Tuesday, February 28, 2012

HEADLINES

• Wikileaks reveals that Dow Chemicals hired US firms to spy on Bhopal activists
• Sports Ministry writes to the International Olympic Committee urging it to cancel the sponsorship of Dow Chemical for the London Olympics
• UPA and trade unions lock horns as 11 trade unions call a nation wide general strike
• Kingfisher says funds arranged to pay the overdue salaries
• Central and TN state intelligence agencies detain and deport one German man in Nagercoil for organising funds for the Kudankulam anti-nuclear stir

NATIONAL NEWS

• Supreme Court tells Central Govt to set up special panel on linking of rivers
  • The Supreme Court on Monday directed the Centre to constitute a ‘special committee' forthwith for inter-linking of rivers for the benefit of the entire nation. It said that there was unanimity among the authorities concerned on the exercise including Central and State Govts barring one or two. The court appointed a committee to look into the issue;
  • The SC directed the committee to take firm steps and fix a definite time frame for laying down the guidelines for completion of feasibility or other reports and to ensure completion of projects, so that the benefits could be obtained in a reasonable time and cost. The court directed the Central and State governments to participate in the programme and render all financial, administrative and executive help for completing these projects effectively;
  • The river interlinking project was first proposed in 1971 and then taken forward by the NDA Govt in 2002 and a task force had made recommendations on inter-linking to deal with the acute drought in those years. The task force had recommended 2 branches of the project –
    • peninsula component – southern water grid with 16 linkages, including diversion of surplus waters of Mahanadi and Godavari to Pennar, Krishna, Vaigai and Cauvery. There will also be diversion of Kerala and Karnataka's west flowing rivers to the east and interlinking of smaller rivers;
    • himalayan component – building of reservoirs on Ganga and Brahmaputra
  • Please read this editorial which explains the necessity of the proposal.
• Indian Envoy from the Ministry of External Affairs holds talks with Nowegian Govt
  • A top Indian official on Monday had “positive” discussions with Norwegian Foreign Minister in Oslo regarding the early return of the children, taken away from an NRI couple in Norway.
• World Thinking day celebrated on February 27
  • World Thinking Day is celebrated on February 27 every year to mark the birth anniversary of the founder of the Scouts and Guides movement, Lord Baden-Powell.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

• The Oscars
  • The Artist, a silent movie black-and-white comic melodrama category, won 5 awards including the best actor award which went to Jean Dujardin and the best director to Michel Hazanavicius. The last silent movie was a world war I saga called Wings which won in 1929;
  • Meryl Streep won the best actress for The Iron Lady;
  • Octavia Spencer as supporting actress for The Help and Christopher Plummer as supporting actor for Beginners (oldest actor to get Oscar – age 82);
  • Martin Scorsese's Paris adventure Hugo also won 5 Oscars, all in technical categories;
  • Best foreign film – Iranian movie, A Separation; It is the first Iranian film to win the award. The only other Iranian movie ever nominated was 1997's Children of Heaven , which was defeated by Italy's Life Is Beautiful. Asghar Farhadi wrote and directed A Separation and it gives an insight into Iranian culture;
  • Best documentary maker – Pakistan's documentary film maker Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy for Saving Face, a documentary on acid victims and about Dr. Mohammad Jawad, a plastic surgeon of Pakistani origin from Britain who moves back to help these victims.
  • Here is an editorial which discusses this years Oscars in brief.
• Chechen-linked plot to assassinate Putin
  • Russian and Ukrainian secret services have foiled a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Vladimir Putin after the March 4 presidential elections. 2 suspects arrested in Ukraine earlier this year confessed of plotting to bomb Mr. Putin's motorcade in Moscow on the orders of Chechen warlord Doku Umarov, who had organised a bloody suicide bombing of a Moscow airport a year ago;
  • A similar plot was unearthed 4 years ago during the last presidential elections.
• Refoms a must to step the slide, China warned
  • China's export-driven growth model has reached a turning point and the government needs to put in place sweeping reforms to respond to declining growth and avoid a slowdown, a joint report by a leading Chinese think-tank and the World Bank has warned;
  • The report warned that restructuring was necessary because China's growth would “decline gradually” leading to the year 2030 as its current economic model reaches its limits. Among its recommendations were the breaking up of State monopolies and encouraging the growth of small and medium enterprises, as well as commercialising the banking system and promoting financial reforms;
  • It also called for greater protection accorded to farmers' rights and reforming the pension and unemployment systems to provide greater social security and reduce inequality. Promoting innovation and encouraging green growth were other suggested areas of focus. China's growth declined to 8.9% in the last quarter of 2011. The targets for 2012-15 is around 7%.
• Gazon acquited in Franco era crimes probe
  • A court in Madrid acquitted Spain's renowned human rights judge Baltasar Garzon on Monday of breaching the terms of an amnesty by trying to investigate atrocities committed during the Franco era;
  • Mr. Garzon has argued that the atrocities, including the disappearance of more than 100,000 people during the 1936-39 Civil War and General Francisco Franco's dictatorship that ended in 1975, were crimes against humanity and not subject to a 1977 amnesty voted through by Parliament;
  • Mr. Garzon had been accused of soliciting sponsorship payments for lectures he gave in New York from five institutions, four of which had been probed in his own courtroom or other courtrooms in the National Court. But Mr. Garzon was handed an 11-year suspension from the bench earlier this month after he was convicted of illegally ordering wiretaps in a separate corruption case;
  • The 56-year-old, who came to fame with his efforts to extradite Chile's former dictator Augusto Pinochet from London in 1998, has also taken on Basque militants and even the al-Qaeda. His supporters argue that the recent court cases against him were inspired by a desire for revenge on behalf of his enemies.
• India to step up engagement with the Arab world
  • Having cast its lot with the Arab League on the Syria question, India will step up its multilateral engagement with the Arab world in the coming months with a series of events that will include a visit to Cairo by External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna to confabulate with the Arab League and to re-engage Egypt, which is stepping out of the rigid policy confines of the Mubarak era;
  • Trade between the Arab countries and India in the last few years has exceeded $120 billion and over 60 lakh Indians live and work in the Arab world;
  • Post-Mubarak Egypt, Libya reconstruction main areas of focus for India.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS & COLUMNS

• On February 21 there was an article from Andre Beteille on the role of castes in politics (refer to archives). Here is another opinion on the reasons why caste based politics triumphs. A must read for Sociology students
• Read this article about funds from the International Monetary Fund being used by the European Union to firewall/protect itself
• If you have time, glance through this article on Indo-Italian relations. Not important from an exam perspective.