Sunday, February 05th, 2012

HEADLINES

• No Chidambaram role in 2G plot : Court
• Kudankulam:State forms expert panel
• India votes against Syrian president Bashar Assad at the UNSC and asked him to step down; This reiterates the support for the arab leagues support for a peaceful resolution of the 11 month crisis.

NATIONAL NEWS

• Space commission, cabinet not informed of the Devas deal
  • The report was given by the High Powered Review Committee, comprising B.K. Chaturvedi, Member, Planning Commission and Professor Roddam Narasimha, Member, Space Commission appointed
  • Subsequently, a five-member High-Level Team led by the former Central Vigilance Commissioner, Pratyusha Sinha, was asked by the government to examine the deal and fix responsibility for acts of omission or commission.

• Fourth phase of the intensive tiger monitoring programme begins
  • The fourth phase of an intensive “Tiger Monitoring Programme” envisaged by the Tiger Task Force of the Union Government has begun at the Kalakkad - Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR) in Tirunelveli (Tamil Nadu).
  • In the fourth phase now the setting up of 100 cameras in every four sq. km. area has begun
  • In the first phase, determination of occupancy and mapping relative abundance of the carnivores was done
  • The second phase saw work on remotely sensed spatial and attribute covariates, while in the third phase camera-trap based mark recapture was carried out.
    
    
• Foreign aid for five Indian districts
  • The prestigious Earth Institute of Columbia University has selected Dausa in Rajasthan among five districts in India where it would initiate a special project for health care, poverty alleviation and sustainable development.
  • The project in the country will be launched in collaboration with the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) whose mission is to expand the capacity of the U.N. system and its partners to implement humanitarian and development operations.
  • Besides Dausa, other districts selected for the project are Jhansi (Uttar Pradesh), Jehanabad (Bihar), Medak (Andhra Pradesh) and Morigaon (Assam).
  • The National Rural Health Mission will extend support to the project works in the health sector.
    
    
• Pranab unveils special edition of Tagore's diary
  • Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee released a special edition of Rabindranath Tagore's diary with his translations of Gitanjali, as part of the poet's 150th birth anniversary celebrations.
  • Harvard University had permitted the Indian government to make replicas, the first of which are being released, but the copyright does not permit the government to sell these copies.
    
    
• Opposition to monsanto patent on indian melons
  • Activist Vandana Shiva and an Europe-based NGO have jointly opposed a patent awarded to an American company on virus resistance traits taken from indigenous melon varieties in India.
  • The NGOs — Navdanya and No Patent on Seeds — contend that, armed with this patent, the U.S. company (Monsanto) could block access to all breeding material inheriting the virus resistance derived from the Indian melon.
  • Seeking complete revocation of the patent the NGOs, in their application filed in the European Patent Office in Munich on Friday, said that the patent (EP 1 962 578) on Closterovirus-resistant Melon plants should not have been granted as it was not an invention but a case of “bio-piracy.”
  • Melons have a natural resistance to certain plant viruses. In the case of Cucurbit Yellow Stunting Disorder virus (CYSDV) — which has been spreading through North America, Europe and North Africa for several years — certain melons are known to be naturally resistant to it. Using conventional breeding methods, this type of resistance was introduced from an Indian melon to other melons and has now been patented as a Monsanto “invention.”
  • “Patents like this are blocking access to the genetic resources necessary for further breeding, and basic resources needed for daily life are subordinated to monopolisation and financial speculation,”
    
    
• Lost 18^th century sanskrit grammar manuscript by Jesuit missionary found in Italy
  • A Sanskrit grammar manuscript of grammarian, lexicographer and philologist Arnos Padre, which had been lost for over two centuries, was found in an Italian monastery.
  • The manuscript,Grammatica Grandonica, written by the Jesuit missionary Fr. Johann Ernst Hanxleden, popularly known as Arnos Padre, three centuries ago, is considered as one of the earliest missionary grammars in Sanskrit.

INTERNATIONAL

• China Russia veto UNSC resolution against Assad
  • Russia and China vetoed an Arab League-backed resolution at the United Nations Security Council that called on Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down, while India, along with the U.S. and 12 others, backed the move.