Monday, January 23rd, 2012

HEADLINES

• Salman Rushdie slams Rajastan government for fabricated threat; Rajastan Government defends decision.
• Anna writes open letter to PM, blaming him for the Lokpal fiasco; Letters sent to Rahul Gandhi, Mayawati, Mulayam and Nitin Gadkari questioning their roles
• Kalam became the ex-first commander in chief of the army to visit the IPKF memorial in Sri Lanka.

NATIONAL NEWS

• Cochin Shipyard Ltd(CSL) plans to set up large dock at vizhinjam
  • CSL has proposed setting up a Very Large Crude Carrier(VLCC) capacity at its proposed shipyard facility at vizhinjam.
  • The VLCC capacity dock will put CSL in the big league of ship builders and enable the ship yard to enter high value construction.
  • The big dock is at the centre of a 20 year plan by the shipyard, which also includes building India's first indegenous aircraft carrier
  • The key components of the plan includes expansion, new facilities, product profile and Capital Expenses(CAPEX) requirements and also a Bollard pull test facility(Bollard pull is a value that allows comparision of the pulling force of the watercraft, particularly tugboats.
  • At present CSL is constructing 32 ships out of which 5 are for Shipping Corporation of India(SCI) and the rest are for international owners. Besides that the yard is also constructing 20 fast patrol vessels for the Indian coast guard

• National convention of Children's right to food concluded in Bhopal
  • The convention adopted a 25 point charter on combating malnutrition.
  • The 25 pt charter consists of the universalisation and diversification of the PDS under the proposed national right to food act, universalisation of the Integrated Child Development Scheme(ICDS) and ensuring Job security and social security for anganwadi workers, promoting decentralised /localised production of nutrition supplements instead of ready to eat package material, focussing on health of adolescent girls and inclusion of micronutrients in ICDS.
    
    
• India among the top three countries for phishing attacks.
  • Phishing is among the more popular security attacks on banks and personal information, the others being screen logger, key logger, dictionary attack, brute force attack, shoulder surfing and guessing.
  • The growth of identity fraud is the fastest in India at a rate of more than 100%.
  • Indigenous consultant array shield technologies has come out with a solution called array shield cards, an authentication process to be used for providing access to all applications; Array shield card is a physical card like the credit card size, on which one has to register his pattern with the authentication system. This is used to generate a one time password valid for only one transaction.
    
    
• Jairam quits Council for Advancement of People's Action and Rural Technology(CAPART) paving way for its professional management and putting an end to the political misuse.
  • The restructuring envisages establishment of an independent and autonoumous body, on the lines of Public health foundation of India, under the name of Rural Development Foundation of India, which will be a PPP.
  • While the Rural government will contribute to the corpus, funds from donors and philantrophic organizations will form the basic source of revenue to sponsor large scale activities of civil society organisations in rural areas.
    
    
• Indian Council of Agricultural Research(ICAR) has developed a technique for field cultivation of Makhana(Gorgon nut or fox nut), a kind of dry fruit produced from an aquatic plant.
  • Normally grown in lowland ponds in parts of Bihar, Orissa, Assam and WB, now it can be grown in low farmland(Shallow water depth in cropping system mode) and intercrop it with rice, wheat and green fodder.
  • India exports Makhana to Middle east, the US and some European countries with an annual average production of 500000 tonnes and estimated market of 500 crores.
  • With the new technology the Makhana could be intercropped with paddy, Berseem and wheat.
  • In addition the Makhana plant leaves a lot of organic content and so rice can be grown in the same field after Makhana cultivation without any fertilizer.
    
    
• Make silicosis a notifiable disease.
  • The National human Rights Commission has recommended that Silicosis be made a notifiable disease. Once notified all pvt and govt hospitals has to report confirmed as well as suspected silicosis cases to the government.
  • Silicosis is an incurable lung disease caused by inhaling of dust containing free crystalline silica.
  • The victims of silicosis are poor migrant workers employed in the quarries, mines, gem cutting and other hazardous operations such as the construction sites etc.
  • On the recommendation of NHRC Rajastan government has given a compensation package of 3 lakh rs and has set a corpus fund of 25 crore as the chances of the disease is high in Rajastan.
    
    
• Sudarshan Patnaik, Sand artist, who runs a sand art institute in Puri beach, Odisha, is going to participate in the snow sculpture contest in Sopporo, Japan, where he plans to do an art relating to climate change

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

• Israel – US brain storms Iran Options
  • Israel and Us appeared to have shelved any decision on using force against Iran and the decision has been postpond to later this year.
  • Obama has written to Ayotollah Kohmeini warning Iran against closing the strait of Hormuz, with an offer to talks that could lead to reconsilliation.
    
    
• China to the resue of UK economy
  • Chinese Investment corporation has bought a 8.68 % stake in Thames water, Britain largest water and sewage company.
  • This has boosted expectations of Chinese involvement(Peking pound) in other sectors also.

• Dutch teenager Laura Dekker becomes the youngest sailor to complete a solo circum navigation of the world
  • Ms.Dekker's achievement will not be entered in Guiness book as it has refused to recognize records by minors which are considered unsuitable

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS AND COLUMNS

• Lokpal issue – the great leap backward
• Editorial on the Index of industrial production for november
• Why Rushdie incident is a national shame
• Afganisatan's right to decide it's future

BUSINESS/ECONOMICS

• Fresh direction to monetory policy? - A write up on RBI's monetory policies