity for peace and political stability in Afghanistan might have opened up, according to a Washington Post article which reported that the Taliban and representatives of Afghan President Hamid Karzai have embarked on “secret, high-level talks” aimed at ending the war in the country.

  • the article said the Taliban members were authorised to speak for the Quetta Shura, the wing of the Afghan Taliban based in the Pakistani city of Quetta.

  • However, the sources mentioned by the Post said the groups kept out of the talks included the Haqqani network, a militant outfit in Pakistan that “U.S. intelligence considers particularly brutal”.

  • In January, Pakistan's role in Afghan peace negotiations came in for criticism after it emerged that Abdul Ghani Baradar, a senior operational commander of the Taliban, was arrested by Pakistani authorities because they reportedly feared being left out of a deal the Taliban was striking with the Hamid Karzai government.

Russia renews interest in Vietnam base

  • The Russian Navy has announced plans to return to the Cam Ranh Bay naval base in Vietnam eight years after it pulled out from the strategic foothold in South East Asia.

  • The Russian naval command has drawn up a proposal for the government to resume the lease of naval base at Cam Ranh, the Interfax news agency quoted a source in the naval headquarters as saying on Wednesday.

  • Vietnam war

  • The Russian return to Cam Ranh will impact strategic equations in the region. Cam Ranh was the main U.S. Air Force base during the Vietnam war, and in 1979 the Soviet Union leased the base gratis for 25 years turning it into its largest naval base abroad. In 2002 Russia gave up the lease after Vietnam asked it to pay an annual rent of $300 million.

  • The Russian report comes less than a week before U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates begins an official visit to Vietnam amid warming military relations between the two countries. Washington has been seeking access to Cam Ranh for years to monitor Chinese naval activity, but Vietnam has stalled out of fear of antagonising China.

  • Submarine deal

  • By contrast, Hanoi will have no such problems granting docking rights to Russia, which is a strategic ally of both China and Vietnam. In recent months, Vietnam has signed contracts with Russia to buy six Kilo-class submarines and 12 Su-30MK2 fighter planes. Later this month, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will visit Vietnam to attend an ASEAN summit.

  • India has also displayed interest in the Cam Ranh naval base

Danube safe: Premier

  • Hungarian officials on Friday played down the threat of disastrous pollution to the Danube river from an industrial accident in Hungary, while its Prime Minister said the situation was under control.

  • Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who declared a state of emergency in three counties earlier this week, insisted there remained little risk of the pollution running into the Danube, Europe's second-longest river.

FAO drops reference to J&K, Arunachal as separate countries

  • The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has dropped the references to Jammu and Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh as “independent entities” in its 2010 report and has initiated a review of system for designating countries and territories.

  • The categorisation had come as a surprise to many in India.

  • In its report, the FAO has shown Jammu and Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh as separate countries along with India. The two States figured in country grouping for East Asia.

Donilon has a wealth of experience: Obama

  • General James Jones will be stepping down from his role as the National Security Advisor of the United States and will be replaced by his deputy, Thomas Donilon, President Barack Obama announced.

GM mosquitoes to fight dengue

  • Malaysia's Health Minister on Sunday said the country would carry out a landmark field trial by releasing genetically modified mosquitoes designed to combat dengue fever by the end of the year.

  • Malaysia's death rate from dengue fever has spiralled 53 per cent this year and the public is being urged to take action to eradicate the Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes — the females of which spread dengue — from homes and workplaces.

Setback to Zardari in Supreme Court

  • The federal government's hopes of delaying the implementation of the Supreme Court verdict nullifying the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) were dashed on Monday as the apex court rejected its plea for deferring the next hearing beyond October 13.

  • On Saturday, the government moved the court for delaying the hearing of its review petition against the NRO verdict on the premise that it needed time to find a new counsel to replace Kamal Azfar who had been elevated to the position of adviser to the Prime Minister.

  • The NRO is an amnesty provision initiated during the tenure of the former President, Pervez Musharraf, to “remove the vestiges of political vendetta and victimisation” by previous regimes. It was struck down by the Supreme Court in December 2009. The 8,000-odd beneficiaries include 80 politicians but the government's delaying tactics is seen as a bid to prevent the reopening of graft cases against President Asif Ali Zardari.

Cam Bay not for lease: Vietnam

  • Vietnam on Tuesday said the strategic Cam Ranh Bay naval base would not be leased out to any foreign power for military purposes.

  • For a long time, Cam Ranh has been known as a military port, which is now no longer the case. In 2003, the Vietnamese Prime Minister approved the master plan for developing the Cam Ranh Gulf until 2010 for civil use. This has been strongly implemented and the Cam Ranh airport was inaugurated on May 19, 2004, and it is now open for commercial flights.

First trial with human embryonic stem cells

  • U.S. doctors have begun the first tests of human embryonic stem cells in patients, treating a man with spinal cord injuries in a landmark trial of the controversial process, said the Geron Corporation on Monday.

  • The Phase I trial is expected to involve around 10 patients. Participants in the human trials must be severely injured and start treatment with Geron's product, GRNOPC1, seven to 14 days after sustaining their injury.

  • Patients will be given a single injection of two million of Geron's GRNOPC1 cells in the trial.

  • The ultimate goal for GRNOPC1 is to inject it directly into the spinal cord lesions of injured humans where it would, Geron hopes, prompt damaged nerve cells to re-grow, enabling patients to eventually recover feeling and movement.

  • Geron began working with human embryonic stem cells in 1999.

  • GRNOPC1 is made up of cells containing precursors to oligodendrocytes — multi-tasking cells that occur in the nervous system.

  • Oligodendrocytes are lost in spinal cord injury, resulting in myelin and neuronal loss which cause paralysis in many patients.

Chile rejoices as miners surface to freedom

  • Some 13 hours into the final phase of the rescue operation, the 20th miner of the 33 stepped from the escape capsule. Chilean President Sebastian Pinera was on hand to embrace the earliest arrivals in their first stirring moments of freedom.

  • On Wednesday, he moved to the makeshift hospital, chatting like a triumphant father with ever-growing group of rescued men. Bolivian President Evo Morales joined him to welcome the sole Bolivian miner, Carlos Mamani.

Israel approves homes ending freeze

  • Israel's government ended an unofficial freeze on new building in east Jerusalem, approving the construction of 238 homes in Jewish neighbourhoods as peace talks remained stuck on Friday over the fate of a broader construction slowdown throughout the West Bank.

  • Peace talks that began in early September are deadlocked over a Palestinian demand that Israel extend a slowdown on settlement construction that expired last month. The Palestinians are threatening to quit the negotiations unless Israel reinstates the building restrictions. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to do so.

  • The Israeli settlement slowdown imposed last November in the West Bank did not officially include east Jerusalem, which Israel claims as part of its capital. But before Friday, Israel had quietly halted building there as well without explicitly saying it was doing so.

  • Around 180,000 Israelis live in neighbourhoods Israel has built in east Jerusalem since capturing the area from Jordan in 1967. The eastern sector of the city is home to around 250,000 Palestinians, and Palestinians hope to make it the capital of a future state.

We will decide on North Waziristan, says Islamabad

  • Despite pressure from the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to conduct an operation against terrorists holed up in North Waziristan along the Afghanistan border, Pakistan on Friday made it clear that a decision on “when, how and what [should be done]” would be made by Islamabad.

Myanmar laying rail line to China

  • Myanmar has started work on a railway line from its planned deep-sea port at Kyaukphyu to south-western China's Yunnan province, Chinese media reported on Sunday. The line, which will be completed in 2015, will transport Chinese goods for export, and also be used by China to expand its access to Myanmar's natural resources. The two countries, last year, began work on an oil pipeline from Kyaukphyu to Ruili in Yunnan. The planned railroad will also run from Kyaukphyu, which is in Myanmar's western Rakhine state, to Ruili and Yunnan's capital Kunming. China's official Xinhua agency said China also planned to invest in a special industrial zone at Kyaukphyu.

  • In recent years, Chinese companies, particularly those based in south-western Yunnan province which neighbours Myanmar, have accelerated investments in oil, gas and natural resources in the country. China has also invested in developing deep-sea ports, such as Kyaukphyu in Maday Island, part of a larger plan to secure greater access to Indian Ocean ports and reduce its dependence on the narrow Malacca Straits for its imports of oil from West Asia and Africa.

  • China eventually hopes to use Kyaukphyu as a centre for its imports of oil. The China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) is involved in building both a deep-sea port and storage facilities, from where oil will be transported through the planned pipeline, expected to be opened in 2012, to Yunnan.

Super typhoon hits the Philippines

  • Super Typhoon Megi smashed into the northern Philippines on Monday, causing landslides in mountainous areas, with gusts of up to 260 km an hour whipping up huge waves along the coast and killing at least one person.

  • Forecasters said Megi was probably the most powerful storm in the world this year and the strongest to hit the Philippines since Typhoon Durian unleashed mudslides that buried entire towns and killed more than 1,000 people in 2006. — A

Chechen Parliament comes under attack

  • A daring terrorist attack on Chechnya's Parliament on Tuesday left at least seven people dead and 17 wounded.

  • The attack could have been timed to coincide with a visit to Grozny on Tuesday of Russia's Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev.

  • In August, a group of suicide gunmen attacked Tsenteroi, the heavily fortified home village of Chechnya's President Ramzan Kadyrov.

  • Russia's troubled North Caucasus has seen a four-fold rise in terrorist attacks this year, a deputy Prosecutor General said last month.

Iran optimistic ahead of N-talks

  • Iran has said dates for fresh talks with six global powers have not yet been set but has cited some of its expectations from the proposed nuclear dialogue, which could take place next month.

  • Iran's top representative for nuclear negotiations Saeed Jalili said on Tuesday Tehran had accepted in principle, talks with the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany (P5+1

  • On Monday, Iran's atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi said Tehran was ready to discuss exchanging atomic fuel and its overall nuclear programme in upcoming talks. “We are ready to hold simultaneous talks with the 5+1 and the Vienna group about the fuel swap,” Iran's ISNA news agency quoted Mr. Salehi as saying.

  • The United States, Russia, France and the International Atomic Energy (IAEA) comprise the Vienna group, which had last year held talks on fuel supplies with Iran for its medical reactor based in Tehran.

3 suspended over expenses claims

  • Three senior peers — Labour's Lord Swraj Paul and Baroness Manzila Pola Uddin and independent Lord Amir Bhatia — were on Thursday formally suspended from the House of Lords for varying periods over their expenses claims.

  • The House took the action after a report of the House of Lords Committee for Privileges and Conduct recommended their suspension for wrongly claiming expenses. They were also ordered to repay thousands of pounds they had claimed in excess.

  • Lord Paul was suspended for four months, Baroness Uddin until Easter 2012 and Lord Bhatia for eight months.

  • Both Lord Paul and Lord Bhatia have already repaid the excess amount while Baroness Uddin has been told to pay back £125,349.

Huge U.S.-Saudi arms deal

  • The United States has announced one of the largest weapons sales in its history, worth nearly $60 billion, to Saudi Arabia.

  • Announcing the deal, Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro said the U.S. planned to sell the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia a “significant defence package that will promote regional security and enhance the defensive capabilities of an important Gulf partner with whom we have had a longstanding and close security relationship.”

  • The most significant components of the package include 84 F-15 aircraft, 70 upgrades of existing Saudi F-15s to a more advanced configuration, 70 AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopters, 72 UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters, 36 AH-6i light attack helicopters, and 12 MD-530F light training helicopters.

  • The proposed packages also include aircraft munitions, support, and training services are sufficient, officials said.

  • In approving the sale the Obama administration argued that it would advance U.S. national security, send a “strong message” to the region that the U.S. was committed to support the security of its allies in the Arabian Gulf and enhance “Saudi Arabia's ability to deter and defend against threats to its borders and to its oil infrastructure, which is critical to our economic interests.”

  • U.S. officials also emphasised that in authorising the weapons sale they had taken into account how it was “appropriate” from a regional political-military perspective and determined that it “would not negatively impact Israel's security interests or Israel's qualitative military edge.” Further, Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Affairs Alexander Vershbow said the sale would improve U.S.-Saudi interoperability and as a result the U.S. Department of Defence would be able to free up U.S. forces in the region and maximise the effectiveness of the U.S.' global force posture. When asked whether the sale implied the use of air power against Iran, Mr. Shapiro said: “It is not solely about Iran.”

Putin aide is Moscow Mayor

  • Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's right-hand man has been elected Mayor of Moscow, the third most important job in Russia.

  • Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Sobyanin vowed to tackle the corruption that flourished under his predecessor, Yuri Luzhkov. President Dmitry Medvedev sacked Mr. Luzhkov, who had held office for 18 years, for losing “the President's confidence”. The appointment of Mr. Putin's trusted ally to Moscow, which generates 24 per cent of Russia's GDP, is fresh evidence that the Prime Minister remains Russia's most powerful political figure more than two years after he relinquished presidency.

$2.29-billion U.S. aid for Pakistan to fight terror

  • The United States on Friday announced that it would provide a whopping $2.29 billion as military aid to Pakistan to bolster its army's anti-terror capabilities, notwithstanding India's concerns that Islamabad has been diverting a portion of such assistance against it.

  • Applauding Pakistan's role in the war against terror, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Washington had “no stronger partner when it comes to counter terrorism” than Islamabad.

  • Ms. Clinton made the remarks at the opening of the third U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue with her Pakistani counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

  • Of the new aid, $2 billion comes under the foreign military financing programme and $29 million is being given under the international military education and training funding.

  • Ms. Clinton said a request would be made to Congress for the aid to be made available for the period from 2012 to 2016. This would complement the five-year $7.5 billion in civilian aid to Pakistan under the Kerry-Lugar Bill.

  • This is for the first time that the U.S. has made a multi-year commitment of international military education and training.

Government, unions harden stand

  • Friday saw a further hardening of positions in the standoff between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and striking workers calling for the re-examination of a proposed law to change the pension and retirement laws.

  • Mr. Sarkozy sent in gendarmes to break up pickets and ordered striking oil refinery staff back to work. But defiant workers said they would challenge the President's order in court.

  • Seeking to mute the disruptions, the government on Thursday invoked a clause in the Constitution that allows the Senate to cast a single vote on the legislation and the 200 remaining amendments. The opposition cried foul saying its right to debate the bill had been curtailed “in a most undemocratic manner”.

WikiLeaks' Iraq war papers detail civilian killings, torture

  • In the “largest classified military leak” in United States' history, whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks released nearly 400,000 secret American documents on the Iraq war detailing graphic accounts of torture, killing of over 66,000 civilians and Iran's role in the conflict.

  • The latest leaked documents chronicling the Iraq war from 2004 to 2009 provide a new picture of how many Iraqi civilians were killed, open a new window on the role that Iran played in supporting Iraqi militants and give many accounts of abuse by the Iraqi army and the police, said The New York Times, one of the news organisations which got early access to the papers.

1,500 birds die on Ukrainian island

  • Around 1,500 dead birds were found on a Ukrainian island on the Azov sea, leaving experts puzzled about the cause of their deaths.

  • The dead birds were found on the Bolshoi Dzendzik Island, the RIA Novosti reported.

  • Most of the dead birds found near the Berdyansk spit were cormorants, but a large number of them included herring gulls as well, officials of the Ukrainian Emergencies Ministry said.

Indonesia pledges to control haze

  • Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa has expressed resolve to address the problem of haze that was affecting neighbouring Singapore and parts of Malaysia.

  • Mr. Natalegawa was speaking in Jakarta after Singapore and Malaysia had urged Indonesia to snuff out the uncontrolled fires in Sumatra. These were caused by dry weather and also unregulated activities.

Russian interest in pipeline

  • Russia has offered to join the ambitious Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline, even as it opted out of a project to build a gas pipeline from Iran to Pakistan and India.

  • Russia's natural gas giant Gazprom has opened talks with Turkmenistan on the company's possible involvement in the TAPI project, said Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who is in charge of the energy sector.

  • India last month joined Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan in signing a TAPI Gas Pipeline Framework Agreement (GPFA). Turkmenistan hopes a Gas Sales Purchase Agreement (GSPA) may be signed during a proposed TAPI summit in Ashgabat in December.

  • Russia signalled readiness to join TAPI as it lost interest in the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, which Gazprom had earlier promised to help build. Russia's envoy to Pakistan practically ruled out participation in it. Russian experts link Gazprom's reluctance to join IPI to international economic sanctions against Iran. Last month Moscow cancelled a contract to sell advanced S-300 air defence missile systems to Iran.

$25,000 compensation for Kanishka victims mooted

  • The Canadian government has suggested a compensation of $20,000 to $25,000 to families of each of the victims in the tragic 1985 Air India Kanishka terror bombing that killed 329 people, mostly of Indian origin, said a news report.

U.S. skirts nuclear deal; no mediation on Kashmir

  • Dashing Pakistan's hopes, the United States has refused to be forthcoming on its request for a civil nuclear deal, similar to the one with India, and made clear that it will not mediate on the Kashmir issue.

China to reconsider language policy

  • The Chinese government said on Saturday it would reconsider its plan to promote the use of Mandarin, the language spoken by the majority Han Chinese ethnic group, as the sole language of instruction in universities after hundreds of Tibetan students in western China and in Beijing protested the move this week.

Cholera outbreak in Haiti

  • The United Nations has confirmed five cases of cholera in Haiti's capital after a sudden epidemic of cholera in northern and central Haiti killed 220 people, according to a U.N. report seen on Sunday.

  • U.N. health officials said on Saturday that cholera had reached the capital Port-au-Prince, as officials scrambled to contain a wider outbreak 10 months after an earthquake devastated the Caribbean nation.

113 killed in Indonesia tsunami

  • A powerful earthquake triggered a three-metre tsunami that pounded remote island villages in western Indonesia, killing at least 113 people and leaving scores more missing, said an official on Tuesday.

  • The fault that ruptured on Monday on Sumatra island's coast also caused the 2004 quake and monster Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen countries.

China unveils world's fastest train

  • China on Tuesday unveiled what it described as the world's fastest bullet train, which will connect two of the country's industrial hubs travelling at an average speed of 350 km per hour.

  • The rail link between Shanghai and Hangzhou, the latest addition to China's fast-expanding high-speed rail network that is already the world's largest, covers the 200-km distance in only 45 minutes, reducing the travelling time from 78 minutes.

  • The home-built CRH380 bullet train has been recorded travelling at 420 km per hour, a world record. It will, however, travel between the two cities at less than full tilt, at an average speed of 350 km per hour.

Learn from India, says Chinese think-tank

  • China is fast outpacing India in terms of national competitiveness, but needs to learn from India's legal system and protection of “vulnerable” groups, the country's top think-tank has said in a report.

  • A report on “national competitiveness” released by the official Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), which is China's leading think-tank, also forecast that China would become the world's second-most powerful nation after the United States by 2050, and overtake the U.S. to become the largest economy in 2030.

U.S., Russia to join EAS: ASEAN

  • The United States and Russia will be the new members of the East Asia Summit (EAS), a forum of native states of the region and their dialogue partners among major powers of the world.

  • This follows a decision taken by the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at their latest annual summit in Hanoi on Thursday.

  • Washington and Moscow will be invited to attend the annual meetings of the EAS from 2011.

  • Founded over four years ago, the EAS now has 16 members — all the 10 ASEAN countries, Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea.

  • The ASEAN leaders emphasised the need for “ensuring [the Association's] centrality” to an expanded EAS as well. Currently, the ASEAN Chair presides over the EAS meetings. As “a leaders-driven strategic forum,” the EAS functions as a key organisation for regional cooperation on a range of issues including security.

  • “An effective regional architecture [for cooperation] should be based on existing processes which are complementary to each other,” the ASEAN leaders decided. These processes include the ASEAN+3 forum, the +3 countries being China, Japan, and the Republic of Korea.

A first for women in Pakistan

  • Veteran human rights activist Asma Jehangir has won a keenly-contested election for president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, becoming the first woman to hold this office.

In joint raid with U.S., Russia back in Afghanistan

  • Russian and U.S. special forces have carried out their first joint anti-narcotics operation in Afghanistan that marked the first time Russian security personnel set foot in that country in more than 20 years.

  • In a joint raid on four heroin laboratories near the border with Pakistan, Russian and U.S. forces seized $250-million worth of narcotics,

  • The operation marked Russia's return to Afghanistan for the first time since the Russian Army pulled out from the country in 1989 after a 10-year war. So far Moscow has consistently rejected sending its troops to Afghanistan, limiting assistance to supply of helicopters and provision of transport corridors.

China's supercomputer world's fastest

  • China has overtaken the U.S. as home of the world's fastest supercomputer. Tianhe-1A, named in honour of the Milky Way, is capable of sustained computing of 2.507 petaflops — equivalent to 2,507 trillion calculations each second.

  • The U.S. scientist who maintains the international rankings visited it last week and said he believed it was 1.4 times faster than the former number one, the Cray XT5 Jaguar in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. That topped the list in June with a rate of 1.75 petaflops.

  • The U.S. is home to more than half of the world's top 500 supercomputers. China had 24 in the last list, but has pumped billions into developing its computational ability in recent years.

AWARDS

Award and Prizes October 2010

Social activist Aruna Roy gets Lal Bahadur Shastri award

  • President Pratibha Patil on Friday presented the prestigious Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Public Administration, Academia and Management to Aruna Roy, social and political activist, at the Rashtrapati Bhavan here.

  • The award carries a prize of Rs. 5 lakh, a plaque and a citation stating that the award was conferred on Ms. Roy for her “arduous journey and dedication towards the issue of the common man.”

  • It noted that the most significant of Ms. Roy's efforts had been the campaigns for transparency and the people's right to information, which began in the early 1990s, and, more recently, the right to work campaign.

  • “These [two] broad-based collective campaigns helped ensure the passage of the Right to Information law and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act [now the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act] by Parliament in 2005.”

  • Instituted by the Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management with a view to upholding the vision of the late Prime Minister, each year the award honours an Indian, residing either in the country or abroad, who is an exceptionally outstanding and distinguished business leader, management practitioner, public administrator, education or institution builder, for his or her sustained individual contributions and achievements of high professional order and excellence.

Nobel for “test-tube baby” creator

  • Robert Edwards, the British scientist whose pioneering research with his late colleague Patrick Steptoe led to the birth of the world's first “test-tube baby'' in 1978, has won this year's Nobel Prize for medicine.

  • The Nobel Assembly at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, which awarded the prize worth ten million Swedish Kronor, described his work as “a milestone of modern medicine.”

  • “His work has made possible the treatment of infertility, a medical condition that affects a large proportion of humanity including more than 10% of couples worldwide,” it said in a statement.

Physics Nobel for groundbreaking work on wonder material

  • A day after winning the Nobel Prize for Medicine, two scientists in Britain struck it “rich” again at Stockholm on Tuesday when Russian-born Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov of Manchester University were named joint winners of this year's Nobel Prize for Physics for their “groundbreaking” work on experiments with graphene, a new form of carbon with immense possibilities.

  • At 36, Professor Novoselov, a British-Russian citizen, has been the youngest physicist since 1973 to win a Nobel, a committee official said.

  • Highlighting the significance of their work, the Prize committee said graphene could be put to a number of practical uses.

  • “Since it is practically transparent and a good conductor, graphene could be used for producing transparent touchscreens, light panels and maybe even solar cells,” it said.

  • The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences hailed graphene for its glittering potential in computers, home gadgets and transport.

  • This novel form of carbon comprises a single layer of atoms arranged in a honeycomb-shaped lattice. Just one atom thick, it is the world's thinnest and strongest nano-material, almost transparent and able to conduct electricity and heat.

3 win Nobel for inventing chemical tool

  • American Richard Heck and Japanese researchers Ei-ichi Negishi and Akira Suzuki won the 2010 Nobel Prize in chemistry on Wednesday for developing a chemical method that has allowed scientists to test cancer drugs and make thinner computer screens.

  • The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said the award honors their development of palladium-catalyzed cross couplings in organic systems.

  • The academy called that one of the most sophisticated tools available to chemists today, and one that is used by researchers worldwide and in commercial production of pharmaceuticals and molecules used to make electronics.

  • The awards were established by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel -- the inventor of dynamite -- and are always handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of his death in 1896. - AP

Award for Rahman, Ramakrishna Mission Ashram

  • Oscar-winning composer A.R. Rahman and the Ramakrishna Mission Ashram, located in Chhattisgarh's Narainpur, have jointly won the 25th Indira Gandhi Award for National Integration for the year 2009 for their services in promoting and preserving national integration.

  • The award, which consists of a citation and Rs.2.5 lakh, will be presented by Congress president Sonia Gandhi at Teen Murti House on October 31, the death anniversary of the former Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi.

  • The award was instituted by the Congress in 1985 to recognise distinguished persons for outstanding contributions to the cause of national integration.

Literature Nobel for Mario Vargas Llosa

  • Mario Vargas Llosa (74), celebrated Peruvian-Spanish author and one of the most renowned novelists of his generation, has won the Nobel Prize for Literature “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat”.

  • Works: His other profoundly influential novel was The Feast of the Goat (2000). This major work was again a political thriller and was loosely based on the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic between 1930 and 1961. Other well known works include Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977), The War of the End of the World, (1981) and, more recently, Death in the Andes (1993).

  • This last novel — focussing on deaths associated with the militant Shining Path group — also reflected some of Mr. Llosa's concern for the plight of the downtrodden. In Death in the Andes, Mr. Llosa situated violence “in the context of an older world where life is brutal and in a society which is on the very fringe of the modern world”.

Peace Nobel for Chinese activist

  • Jailed Chinese political activist Liu Xiaobo, 54, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, a decision the Chinese government has criticised as “a blasphemy.”

  • The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the award went to Mr. Liu, who is in prison for his calls for political reform, “for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.”

  • “Prerequisitefor fraternity”

  • “The Norwegian Nobel Committee has long believed that there is a close connection between human rights and peace,” it said in a statement.

  • “Such rights are a prerequisite for the fraternity between nations of which Alfred Nobel wrote in his will.”

Guinness record: 50,300 saplings planted in an hour

  • The ‘cold desert' of Leh on Sunday entered the Guinness Book of World Records after 50,300 saplings were planted at a village here in less than an hour by 9,000 volunteers under a drive supported by Buddhist monks to mark the ‘green' Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

  • The earlier record was held by Peru, where 40,000 saplings were planted in 60 minutes by 8,000 volunteers.

3 share Economics Nobel

  • Peter Diamond and Dale Mortensen of the United States and British-Cypriot Christopher Pissarides won the 2010 Nobel Economics Prize on Monday for work on why supply and demand do not always meet in the labour market and elsewhere.

  • The prize highlights one aspect of a policymaking problem which has bedevilled governments of advanced countries since the oil shocks of the 1970s: high unemployment which has risen even higher because of the global economic crisis. The jury lauded the trio “for their analysis of markets with search frictions”, which helps explain how unemployment, job vacancies, and wages are affected by regulation and economic policy.

  • According to traditional theory, labour markets should work on their own, with job-seekers finding available jobs, thus creating balance.

  • The three Nobel laureates, however, help show with their model — the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides, or DMP model — that markets do not always work in this way.

  • Owing to small glitches, buyers may find it difficult to find sellers and job-seekers may not find the employers looking to fill a position.

  • For instance, a small cost faced by employers looking for labour may mean they decide not to take on workers even though they need them.

  • The trio's model helps explain why unemployment persists and proves stubbornly resistant even when economic circumstances improve. It also helps identify areas for government policy action, pinpointing for instance what governments can do to improve employment and prevent long-term unemployment through training.

  • Last year, Elinor Ostrom — the first woman to ever win such a prize — and Oliver Williamson of the United States won the Economics Prize for their work on the organisation of cooperation in economic governance. — AFP

Cambridge confers Honorary Fellow of Trinity Hall on Aiyar

  • Exactly 47 years after he left Cambridge University, Mr. Aiyar returned here on Tuesday to be made an Honorary Fellow of Trinity Hall, his alma mater, in recognition of his contribution to the “diplomatic and political life of the world's greatest democracy.”

  • He joins the ranks of figures such as renowned scientist Stephen Hawking.

Man Booker Prize throws up surprise winner

  • British writer and journalist Howard Jacobson's novel The Finkler Question, a semi-autobiographical comic take on Jewish identity, is the surprise winner of this year's Man Booker Prize.

  • It was not the unanimous choice of the jury and, in the end, two of the five judges voted against it.

  • Manchester-born Mr. Jacobson, who lives in London, beat two of the bookies' favourites — Tom McCarthy's C and Emma Donoghue's Room — to win the £50,000 prize.

  • Mr. Jacobson's previously longlisted novels are Kalooki Nights and Who's Sorry Now?

SASTRA Ramanujan Prize for Wei Zhang of Harvard

  • The 2010 SASTRA Ramanujan Prize will be awarded to Wei Zhang, a Benjamin Pierce Instructor at the Department of Mathematics, Harvard University, United States.

  • According to a release from the Shanmugha Arts, Sciences, Technology, Research Academy (SASTRA) University, Dr. Zhang was the unanimous choice of the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize Committee, comprising a panel of international experts, chaired by University of Florida's Professor Krishnaswami Alladi, for making a profound influence at the young age of 29 in a wide range of areas in mathematics.

  • Established in 2005, this annual prize is for outstanding contributions by very young mathematicians in areas influenced by Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. The age limit for the prize has been set at 32 because Ramanujan achieved so much in his brief life of 32 years.

  • The $10,000 prize will be awarded at the International Conference on Number Theory and Automorphic Forms at SASTRA University in Kumbakonam, on December 22, Ramanujan's birthday. Dr. Wei has made far-reaching contributions by himself, and in collaboration with others, to a broad range of areas in mathematics, including number theory, automorphic forms, L-functions, trace formulas, representation theory and algebraic geometry, the release said.

PM wants pace of developing scientific knowledge quickened

  • Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called for quickening the pace of developing scientific knowledge and application relevant to the needs of developing countries, while cautioning against the development path followed by the industrialised nations.

  • Inaugurating the 21st general meeting of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS) here on Tuesday, he said the challenges that the developing countries faced were similar, whether in combating tropical diseases or transforming agriculture or tackling natural disasters. “These problems of under-development do not receive adequate attention in the advanced industrialised countries. Nor should we expect others to solve our problems for us.”

  • He paid homage to Pakistani Nobel Laureate Prof. Abdus Salam, who was the founder of the TWAS (renamed now as the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World).

  • Earlier, Dr. Singh presented the Ernesto Illy Trieste Science Prize, which carries a cash prize of $1,00,000, to renowned energy expert Jose Goldemberg of Brazil and the India Science Prize, with a cash award of Rs. 25 lakh, to eminent statistician Prof. C.R. Rao.

Cinema has a stake in societal stability'

  • President Pratibha Patil presented the Dadasaheb Phalke Award to D. Ramanaidu at the 57th National Film Awards-2009 ceremony at the Vigyan Bhavan here on Friday.

  • Dr. Ramanaidu holds the Guinness Record for producing the highest number of films in his career spanning over four decades. His repertoire includes 134 films in almost all major Indian languages and even English. Born in Andhra Pradesh, Dr. Ramanaidu started as a character actor and made his debut as producer of Ramudu Bheemudu in 1963.

  • Amid rousing reception, Amitabh Bachchan walked away with the award for the best actor for his portrayal of a 13-year-old schoolboy in the Hindi film Paa. This is the fourth national award for Mr. Bachchan, who first bagged it for his role in Saat Hindustani, followed by one for Agneepath and more recently for Black.

  • His onscreen father in Paa and son in real life Abhishek Bachchan went up with director R. Balki to collect the award for the Best Hindi Film Paa.

  • The Nargis Dutt Award for the best feature film on national integration for Delhi 6 was collected by director and producer Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra.

  • This year's award list included several new categories based on the recommendations of the expert committee set up under filmmaker Shyam Benegal.

  • Kutty Srank (Malayalam) won the top honour for the best feature film. It also bagged award in four other categories — best cinematography, best screenplay, best costume and a special jury recognition, which it shared with the Hindi film Kaminey and the Malayalam film Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja.

  • In the special jury award category for the best director, Shaji N. Karun was presented the Swarna Kamal. For the best popular film providing wholesome entertainment, the Swarna Kamal went to 3 Idiots (Hindi) directed by Raj Kumar Hirani.

  • A Rajat Kamal, the award for the best film on social issues, was bagged by Well done Abba (Hindi) directed by Shyam Benegal; in the best children's film category the award was shared by Putaani Party (Kannada) and Keshu (Malayalam).

  • The Swarna Kamal for the best direction was given to Rituparno Ghosh for Abohoman (Bengali), and Ananya Chatterjee won the best actress for the same film.

  • Farooque Sheikh bagged the Rajat Kamal for the best supporting actor for Lahore, and Paa fetched the award to Arundhati Naag in the best supporting actress category.

  • The award for the best child artist went to D.S. Kishore and Sreeraam for their portrayal as ‘Anbukkarasu' and ‘Jeeva' in Pasanga (Tamil). The Rajat Kamal for the best Tamil film was won by Pasanga.

  • Rupam Islam and Neelanjana Sarkar were presented with the awards for best male and female playback singers, while cameraperson Anjuli Shukla walked away with the best cinematography award for Kutty Srank. She is the first woman to win the award in this category.

  • A thunderous applause greeted Aasna Alam, a visually challenged girl, for her role in the Malayalam film Kelkkunnundo. Nikita Bhagat won the special mention for her debut film Vilay posthumously.

  • The award for the best music direction (songs) was presented to Amit Trivedi for Dev D (Hindi) and for the best background score (a new category) to Ilayaraja. The special jury award was shared by Kaminey, Kutty Srank and Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja. In the non-feature film category, The Postman directed by M. Manohar, and Bilal by Sourav Sarangi won the Swarna Kamal.

  • The Swarna Kamal for the best film critic was presented to C.S. Venkiteswaran (Malayalam).

Indian wins U.S. award for EVM security work

  • The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a leading civil liberties group, will confer the 2010 Pioneer Award on researcher Hari Prasad, who was recently released on bail after having been jailed for his security work on electronic voting machines.

Microsoft sets Limca record

  • The fall of a chip sets off a cascading effect. As the chips lined up in formations fall, a wave is created and vibrant colour pattern emerges. It was not a mean task at Microsoft's Hyderabad Centre. The falling chips made a dazzling display of the logo of Windows 7, the operating system made available on October 22 last year.

  • This was the way a team of 22 Microsoft employees celebrated the first anniversary of the general availability of Windows 7 and the effort enabled Microsoft storm into the Limca Book of Records for the first ever dominoes display of its kind in India. The Microsoft Dominoes effect required 7,000 wooden dominoes, each weighting 12 gm and placed barely 0.2 inches apart sidewise and 0.5 inches lengthwise to create the logo.

Winners of Infosys Prize 2010 announced

  • The Infosys Science Foundation, established by Infosys Technologies Ltd., on Monday announced the winners in the five categories of the Infosys Prize 2010.

  • The prize for excellence in Mathematical Sciences was awarded to Chandrashekhar Khare, Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He won the prize for his “fundamental contribution” to number theory, particularly the solution he found for the Serre conjecture, stated the citation of the jury, headed by Srinivasa S.R. Varadhan, Professor of Mathematics, and Frank J. Gould, Professor of Science at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University.

  • Professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, Sandip Trivedi, won the prize in the Physical Sciences category for “finding an ingenious way” to solve two of the most outstanding puzzles of superstring theory — what is the origin of dark energy and why there is no mass-less scalar particle — simultaneously.

Nonagenarians among four Jamnalal Bajaj awardees

  • President Pratibha Patil on Thursday presented the Jamnalal Bajaj Awards for 2010 for outstanding contributions in social development.

  • Chewang Norphel, a 74-year-old civil engineer from Ladakh, was presented the award for application of science and technology for rural development. His ‘artificial glacier' has helped farmers in the dry and difficult region of Ladakh get water supply in April and May — the most crucial period of sowing.

  • Chunibhai Vaidya, a nonagenarian from Ahmedabad, was given the award for outstanding contribution in the field of constructive work. The oldest living Gandhian, Mr. Vaidya has been active in many movements in Gujarat and Rajasthan for betterment of the poor and the marginalised. He has also authored several books.

  • The award for development and welfare of women and children was given to Shakuntala Choudhary, a nonagenarian from Assam.

  • The award for promoting Gandhian values outside India was given to Lia Diskin from Brazil. .The winners were chosen from 124 nominations across the world.

Finance Minister of Asia award for Pranab

  • Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has won this year's ‘Finance Minister of the Year for Asia' award. This award is based on nominations from public and private sector economists, analysts, bankers, investors and other experts.

  • The award is from ‘Emerging Markets', the daily newspaper of record for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

  • SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

  • A boost to coastal security

  • The Director-General of the Indian Coast Guard, Vice Admiral Anil Chopra, on Friday commissioned the C-148 Interceptor Boat enhancing the close-coast surveillance capability of the coast guards at an impressive ceremony at Veraval in the Saurashtra coast of Gujarat.

  • Built at the ABG Shipyard in Surat, the C-148 is the sixth in the series of 11 such boats to be built indigenously with ultra-modern navigational and communication equipment, an official spokesman of the Indian Coast Guard said.

  • The 28-metre Interceptor Boat with a 90 tonne displacement, manned by 12 people, has an endurance of 500 nautical miles at an economical speed of 25 knots and can achieve a maximum speed of 45 knots. In addition to various state-of-the-art navigational and communication equipment, the boat is also equipped with automatic small arms and 12.7 mm ‘Prahari' Heavy Machine Gun (HMG) for effective fire power.

  • With the induction of C-148, the coast guard fleet now comprises of 44 ships, 19 interceptor boats, six hovercrafts, 24 Fixed Wing Aircraft (Dornier) and 21 Helicopters to undertake its vast charter, including search and rescue, anti-smuggling and anti-poaching operations.

CIA chief meets Chidambaram

  • The American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief, Leon Panetta, on Saturday met Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram and discussed the overall security scenario in the region.

  • He was accompanied by U.S. Ambassador Timothy J Roemer to the North Block. Mr. Panetta came from Islamabad where he had held discussions with Pakistani leaders as Western intelligence reports indicated that the Al-Qaeda was planning attacks in Britain, France and Germany. Mr. Panetta is said to have shared with Mr. Chidambaram information about his visit to Pakistan. He also met Home Secretary G.K. Pillai, Research and Analysis Wing chief A.K. Verma and Intelligence Bureau chief Rajiv Mathur.

Climate deal unlikely at Cancun

  • As the last round of negotiations before the year-end Cancun climate conference begins on Monday in Tianjin, a port city near here, Chinese officials played down the chances of a binding climate deal being reached this year, citing persisting differences between developed and developing countries.

  • China's top climate official Xie Zhenhua said this week developed countries needed “to do more and do better” to take on greater emission cuts, if a binding deal was to be reached.

  • China has committed to reducing the carbon intensity of its emissions, or emissions per unit of GDP, by 40 per cent of 2005 levels by 2020.

  • But as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, developed nations say China should take on greater commitments.

INO project headquarters to be set up in Madurai

  • The headquarters of the Rs.1,200-crore India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) project, coming up in the Western Ghats, will be set up in Madurai.

  • While the country's first-ever underground neutrino observatory will be set up in Theni district, it was decided to have the headquarters in Madurai to provide facilities for scientists, administrative operations and for residential quarters.

  • The INO Project is an underground facility with a huge detector and two man-made caves amidst a rock mass to study the properties of neutrinos through experiments and understand the various processes in the universe. Once started, this project is expected to take five years for execution.

Centre has overreached court on Polavaram project: Orissa

  • The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Centre on Orissa's application seeking a stay on the operation of the final approval granted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) for the Indira Sagar Polavaram project in Andhra Pradesh and for a direction to maintain status quo in its execution.

  • A Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Mukundakam Sharma also permitted Maharashtra and Karnataka to file applications for impleading themselves in the suit filed by Orissa against Andhra Pradesh.

  • Drawing a distinction between the original and revised proposals, the application pointed out that Orissa entered into the 1980 agreement with Andhra Pradesh based on a maximum backwater level of 174.22 feet for a maximum discharge of 36 lakh cusecs as put forth by that State. However, according to the Andhra Pradesh government's application before the MoEF, backwater spread would go as high as 182 feet for 36 lakh cusecs. Therefore the basic or most fundamental assumption of fact, on which the agreement was entered into, turned out be wrong.

Experts call for comprehensive global cancer control mechanism

  • Global health experts, in the October 2 issue of The Lancet, have called for a comprehensive cancer control mechanism on the scale of the existing measures to combat HIV and tuberculosis in low and middle income countries.

India watching developments in neighbouring countries”

  • Stressing that the government was watching the developments in all the neighbouring countries with caution, Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik on Monday said that consequently, it was also looking into developments in China.

  • “Anything that upsets the growth of our nation is a matter of concern. It is viewed as such and planned for,” he said at his annual press conference here.

  • “All neighbours — borrowing Chanakya's quotes — have to be watched with caution for their impact on the growth of our nation. So, we watch all neighbours, be it the smallest or the largest, with caution,” he added.

Fast Breeder Test Reactor to turn 25

  • A small board at the entrance announces, “Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR).” On October 18, 2010, it will be 25 years since the FBTR, the symbol of the country's self-reliance and ingenuity in nuclear power technology, attained its first criticality at Kalpakkam in Tamil Nadu.

  • The FBTR is at the heart of the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) at Kalpakkam, and it is a forerunner to the second stage of the country's nuclear power programme, under which several breeder reactors will be built.

  • The FBTR's successful working has given enough confidence to the Department of Atomic Energy to build the 500 megawatt electrical (MWe) Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR), also at Kalpakkam. It is silver jubilee too for the Radiometallurgy Laboratory (RML) at IGCAR, which became the foundation for testing the FBTR's fuel, control rod materials and fuel pins

  • IGCAR Director Baldev Raj called the FBTR, “a unique reactor in the world, and it has worked wonderfully well in the last 10 years

  • he said. The FBTR uses a “unique” plutonium-uranium carbide fuel, which was developed specially for it, and its behaviour has been excellent. Liquid sodium is the coolant. “Today, we are the world leader in Fast Reactors, or we are among the world leaders. We are definitely there,” asserted Dr. Raj.

  • Fast Reactors use “fast' (high energy) neutrons to sustain the fission process, in contrast to water-cooled reactors that use “thermal” (low energy) neutrons. Fast Reactors are commonly known as breeders because they breed more fuel than they consume.

  • In Homi Bhabha's vision for the country's nuclear electricity programme, the breeder reactors occupy the centre stage and form a bridge between the first and third stages.

  • Under the first stage, 17 Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) that use natural uranium as fuel are already operating in India.

  • The second stage envisages building a series of breeders that will use plutonium reprocessed from the PHWRs' spent fuel and their depleted uranium. The Fast Reactors will form the “bread and butter” of the country's nuclear power programme. For they will be able to generate about 6 lakh MWe with the country's uranium reserves.

  • In the third stage, abundant thorium reserves in the country's and uranium-233 produced in the breeders will be used to generate electricity.

  • “So the FBTR is extremely important for us. But there were huge uncertainties and we had a long struggle,” said Dr. Raj. Developing the carbide fuel was difficult. Industries in the country had to make all the components for the reactor. Sodium had to be purified to a high level. Sensors and instrumentation to test sodium purity and detect leakages had to be robust. The FBTR had to be loaded with 100 tonnes of liquid sodium and a large quantity of plutonium-bearing fuel.

India on the threshold of exporting n-reactors'

  • India is on the threshold of exporting nuclear power reactors, Atomic Energy Commission chairman and Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy, Srikumar Banerjee said here on Wednesday.

  • Dr. Banerjee was addressing a technical meeting on the “Power Scenario in West Bengal — Role of Nuclear Power,” organised by the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL), the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre and the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in the city.

  • Elaborating on Dr. Banerjee's comment, NPCIL chairman and managing director S.K. Jain said the corporation was targeting the Asia-Pacific market, and offering Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) of 220 megawatt (MW) and 540 MW capacity.

  • “A memorandum of understanding for a feasibility study has already been signed with Kazakhstan. Additionally, detailed interactions were held with delegations from other counties such as Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam,” Dr. Jain said.

Climate finance, key issue

  • Financial assistance from developed countries for projects to combat climate change in the developing world has emerged as a key sticking point at the climate meet in Tianjin, which is the last round of negotiations before the year-end Cancun conference.

  • Negotiators from India, China and other developing nations have called on the West to step up commitments with promises, as yet, falling short of expectations. Differences have also surfaced over developed countries repackaging earlier development aid as climate-related funding.

  • At the Copenhagen summit in December last year, developed countries pledged to commit $30 billion to “fast start” projects in the next three years. While much of this amount has been identified, differences have persisted on how much funding would be new commitments and how much would be derived from earlier pledged development assistance.

India, Russia closer to mega defence deals

  • India and Russia inched closer to two mega defence deals that have been under negotiation for a while. They also discussed the resolution of wrinkles in contracts under implementation at a high-level meeting, co-chaired by Defence Ministers of both countries — A.K. Antony and A.E. Serdyukov here on Thursday.

  • The two sides also decided to step up the tempo of joint exercises by making them an annual event. A top Russian general will visit the country next month to firm up the schedule. Both sides will hold the Indra exercises here after a gap of three years, and moves are on to hold the next edition in Russia next year, said official sources.

  • At a joint press conference, Mr. Antony said India will receive 250-300 Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) that both countries intend developing together. The announcement comes against the backdrop of bleak chances for the MiG-35 of making it to the top, in another $10 billion tender for 126 multi-role fighters.

  • The 10th Meeting of the India-Russia Inter-Governmental Commission on Military Technical Cooperation (IRIGC-MTC) also tied up the loose ends of another ambitious co-development project — the multirole transport aircraft (MTA), for which the shareholder agreement was signed in September.

Situation in region volcanic: IAF Chief

  • Air Force Chief Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik on Friday called on his personnel to be prepared to meet any internal and external challenges as the current security scenario in the country's neighbourhood was volcanic.

  • “[The] current security scenario is like a volcano and may test your skills at any time without warning. These times require swift action,” he said at the 78th Air Force Day Parade at Hindon.

  • MMRCA on course

  • The winner of the multi-billion dollar contract for 126 Medium Multirole Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) may be decided by next July-end, the Air Chief Marshal said.

  • “We submitted the MMRCA report to the Defence Ministry on July 30 and if everything goes well, the contract should be signed by July 30 next.”

  • American F/A-18 E/F and F-16, European Eurofighter, Russian MiG 35, French Dassault Rafale and the Swedish Saab 39 Gripen are in the race for the contract.

  • The IAF issued a global tender in 2007 and subsequently subjected the aspirants to gruelling tests in all types of terrain.

Indian Naval ships in Sri Lanka

  • Four Indian naval ships — INS “Tir”, INS “Shardul”, INS Tarangini and ICGS “Varuna” — arrived in Sri Lanka on Saturday for training and exercises with the Sri Lankan Navy.

  • While INS “Tir”, INS “Shardul” and ICGS “Varuna” arrived at the port of Trincomalee, INS Tarangini arrived at the port of Colombo.

  • The ships were ceremonially welcomed in accordance with naval traditions and are scheduled to stay till October 15.

  • A special programme has been arranged for the group of 160 Indian Naval officer cadets while

Guardian of the sea' is here to take care of pollution

SEA CHANGE:Coast Guard vessel Samudra Prahari seen in Mumbai on Saturday.

  • Maritime security measures moved up a notch in the wake of the recent oil spill off the Mumbai coast as the Coast Guard (CG) got “a state-of-the art” Pollution Control Vessel (PCV), touted to be “the first of its kind in South Asia” in terms of sophistication of technology.

  • Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan commissioned the ship ‘Samudra Prahari' or ‘Guardian of the Sea' at a ceremony at the naval dockyard here on Saturday. Vice Admiral Sanjeev Bhasin, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief of the Western Naval Command, and Vice Admiral Anil Chopra, Director-General, CG, also attended the event.

  • The 95-metre PCV was designed and built by Surat-based private shipping company ABG Shipyard Ltd. “The ship is equipped with the most advanced and sophisticated pollution response equipment for mitigating marine oil spills in the Indian Exclusive Economic Zone. It is also equipped with the advanced navigational and communication sensors and equipment and is capable of embarking helicopter. [Its tonnage is] 4,300 tonnes. It has an endurance of 6,500 nautical miles and can stay at sea for prolonged duration of up to 20 days without any replenishment,” an official release stated.

  • ‘Samudra Prahari' and the two more PCVs which are to be commissioned are believed to have cost Rs. 20 crore each. Contracts for them were given to ABG five years ago.

Saraswat: DRDO working on India's own computer operating system

  • The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is working on creating a futuristic computing system, including India's own operating system, said V.K. Saraswat, Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister and DRDO Director-General.

  • Two software engineering centres are being set up for this purpose in Bangalore and New Delhi.

Agni-II Plus to be launched in 2011: DRDO

  • Director-General of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) V.K. Saraswat said on Friday that Agni-II Plus, a modified version of the Agni-II strategic missile, would be launched next year.

  • Dr. Saraswat said it would have a higher range, higher performance, with respect to the thrust and weight ratio than Agni-II, which has a range of 2,000 km.

  • He said that BrahMos Aerospace Ltd, a joint venture between India and Russia, would be launching the aircraft version of the super-sonic missile

  • On the indigenous light combat aircraft (LCA) Tejas, negotiations were going on to acquire the GE4141 engines and this would be completed within a month.

Reject protectionism in climate talks: Jairam Ramesh

  • Climate officials from developing countries met here on Sunday to come up with a strategy to ensure that any climate agreement will have provisions to restrict attempts by developed nations to impose trade penalties on carbon emitters.

  • Officials from the BASIC group of developing countries — Brazil, South Africa, India and China — have, in negotiations here this week, pushed for the introduction of a text to “reject the use of unilateral protectionist measures” by developed countries, said Minister of Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh.

  • The United States and European countries have called for trade restrictions, known as border adjustments, on goods imported from countries such as India and China who do not agree to binding emissions reduction targets. They argue that import tariffs are needed to offset the loss of competitiveness industries in countries which accept binding targets are likely to face.

  • The text, which India first proposed in Bonn in August last year, says developed countries “shall not resort to any form of unilateral measures including countervailing border measures, against goods and services imported from developing countries on grounds of protection and stabilisation of climate”.

  • Violation

  • Mr. Ramesh said moves to do so would violate the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. However, he expressed concern over reports that have argued that some of the measures were compatible with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, under carefully crafted conditions.

Evaluation of Western Ghats to begin this week

  • The evaluation of serial sites in the Western Ghats to gauge whether its conservation and biological diversity values are universally outstanding will begin this week.

  • The appraisal, to be carried out by an International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) team, is part of the preparatory process for nominating the Ghats as a World Heritage site. India had been campaigning for including the 39 serial sites in the Ghats in the world list for quite some time.

  • The Union Ministry of Environment and Forests had earlier submitted a dossier for all the serial sites to the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization.

We won't compromise on three-stage nuclear power programme: Chavan

  • Even as India looks forward to expand its nuclear power programme with imported reactors and fuel, “there will be no compromise with our commitment to the indigenous three-stage nuclear power programme, to our own research and our own technology,” Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Prithiviraj Chavan said on Sunday.

  • Mr. Chavan was delivering the presidential address at a function to mark the silver jubilee of the Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) attaining first criticality on October 18, 1985, at Kalpakkam, near here.

  • The Minister was responding to fears that India's plans to import 36 reactors would lead to dilution of Homi Bhabha's vision of a three-stage nuclear electricity programme. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had assured the country that he would stand by the programme. Breeder reactors were essential for India's energy security, Mr. Chavan said.

  • (In the first stage, India has so far used natural uranium as fuel to build 17 Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs).

  • In the second stage, plutonium reprocessed from the spent fuel of the PHWRs, depleted uranium and thorium kept in the blanket form will be used as fuel to power a series of breeder reactors. Thorium used in the breeders gets converted into uranium-233, a fissile material.

  • In the third stage, reactors will use thorium and uranium-233 to generate electricity. Thus, the three stages are inter-linked. Fast reactors are commonly called breeder reactors as they breed more fuel than they consume).

  • Mr. Chavan said the FBTR, which formed the corner-stone of the second stage, had an impeccable safety record. The Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) had mastered the use of liquid sodium. Its use could lead to fire. Excellent performance of the sodium systems had removed fears about the handling of liquid sodium at high temperatures.

  • Though the FBTR, with an output of 40 MWt, was an experimental reactor, it had the complexities of a power reactor. The IGCAR's bold decision to deploy plutonium-uranium carbide fuel in the FBTR had paid rich dividends, in the form of experience gained in the design, fabrication and testing of advanced fast reactor fuel. He was glad that the FBTR would work for up to 2030 and fulfil all its original missions.

  • Dr. Banerjee also lauded C. Ganguly, who had headed the Nuclear Fuel Complex, Hyderabad, for developing the mixed carbide fuel, the first of its kind, for the FBTR.

  • IGCAR Director Baldev Raj said the FBTR's steam generator had worked for 25 years without any failure. India would build six breeder reactors, including the PFBR and two more at Kalpakkam, of 500 MWe each. Beyond 2020, breeders of 1000 MWe capacity, using metallic fuel, would come up.

Chavan rules out private participation in nuclear power sector

  • Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Prithviraj Chavan on Sunday ruled out private sector participation in the atomic energy sector.

  • Government companies, such as the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL), would continue to build and operate nuclear power stations in the country.

  • (As the situation stands today, the NPCIL, a public sector undertaking of the Department of Atomic Energy, builds and operates Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors and Light Water Reactors in India. Bharatiya Nabhikiya Vidyut Nigam Limited, also of the DAE, builds breeder reactors).

  • Mining natural uranium

  • The Union government was thinking about setting up a company on the lines of the ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) to mine natural uranium abroad. Some models, on the lines of the OVL, were being looked at.

India opposing Endosulfan ban at Stockholm Convention

  • Governments here and abroad are watching India's stand on Endosulfan at the sixth meeting of the Persistent Organic Pollutants' Review Committee (POPRC) of the Stockholm Convention that began in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday.

India, Vietnam to extend defence ties

  • India and Vietnam on Wednesday decided to extend the frontiers of their defence-related cooperation. As the centrepiece, New Delhi agreed to expand assistance to Hanoi in its ongoing military modernisation, according to sources.

  • The modalities of toning up cooperation were discussed, from a broad political perspective, by Defence Minister A. K. Antony and his Vietnamese counterpart Phung Quang Thanh in Hanoi. Their talks followed India's participation in the first-ever Asia-Pacific Defence Ministers' meeting, which ended in the Vietnamese capital on Tuesday.

Fast attack craft Kalpeni commissioned

  • The indigenous Water Jet Fast Attack Craft (FAC), INS Kalpeni, was commissioned by Chief Justice of the Kerala High Court Jasti Chelameswar at a formal ceremony held at the Navy's Southern Naval Command here on Thursday morning. It is the seventh of the 10 new generation Car Nicobar class FACs designed and built by Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers (GRSE), Kolkata.

  • Kalpeni, propelled by three powerful water jets, can achieve speeds in excess of 35 knots.

  • Based at the Southern Naval Command, it will bolster the capabilities of the Command in coastal surveillance and search and destruction of fast moving targets. Its main armament is a 30mm CRN-91 gun with an Optronic Pedestal Sight as its director.

  • It has also been fitted with 11 machine guns of various types and shoulder-fired IGLA surface-to-air missiles.

Indo-Russia military drills begin

  • After a gap of three years, India and Russia will conduct a 10-day joint anti-terrorism exercise starting Thursday in the picturesque setting of Uttarakhand's Ranikhet district, home of the highly-decorated Kumaon Regiment as well as elements of the Gorkha and Naga Regiments.

  • Termed Indra 2010, Indian and Russian military personnel will form a joint task force and plan and carry out a series of mock anti-terrorism missions in the mountains.

Rustom 1 test-flown successfully

  • Rustom 1, a medium-altitude and long-endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), developed by the Bangalore-based Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE), was successfully test-flown here on Saturday.

  • According to an official statement, Rustom 1 was flown from the Taneja Aerospace and Aviation airfield at Hosur near here. “The aircraft took off even in inclement weather conditions for a first flight, flew for 12 minutes and landed successfully, meeting all its objectives.”

  • A Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) spokesperson told that Rustom 1 followed the two other UAVs developed by the ADE — Lakshya and Nishant. While Lakshya — a drone that is remotely piloted by a ground control station — provides aerial sub-targets for live-fire training, Nishant is a surveillance aircraft primarily tasked with intelligence gathering over enemy territory.

  • “Unlike the other UAVs, which used to have a free fall with parachutes after executing their tasks, Rustom will carry out copybook style landing,” the spokesperson said.

  • “In the coming days Rustom can be used as unmanned combat aerial vehicle and also to carry war-heads,” the spokesperson said.

  • The aircraft has many auto features such as GPS controlled Way Point Navigation and Get U Home included even in its first flight, but will be exercised in subsequent flights.

  • Features

  • “The UAV has an endurance of 12 to 15 hours and can carry payloads up to 75 kg. It has an altitude ceiling of 25,000 feet. Such flights of UAVs remove the risk to human pilots when they have to fly them in hazardous zones,” the statement said.

  • The data link system for this UAV was designed and developed by another DRDO laboratory called Defence Electronics Applications Laboratory (DEAL) situated in Dehra Dun. Its airframe is made by a private company called Zephyr situated in Coimbatore and most of its onboard systems are also manufactured by private industries in different parts of the country.

  • “This UAV can be used by all the three armed services of our country,” the statement added.

Neutrino project approved at Bodi West Hills in Theni

  • After denying permission to the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) to locate the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) at Singara in Nilgiris district in Tamil Nadu .the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) on Monday accorded both environmental and forest clearance for locating the project in the Bodi West Hills (BWH) in Theni district, also in Tamil Nadu.

  • The INO will be a major underground experimental facility to study the elusive and nearly mass-less fundamental particles of nature called neutrinos,

Environment panel split on Posco clearances

  • In a 3:1 split opinion, an Environment Ministry panel has disagreed on whether or not to scrap all environment and forest clearances for South Korean giant Posco's Rs. 51,000-crore integrated steel project in Orissa.

  • While the forest panel will consider the split report on October 25 and the coastal and environment clearance divisions will also examine it, Union Minister of Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh will take a final call on the project's fate after discussions with the State government as well.

  • The Posco project came into existence with an MoU signed between the Orissa government and the Korean steel giant in June 2005.

  • While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is slated to attend the G-20 summit in Seoul on November 11, Mr. Ramesh insisted that there was no “externally imposed deadline” for him to take a decision on the project.

Species facing mass extinction: U.N.

  • The world must act immediately to stop the rapid loss of animal and plant species and the habitats they live in, the United Nations warned on Monday at the start of a major summit on biodiversity.

  • The 193 members of the U.N.'s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) began gathering in the central city of Nagoya in Japan to try to work out strategies to head off a manmade mass extinction.

  • The 12-day conference aims to throw a spotlight on a global environmental issue that has drawn less attention in recent years than the related problem of manmade climate change, blamed on a surge of greenhouse gas emissions.

  • Delegates in Nagoya plan to set a new target for 2020 for curbing species loss, and will discuss boosting medium-term financial help for poor countries to help them protect their wildlife and habitats. But similar pledges to stem biodiversity loss, first made when the U.N. biodiversity convention was adopted in 1992, have not been fulfilled. At the start of the decade, U.N. members pledged under the Millennium Development Goals to achieve “a significant reduction” in the rate of wildlife loss by 2010, the International Year of Biodiversity.

PM to scientists: make a break with the past

  • Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday called for greater participation of the private sector in science and technology and suggested creation of research and development facilities that were owned publicly, but run by the private sector.

  • Dr. Singh was speaking at a function organised by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) for giving away its prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar prize for 2009 and 2010.

  • The awardees for 2010 include G.K. Ananthasuresh of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.), Bangalore; Swapan K. Pati and Umesh Vasudeo Waghmare of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore; Shubha Tole and Kalobaran Maiti of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai,

  • The other recipients are Mitali Mukerji of the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, New Delhi; Sanjeev Galande of the National Centre for Cell Science [NCCS], Pune (presently at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune); Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, and Sandeep Verma of IIT-Kanpur.

  • The awardees for 2009 include N. Jayaraman, S.K. Satheesh, Giridhar Madras and J.R. Haritsa of the IISc.; Amitabh Joshi of JNCASR; Abishek Dhar of the Raman Research Institute; Venapally Suresh of the University of Hyderabad; and S.G. Honavar of the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad. The other awardees are: Charusita Chakravarty of IIT-Delhi; Bhaskar Saha of NCCS; and Rajesh Gopakumar of the Harish Chandra Research Institute, Allahabad.

  • Dr. Singh also presented the CSIR's award for S&T Innovations for Rural Development for 2009 to the Indian Oil Corporation's Research and Development Centre at Faridabad for its ‘Servo Agro Spray Oil' for pest control in crops.

IAF deploys AWACS in air exercise

  • The flying missions of the Indo-United Kingdom Air Exercise “Indradhanush” began at the Kalaikunda Air Force base in West Bengal's Paschim Medinipur district on Wednesday, two days after elaborate briefings on standard operating procedures and familiarisation of the local flying area.

  • The exercise will conclude on November 3.

  • While the Indian Air Force (IAF) has fielded SU-30 MKIs, Mirage 2000s and MiG 27s for the friendly mission, the Royal Air Force is participating with Typhoon Eurofighters, E 3 D Sentry and VC-10 mid-air refuellers, according to a statement released by the Eastern Air Command here.

  • The IAF has also pressed into service its AWACS for the first time in a joint exercise.

JLR unveils armoured vehicles

  • Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has unveiled the armoured range of its Range Rover and Discovery sports utility vehicles (SUVs) that would be priced at Rs.4.75 crore and Rs.3.75 crore, respectively. The Tata Motors-owned company is also looking at launching the armoured version of the Jaguar XJ sedan, which could be priced around Rs.5.50 crore.

Number portability from November 1

  • Mobile number portability, which allows a subscriber to change his operator and retain his mobile number, will be launched on November 1, Communications and Information Technology Minister A. Raja said on Tuesday. “Starting from the Haryana circle, the facility will be rolled out across the country from next month… All the 22 circles will get this service in a phased manner by this year-end,” Mr. Raja told journalists here.

  • The Department of Telecommunications has divided 22 circles into two geographic zones. Each zone is further broken down into 11 service areas that represent cities within the zone. Zone 1, which covers the northern and western regions, has been given to Syniverse Technologies, while Zone 2 that includes the south and east regions has been awarded to MNP Interconnection Telecom Solutions, a 74:26 joint venture between the U.S.-based Telcordia and Deepak Talwar Consultants Pvt. Ltd.

Indian achieves breakthrough in encryption technology

  • A cryptologist of the Indian Statistical Institute here has made a breakthrough in securing information over the internet and his work may be submitted for being considered as the world standard.

  • The “family of algorithms,” developed by Professor Palash Sarkar, for the encryption and authentication of data can be customised according to the user's needs and, not governed by any patents, can easily be adopted as a standard.

Coastal security strengthened since 26/11”

  • Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram on Wednesday said that significant progress had been made, since the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, to strengthen the coastal security of the country.

  • The identified gaps in security would be addressed through Phase-II of the Coastal Security Scheme (CSS) to be launched next year, he said. Mr. Chidambaram was addressing the Parliamentary Consultative Committee of his Ministry here, which focussed on the “Coastal Security”.

Army to get unmanned ground vehicles

  • The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is preparing a road map for induction of unmanned ground vehicles into the Army, S. Sundaresh, Chief Controller Research and Development, Armament and Combat Engineering, DRDO, said.

  • Inaugurating the “Driving Innovation - DRDO Student Robot Competition 2010” at the Combat Vehicles Research and Development Establishment (CVRDE) at Avadi near here, Mr. Sundaresh said the Army had agreed to induct 20 Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs), developed by the DRDO's R&D establishment in Pune.

  • Daksh, the ROV, would locate, handle and destroy hazardous objects safely. Designed to operate remotely from a range of 500 metres, it was capable of handling improvised explosive devices.

  • PERSONS IN THE NEWS

  • Vijay Kumar to head CRPF

  • K. Vijay Kumar, 58, Director, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Police Academy, Hyderabad, will be the new Director-General of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) headquartered in New Delhi, authoritative sources said on Saturday.

  • He replaces Vikram Srivastava, who has been transferred and posted as Director of the Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D), in the place of Prasun Mukherjee, who retired on September 30..

  • Mr. Vijay Kumar, a 1975-batch IPS officer of Tamil Nadu cadre, is expected to take charge of his new assignment on Wednesday. He is the only IPS officer in the State to have been awarded with the President's Police Medal for Gallantry.

Ravi visits Juma Masjid, creates record

  • Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi visited the largest mosque in the southern hemisphere built by the first settlers from India in South Africa and unveiled a plaque renaming the area as ‘Juma Masjid Square.'

  • He also became the first Indian Minister to join the local Muslim congregation in Friday prayers 130 years after the ‘Juma Masjid' was built here.

  • Unveiling

  • “With the first African Pravasi Bharatiya Divas taking place in Durban on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, who spent so much time in the city, we felt it would be appropriate to unveil the plaque today,” said A.B. Mahomed, a trustee of the Masjid.

C.V. Raman's son on a global expedition

  • Eighty-one-year-old Professor V. Radhakrishnan, eminent radio astronomer and Trustee of the Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, might be among the few Indians who have been criss-crossing the oceans in a yacht, that too designed by him. The son of Sir C.V. Raman, he is on a mission to learn more on his chosen field on his yacht ‘Eldemer.'

  • He would set sail from Kochi in a few days to Phuket in Thailand,

Director-writer Pendharkar passes away

  • Film director and writer Prabhakar Bhalji Pendharkar passed away at his residence in Pune on Thursday. He was 77.

  • Mr. Pendharkar, son of legendary Marathi filmmaker Bhalji Pendharkar, recently received a special mention at the National Film Awards 2009 for his book Eka Studioche Atmavrutta. The award was to be conferred on him on October 21.

  • His books include Rarang Dhang, Pratiksha, Sansar Sansar, and Ani Chinar Lal Zala. Rarang Dhang had won a State award.

  • Mr. Prabhakar Pendharkar also served as director of Films Division of India for 30 years.

  • His films Bal Shivaji (Marathi) and Bidai (Hindi) won national awards.

Dame Sutherland is dead

  • Australian opera legend Dame Joan Sutherland was hailed as “La Stupenda” and “voice of the century” on Tuesday after she died following an illness aged 83, leaving behind an extraordinary musical legacy.

  • Lavish tributes poured in for the star, who dazzled European audiences with her vocal range and ability from the 1950s until her retirement in 1990, after her family announced her death at her Swiss home on the shores of Lake Geneva.

Tamil poet, orator Soundara Kailasam passes away

  • Eminent Tamil poet and writer Soundara Kailasam who is the mother-in-law of Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram expired early on Saturday morning at her residence. She was 83.

IIT alumnus joins Team Obama

  • The Obama administration has made one of its most senior appointments yet from the Indian-American community. Subra Suresh (54), School of Dean of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, has been confirmed as the Director of the high-level National Science Foundation.

Dheeraj Hinduja to head Leyland

  • Dheeraj G. Hinduja has become the Chairman of Ashok Leyland. He takes over from R. J. Shahaney, who was Chairman of the company since August 1997.

  • Mr. Hinduja, who has been a co-chairman of the company for the past three years, is a third-generation member of the Hinduja family.

K.E. Eapen passes awy

  • K.E. Eapen, a pioneer in journalism and communication education in the country, passed away in Bangalore on Saturday morning. He was 87.

  • Professor Eapen was actively associated with journalism for over 50 years, having set up three university departments of journalism and communication, and many organisations connected with the field. Besides teaching journalism, he also served on policy-making bodies and authored books on communication.

  • Professor Eapen was the first convener of the University Grants Commission (UGC) panel on mass communication, and the first UGC National Lecturer and Emeritus Fellow,

Legendary Everest climber feared dead

  • A Nepalese mountaineer who has climbed Mount Everest 19 times is missing and feared dead in the Himalayas two days after being swept away by an avalanche, said expedition organisers on Monday.

  • Mr. Chhewang is one ascent away from equalling the world record of summiting Mount Everest 20 times, which is held by Apa Sherpa.

Centre not for filing charges against Arundhati Roy, Geelani

  • The Union government has no intention of filing criminal charges against Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, writer Arundhati Roy and others who spoke in favour of ‘azadi' for Jammu and Kashmir at a seminar here .

Death sentence for Saddam aide Tariq Aziz

  • The Iraqi High Tribunal has sentenced to death Tariq Aziz, a former Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister who was part of the inner circle of the former President, Saddam Hussein.

  • He was also convicted for the forced displacement of Kurds, and was awarded an additional prison sentence of seven years.

Lt. Gen. Ravi Shankar is new Director General Border Roads

  • Lieutenant General S. Ravi Shankar has taken over as Director-General Border Roads.

  • A recipient of Vishisht Seva Medal, he is an alumnus of the National Defence Academy, Khadakvasla, Pune; Indian Military Academy, Dehra Dun; College of Military Engineering, Pune; Defence Services Staff College, Wellington; and Army War College, Mhow.

  • Lt. Gen. Ravi Shankar was commissioned into the Corps of Engineers (Madras Sappers) in 1972 and has held various staff, instructional and command appointments, including Commanding Officer of an Engineer Regiment, Commander of an Engineer Brigade, Deputy Military Secretary at Integrated Headquarters of Ministry of Defence (Army), Commandant, Selection Centre East, Allahabad and Chief Engineer at Headquarters Eastern Command.

Narendra to head IOB

  • M. Narendra has been appointed Chairman and Managing Director of Indian Overseas Bank with effect from November 1.

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