Tuesday, 7th February, 2012

HEADLINES

• Ban order on Madhavan Nair and three others to stay but the centre slow on investigation despite the pratyush sinha committee has recommended ban and immediate investigation.
• Home ministry shoots down pleas to prosecute killer soldiers, as according to AFSPA, the home ministry should sanction the prosecution of an army man.
• Yuvraj singh battling curable cancer. In US for treatment.
• Historian and author Sharada Dwivedi passes away.
• Powerful earthquake in Phillipines kills 44.

NATIONAL NEWS

• Apex court issues notice to centre on illegal drug
  • The Supreme Court has issued a notice to the Centre on a writ petition alleging that illegal clinical trials of untested drugs were being conducted by pharmaceutical companies on adults, children and even mentally ill persons in various States.
  • In a large number of cases, multinational corporations were using contract research organisations for carrying out clinical trials of unapproved drugs.
  • The petitioner said these trials “are conducted in India either because they are not allowed elsewhere or because they are cost prohibitive in the country of origin.
  • “The manner in which these trials are conducted is grossly illegal and violative of Article 21 of the Constitution. The inaction of the government in not banning/restricting these trials is violative of Article 14.
  • The petitioner said that as per the guidelines the subject should know the nature, duration and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it was to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonable to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which might possibly come from his participation in the experiment.
  • The Bench sought a response from the government in six weeks.

• Centre unveils national policy on narcotic policy and psycotropic substances
  • The need for such a policy assumes significance in the light of the fact that trafficking in narcotic drugs also contributes to generation of black money in the country.
  • The policy recommends the production of Concentrate of Poppy Straw (CPS) in India by a company or body corporate that would enable the country to retain its status of a traditional supplier of Opiate Raw Material (ORM) to the rest of world, while remaining competitive.
  • While the consumption of poppy straw by addicts is to be gradually reduced and finally stopped in a time frame decided by the States, the policy emphasises use of satellite imagery for detection of illicit poppy and cannabis crop and its subsequent eradication and development of alternate means of livelihood in respect of cultivators in pockets of traditional illicit cultivation.
  • The private sector may be allowed production of alkaloids from opium — at present alkaloids from opium are produced only in Government Opium and Alkaloid Factories (GOAFs) — non-intrusive methods of regulating the manufacture, trade and use of such psychotropic substances will be introduced.
    
    
• India to strategise on climate resilitent agriculture at international meet today
  • Observed changes in rainfall patterns and increased temperatures, particularly in the North-Eastern region, are the major projections on which Indian agriculture scientists are pegging their “mitigation and adaptation” plans in the farm sector in the absence of definitive long-term and area-specific data on climate change
  • At the centre of their plan is shifting the cropping pattern to less water dependent crops, changing the land-use pattern to bio-fuel plantation and agro-forestry and managing heat stress in dairy animals.
  • An international conference on “Climate change, sustainable agriculture and public leadership, 2012” organised by ICAR and the National Council for Climate Change, Sustainable Development and Public Leadership (NCCSD) is going to be held in Delhi
  • It is projected that in India productivity of cereals may decline due to increase in temperatures and decrease in water availability. Each one degree Celsius rise in temperature will, for instance, result in four to five million tonnes of wheat, which can be reduced to one to two million tonnes by timely sowing
  • Rise in sea and river water temperatures will impact fish breeding, migration and harvests. Animal disease due to heat effects and decline in milk production by 2020 is also likely.
    
    
• National counter terrorism centre to open
  • In a step aimed at strengthening various counter-terrorism measures, the government has decided to operationalise the ambitious National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC)
  • The operations division of the counter-terrorism body has been given powers to arrest and carry out searches under Section 43A of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.
  • The NCTC will be located in the Intelligence Bureau and headed by a Director who will be an officer in the rank of Additional Director, IB. It will have three units — gathering intelligence, analysis of intelligence and carrying out operations — and each of these divisions will be headed by a joint director of the IB.
  • The NCTC will have the power to requisition the services of the elite National Security Guard (NSG), according to the official order. It will integrate intelligence pertaining to terrorism, analyse it, pursue or mandate other agencies to pursue the different leads, and coordinate with the existing agencies for an effective response.
  • It will also maintain a comprehensive database of terrorists and their associates, friends, families, and supporters of terrorist modules and gangs and of all information pertaining to terrorists.
  • “The NCTC will prescribe counter-terrorism priorities for each stakeholder and ensure that all agencies have access to and receive source intelligence support that is necessary to execute counter-terrorism plans and accomplish their assigned tasks
  • It will also prepare daily threat assessment reviews and disseminate them to the appropriate levels in the Central government and to the State governments.
    
    
• Supreme court issues notice to centre on a petition that sought a direction for framing a national policy on traffice management as per the WHO 2005 guidelines.
  
  
• CEC for cancellation of 49 mining leases
  • The Supreme Court-appointed Central Empowered Committee (CEC) has recommended the cancellation of 49 iron ore mining leases Karnataka where iron ore was being mined illegally. It has suggested a cap on production of iron ore at 30 million tonnes a year, besides recommending that new mining leases not be issued.
  • The CEC has accepted a majority of the recommendations made by the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE), which unearthed massive illegal mining and transportation of iron ore in the State by several mining companies.
  • In its report, the CEC has classified the mining leases into three categories. Category ‘A' comprises working leases and non-working leases where no illegality or marginal illegality was found.
  • Mining leases where illegal mining by way of mining pits outside the sanctioned lease areas have been found to be up to 10 per cent of the lease area, and waste dumps outside the sanctioned lease areas up to 15 per cent of the lease area come under Category ‘B.
  • Category ‘C' is similar to Category ‘B', except that here the extent of mining pits and waste dumps are more than 10 per cent and 15 per cent respectively of the sanctioned lease areas. Leases where the Forest (Conservation) Act has been flagrantly violated or where illegal mining is going on in other lease areas also come under Category ‘C'

• Policy to provide “Preferential market access” to Indian electronics hardware companies.
  • Preferential access would be provided to domestic electronics manufacturers of products, “which have security implications or products purchased by governments (including states) for their own use.”
  • The policy stipulates an initial minimum indigenous value addition of 25 per cent, which will go up to 45 per cent in the fifth year.
  • The strategy includes the establishment of semiconductor fabrication units in the country, for which Expressions of Interest had already been floated by the Government.
  • An independent National Electronics Board, which would oversee the implementation of the new policy for the sector.
  • An Electronics Development Fund, with a corpus of Rs. 10,000 crore would be created. The fund would support research and development activity, invest in the development of intellectual property and enable transfer of technologies.

• Zambia high on radar of Indian investment exploration
  • To increase bilateral trade between India and Zambia five-fold to reach $1 billion mark, the Zambia Government has invited Indian firms to invest in core sectors.
  • Zambia invited investments in areas such as agriculture, mining, tourism, ICT, energy, education, manufacturing, construction, infrastructure and telecom to enhance its trade, investment and bilateral relations with India.
  • In the last five years, Indian firms had invested $2.3 billion and thereby creating 13,000 jobs.

INTERNATIONAL

• Massive water diversion project nears completion in China
  • China's ambitious $80-billion project to divert waters of southern rivers to the arid north is nearing completion and will begin supplying water next year
  • Construction has not yet begun on the western route, which plans to divert water from the upper reaches of the Yangtze as well as a number of rivers on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, including the Brahmaputra and Mekong
  • It, however, remains unclear whether the central government has given the green light to any of the proposed diversions, amid environmental concerns of the project's impact on the ecologically sensitive Tibetan plateau
  • The central government has, however, come under increasing pressure from hydropower lobby groups to allow the construction of run-of-the-river power generation projects on the middle and upper reaches, with proposals from hydropower companies for as many as 27 dams, including a massive 38-gigawatt plant on the river's “Great Bend”, where it begins its course towards India.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS AND COLUMNS

• An article on the Syrian debacle
• Editorial on Cancer
• Editorial on radiation from mobile phones

BUSINESS/ECONOMICS

• S&P warning to India on negative rating
  • Even as there is no immediate threat of downward tweaking, global rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) on Monday cautioned India that its sovereign credit rating could tilt slightly towards ‘negative' if effective action was not taken to counter “the balance of risk factors” emanating from economic uncertainties at home and abroad.