HEADLINES

• Congress Core Group discusses Telangana but no solution yet
• Nitish Kumar flags off L.K Advani's anti-corruption yatra from near J.P Narayan village in Bihar
• DMK patriarch, Karunanidhi backs the Maran brothers

NATIONAL NEWS

• Your image being exploited by your team, Digvijay tells Anna Hazare
  • Digvijay Singh, the Congress General Secretary wrote an open letter to Hazare asking him to introspect who he was supporting by opposing the Congress in the Hissar elections;
  • Digvijay also told Hazare that the people surrounding him were anti-congress and were using his clean image to gain political ground.
• Way cleared for Election Commission to pursue the paid news case against Ashok Chavan
  • With the Delhi High Court rejecting the petition of Ashok Chavan and Madhu Koda challenging the powers of the EC to look into accounts that were closed after an election;
  • The EC has now set October 21 as the date for hearing for Koda and November 4 to hear Chavan's case.
• Vietamese president visits India; to sign an extradition treaty and cultural exchange agreement
• Empowered Committee looking into Mullaperiyar dam is likely to submit its report by Junary 2012
  • The committee comprises of former Chief Justice A.S. Anand, former Supreme court judges K.T Thomas representing Kerala and A.R. Lakshmanan representing Tamilnadu, former Water resources secretary C.D Thatte and retired Chief Engineer of the Central Water Commission, D.K. Mehta;
  • The mandate before the committee is to see if it is safe for the levels in the dam to be increased beyong 136 ft up to 142 ft. The committee will also look at Kerala's proposal for a new dam but said it was not the main issue to be looked at and it would be upto the Supreme Court.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

• India may block consensus on hazardous wastes at 10th conference of parties of Basel Convention
  • India may block any consensus among the international community to ratify a ban on import and export of hazardous waste as sought by the Basel Convention on the control of cross-country movements of hazardous wastes and disposal — a treaty of which India is a signatory along with 177 other countries;
  • A team of officials from the MoEF are heading to the Conference of Parties of the Convention at Cartagena, Colombia between October 17 and 21 and have indicated that they are not in favour of any fixed time approach;
  • The main concern for India is the domestic recycling industry which will be hit.
• Slovak Government falls amidst the plans for the Eurozone bail out fund

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS & COLUMNS

• Here is a discussion on the National Policy on Information Technology 2011
• Here is a interesting article on the findings of the Messenger space mission which is orbiting the Planet Mercury
• Here is an editorial on the Economics Nobel Prize

ECONOMY & BUSINESS NEWS

• DOT enforcement arm says that 3G roaming deals by players who dont have 3G spectrum is illegal
  • Few operators who do not have 3G in certain circles have entered into roaming arrangements with other operators. The Telecom Enforcement and Resource Monitoring Cell of the DOT has indicated that action must be taken against such operators.
• The Govt may hike the 51% cap on single brand retail trading soon
• Revised Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement between India and Switzerland comes into effect; to provide access to more information about illegal funds