Sunday, February 19th, 2012

HEADLINES

• India wants captain of Enrica Lexia, the Italian ship to surrender today.
• Returns home and rebuild life, Chidambaram appealed to the Reang tribes who are displaced from Mizoram and are living in the sheltered camps of North Tripura

NATIONAL NEWS

• India woos Sri Lankan students with education fairs
  • India is promoting itself seriously as an education destination in Sri Lanka, with a series of initiatives. Three education fairs were organised this financial year as part of a ‘Study in India' campaign, coordinated by the Indian High Commission.
  • India hopes to attract at least half of the 10,000 students who go abroad according to Sri Lankan statistics given its various advantages like cheaper education, stay and proximity to home.
    
    
• Question marks about the National Telecom policy 2012
  
  
• Advocates on record rule upheld
  • The Delhi High Court has upheld the ‘Advocate on Record' (AoR) system prevailing in the Supreme Court by which only those advocates who are qualified in the AoR examination are eligible to file petitions in the Supreme Court.
  • “The [AoR] rule is based on intelligible differentia with objective sought to be achieved, as highlighted by the Solicitor General Rohinton Nariman, namely it is in the interest of litigating public that the practice before the apex court is regulated by way of prescribing such qualification/eligibility conditions for advocates to become ‘Advocate on Record‘ and to be entitled to act or plead.”
  • “The court system, being pyramidal in structure, makes the Supreme Court the court of last resort, so it is helpful to have someone who is equipped to deal with all kinds of matters where the litigant is not able to afford senior counsel or some other counsel.”
    
    
• Lok Shabha speaker Meira Kumar will lead the first ever parliamentary delegation to visit Pakistan

INTERNATIONAL

• FATF nod for revised proposals for combating money laundering
  • The plenary meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) being held in Paris has approved the revised recommendations for combating money laundering and financing of terrorism.
  • The plenary also discussed the fourth follow-up report on India's progress on the action plan that it had committed to in June 2010 and appreciated the progress it made with regard to the international Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) standards.
  • The FATF is an inter-governmental body that sets international standards for combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism. India became a member of the body in June 2010.

BUSINESS/ECONOMICS

• Pranab holds parleys with regulators on budget
  • The Financial stability and development council headed by the financial minister and consisting of RBI governor, SEBI chief, PRFDA chairman and other top officials of the finance ministry met to have a pre budget negotiations
  • Following the global financial crisis in 2008, the FSDC, headed by the Finance Minister, was set up as a policy discussion forum of regulators to look at the country's financial sector development, financial literacy and financial inclusion along with macro-prudential supervision of the economy, including the functioning of large financial conglomerates.