Wednesday, Feb 22nd, 2012

HEADLINES

• Italy works back channels, sea law to get marines off the hook
• NCTC wont take away states power, PM writes back
• DGCA raps Kingfisher for not adhering to flight schedules, however no punitive action taken against it for now.
• Search warrant issued to seize gun from the Italian ship

NATIONAL NEWS

• Italy works back channels, sea law to get marines of Indian hook
  • According to their country any of their nationals involved in criminal activity anywhere are subject to Italian law, while Section 4 of the Indian Penal Code says that any crime committed against an Indian or on an Indian vessel “wherever it may be'' can be tried in India.
  • The second approach Italy is taking is to argue that the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) permits prosecution only by the state whose flag the ship is flying or the state of which the citizen is a national (in both cases Italy). The third is that their ships have the right to take on pirates.
  • According to India, Article 97 of UNCLOS to which Italians are referring deals only with collision of vessels and other such incidents. The right against pirates is also given only to naval vessels and not merchant ships,
    
    
• NCTC wont take away state's powers, Manmohan writes back
  • PM has explained that the primary purpose of the National Counter-Terrorism Centre was to coordinate counter-terrorism efforts nationwide
  • The Chief Ministers apprehended that the NCTC, to be made operational from March 1, will infringe upon the powers and rights of the States. The decision should have been taken only after adequate consultation and with the consent of the States
  • PM also said, the idea of the centre had been under consideration since the Group of Ministers report of 2001 suggested a joint task force on intelligence and the report was accepted by the government of the day. “It was also suggested by the Second Administrative Reforms Commission that a National Centre for Counter-Terrorism be established,”
    
    
• Dutch Indologist prof. Johan Frederik Staal dead
  
  
• Janapada Shri award for Daroji Eramma for her rendering of the epics in her native language (Telugu)
  
  
• Vasan seeks US help in countering piracy at sea
  • The Shipping Ministry has sought the co-operation of the United States to counter the menace of piracy at sea and also to produce quality maritime human resources through the respective training institutes.
  • U.S. Department of Commerce, said that while India was projected to grow faster than any country over the next 20 to 25 years, India's infrastructure was not keeping pace with its growth. The commercial relations between the two nations were hindered by this reality.

• Three megalithic sites discovered near Krishtapuram in the Gundala forest region by the students of Hyderabad university students

• Kingfisher airlines asked to give a realistic flight schedule
  • Facing turbulent times with continuing large-scale flight disruptions and financial mess, Kingfisher Airlines was on Tuesday given a 24-hour deadline by the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to submit a “revised and realistic” flight schedule.
  • Badly needing immediate infusion of funds, Kingfisher Airlines has also Income Tax authorities breathing down its neck. The I-T authorities have frozen its bank accounts
  • Under Rule 140(A) of the Aircraft Rules, 1937, airlines need prior approval of the DGCA to curtail their flight schedules. Any violation can attract cancellation of the flight permit, as an extreme measure.
  • The airline has also assured the DGCA that the pending salaries of its employees would be paid by the end of the month.
  • Kingfisher owes over Rs. 7,000 crore to an 18 bank consortium led by the State Bank of India. Lenders would meet again next week to finalise a restructuring package. Kingfisher reported losses of Rs. 444 crore in the third quarter of this year — up from Rs. 254 crore a year ago. Kingfisher's current debt is close to Rs. 7,057.08 crore.

• Global financial uncertainity affecting India : Pranab
  • Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has said it was imperative to have a broad-based development across sectors, regions and among the different population segments of society for growth to be sustainable in the long term.
  • The problems in Europe were a setback to the global recovery and the relative robust revival in emerging market economies was also beginning to falter and the financial uncertainity is affecting India
  • Advocating a development path with two parallel objectives, Mr. Mukherjee said villages, agriculture and agro-based industries and infrastructure had to be developed in the rural areas while empowering the rural people and giving them new opportunities.
    
    
• New family of limbless amphibians found
  • Scientists have discovered a new family of limbless amphibians from northeast India with their ancient lineage traced to eastern and western parts of Africa
  • They have named the new family as Chikilidae and the new genus as Chikila, deriving the name from the Northeast Indian tribal language of Garo.
  • Until this discovery, there were only nine known families of legless amphibians, also called caecilians, found across the wet tropical regions of Southeast Asia, India, Sri Lanka, parts of East and West Africa, the Seychelles and northern and eastern parts of South America.
  • Chikilidae is a group of extremely dedicated burrowers. They exhibit an intriguing and highly specialised reproductive behaviour. The mother builds underground nests for her eggs and coils around them. The embryos hatch in about 2-3 months. The eggs undergo direct development, feeding on the yolk reserves and come out as miniature adults without an intervening free-swimming larval stage that is usual of amphibians in general

INTERNATIONAL

• Pakistan seeks interpol help to arrest Musharraf in connection with the assassination of the former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, for failing to provide adequate security to her.

• Russia refuses friends of syria invite
  • Russia has refused to attend a meeting of the Friends of Syria this week accusing the group of scripting a Libya-type scenario for foreign intervention.
  • The Friends of Syria group, set up by some European and Arab states, as well as the U.S., will meet for the first time in Tunis
  • Moscow took objection to the fact that only Syrian opposition, but not the government, had been invited to Tunis.
  • Earlier Russia and China vetoed a draft Security Council resolution recently that supported an Arab demand for Mr. Assad to step down and voted against a similar non-binding resolution adopted by the U.N. General Assembly .

• Yemenis vote in favour of peace
  • Yemenis voted on Tuesday to instate their U.S.-backed Vice- President as the head of state, tasked with steering the country out of a crisis created by an anti-government uprising that has raged for a year.
  • The vote can hardly be called an election as Vice-President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi is the only candidate. It is, however, a turning point for the impoverished Arab state, ending President Ali Abdullah Saleh's 33-year authoritarian rule.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS AND COLUMNS

• An article on the India – Latin America partnership
• A nice article on fighting piracy in the sea
• Editorial on National Floor level Minimum wage (NFLW)

ECONOMICS

• Government mulls action against RIL for fall in KG-D6 output
  • With the production from the once prolific Krishna Godavari basin D6 block of Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) projected to decline to 27 million standard cubic metres per day (mscmd) by April this year, the Government is exploring all legal options to take “penal action” against RIL for the ‘drastic fall' in production.
  • Under the Field Development Plan (FDP) submitted by it, the company was to produce around 70 mscmd of gas from the D6 block but the present levels of output stand at around 35 mscmd only.
  • Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and its partner BP plc have got the government nod for putting in place a plan to develop another of their discovery in KG-D6 block but did not get approval for the D-29, D-30 and D-31 discoveries.
  • A committee headed by Directorate General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) recently gave its approval to the commercial probability of Dhirubhai-34 or D-34 gas find in the KG-DWN-98/3. The Management Committee (MC), which besides DGH also includes representative of Petroleum Ministry, however, did not approve commercial probability of D-29, D-30 and D-31 discoveries in the absence of individual well tests of the finds.
  • The MC approved drilling of 11 wells to produce 14.68 mscmd of gas for 8 years beginning 2016-17.
  • But for D-29, 30 and 31, the MC rejected the the approval on the grounds that individual well tests confirming the discovery nor appraisal wells had been drilled to substantiate the finds.

• Ten Blocks under NELP IX face the axe
  • A total of ten blocks offered under the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) IX face the axe as the Empowered Committee of Secretaries (ECS) has recommended not to award them due to lower profit petroleum to the government. A total of ten blocks offered under the New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP) IX face the axe as the Empowered Committee of Secretaries (ECS) has recommended not to award them due to lower profit petroleum to the government
  • It rejected bids for seven deep water blocks and three shallow water blocks.
  • The ECS also rejected Essar Oil's bid for the CB-ONN-2010/11 block despite the company scoring the highest points and having the required minimum net worth of $19.42 million. However, the bid was not considered as the net worth furnished by the bidder, at $142.90 million, included an amount of $256.84 million for advance towards “global depository shares”.Removing advance for GDS resulted in negative net worth of $113.94 million.