Friday, 2nd March, 2012

HEADLINES

• Centre seeks clarification on auction of 2G licenses
• India – China move to maritime cooperation
• Stiffer penalties for traffic offenders under new rules approved by the union cabinet

NATIONAL NEWS

• India – China move to maritime cooperation
  • India and China have decided to open a new chapter in bilateral cooperation by agreeing to undertake joint operations against pirates and sharing technological knowhow on seabed research.
  • The first proposal seeks to involve the Coast Guards, the navies and air forces in action against pirates.
  • Chinese second proposal — sharing technological knowhow on seabed research falling outside the domain of coastal countries — is aimed at dousing India's apprehensions after Beijing was permitted by the International Seabed Authority to explore in south-west Indian Ocean.
    
    
• After some hiccups and a late government intervention, the sale of government's 5 per cent stake in ONGC through auction finally managed to sail through and garner estimated proceeds of over Rs. 12,600 crore to partly meet the disinvestment target for this fiscal
  
  
• Chinese Architech Wang Shu wins Pritzker architecture prize, considered the nobel prize for architecture
  • He was awarded for his “producing an architecture that is timeless, deeply rooted in its context and yet universal.” This is the first time a chinese is winning this award.
    
    
• Torpedo Akash missile to be handed over to the Navy and IAF.
  • The indigenously developed advanced light-weight torpedo and the Akash missile system will be handed over to the Navy and the Indian Air Force respectively.
  • Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL), Hyderabad, is the production agency for both the torpedo and the missile. The Navy has christened it Torpedo Advanced Light (TAL). The Naval Science and Technological Laboratory (NSTL), Visakhapatnam, which comes under the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), has designed and developed the TAL.
  • The Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL), Hyderabad, developed Akash, a surface-to-air missile.
  • Torpedoes are underwater missiles which are fired from ships, submarines or helicopters against ships and submarines.
  • It is an anti-submarine torpedo and can travel upto a maximum distance of seven km before taking out an enemy submarine. It can be launched from ships, helicopters and aircraft. It has a speed of 33 knots an hour and can operate at a maximum depth of 540 metres.
  • Akash, an anti-aircraft defence system, can simultaneously engage several targets. It has a warhead weighing 60 kg and a maximum interception range of 25 km. Rajendra, the radar developed by the Electronics and Radar Development Establishment (LRDE), a DRDO laboratory situated at Bangalore, forms a part of the Akash system. Rajendra does the surveillance, tracks the target, acquires it and guides the missile towards it.
    
    
• Hefty penalty coming for driving offenses
  • The only new offence included to the old list is use of mobile phones or any appliance enabled with transmission or reception of signals by way of wire or other electromagnetic mission.
  • Another experiment is introduction of the concept of minimum and maximum fines for varying degrees of the offence. This will, however, give room for misuse of power to save some offenders, the police being the arbiter, it is feared. eg. Various levels of excess speeding attract different fines and similarly different levels of alcohol content in the body will attract varying fines.
  • I am not giving the fine amounts and the facts, for those details look in to this http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article2952345.ece
    
    
• Sanction for prosecution only after cognizance : Centre
  • Contending that the question of sanction for prosecution of a public servant for corruption would arise only at the stage of cognisance by the competent court after the filing of a complaint, the Centre has sought a direction in the Supreme Court to review its judgment that any private complainant could seek sanction for prosecution.
  • The court had fixed an outer time limit of four months for deciding the issue of sanction for prosecution of corrupt public servants, including one month for the Attorney-General to give his opinion to the government in certain cases.
  • In the absence of a time limit in Section 19 of the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA), the provision would violate Article 14, the Centre said.
  • “The conclusions in this regard that the question of sanction can arise at a stage anterior to the stage of cognisance and even before the filing of the complaint are in the respectful submission of the petitioner legally untenable.” The Centre said “the interpretation of Section 19 of the PCA in the judgment needs correction.”

• Preliminary probe or FIR firs?
  • The Supreme Court has referred to a five-judge Constitution Bench the question whether the police are duty-bound to register a First Information Report on receipt of a complaint or information of commission of a cognisable offence or there is discretion on their part to order a preliminary probe before that exercise.

• 2.5% of GDP for health sector
  • The Prime Minister's Office has decided to increase the total expenditure on health to 2.5 per cent of the GDP from the current 1.4 per cent by the end of the coming 12th Plan period.
  • The meeting decided that the Ministry prepare a “clear” road map to merge all the schemes under the National Rural Health Mission to bring them under one umbrella.
  • It decided to soon bring into effect the Clinical Establishments (Registration and Regulation) Act, passed by Parliament in 2010, so that its provisions are operationalised at the earliest.
  • It wanted the work on establishing a National Centre for Disease Control completed in two years and the integrated disease surveillance project strengthened with the setting up of public health laboratories at State and district levels
  • It decided that an approach paper on induction of health managers and a public health cadre must be prepared for inclusion in the 12{+t}{+h}Plan.
  • Efforts must be taken to strengthen facilities at primary health centres, community health centres and district hospitals to provide for a minimum package of care to all citizens through provision of cashless, hassle-free outpatient, inpatient and diagnostic care, with adequate supply of essential medicines.
    
    
• Mass nesting of Olive ridleys apace in Rushikuliya
  • Around 55,000 turtles nested on the coast near the Rushikulya rookery.
  • Olive ridleys preferred to nest in large numbers on a recently formed, two-km-long sandbar near the rookery, almost 70% has nested here
  • Earlier there were apprehensions that this sandbar might have a negative impact on nesting on this coast. For, in the past olive ridleys did not prefer to nest on deltas formed near the river mouth.
  • The sandbar is located more than 200 metres inside the sea near this coast. Natural shifting of the river mouth has completely eroded the long sandy beach where most of the olive ridleys laid eggs last year.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS AND COLUMNS

• Is the supreme courts order on Inter linking of rivers a case of judicial over reach? A discussion on that
• A good write up on the recently concluded Vodafone case
• Editorial on the last quarters growth decline
• Plagiarism in the world of science and research.

ECONOMICS

• Cabinet nod for subsidy cut in P&K fertilizers
  • The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved the proposal to bring down the quantum of subsidy on decontrolled fertilizers — phosphatic (P) and potassic (K) — for 2012-13.
  • Due to the strengthening of the rupee and bearish global price, the Department of Fertiliser had recommended reduction in subsidy on nitrogen (N) and potassium (K), which will be Rs.24 a kg each and Rs.21.8 a kg on phosphate (P) for 2012-13.
  • The subsidy bill of P&K fertilizers alone is seen to touch Rs.52,000 crore with the overall subsidy bill touching Rs.90,000 crore this fiscal
  • The government fixes subsidy on nutrients such as NPK, which is linked to the import parity price of fertilizers, di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) and muriate of potash (MoP). The subsidy is reimbursed to fertilizer firms for selling the indigenous or imported crop nutrients at lower price to farmers.
  • Under the NBS regime, introduced from April 1, 2010, retail prices of 22 varieties of P&K fertilizers were freed.

• Cabinet clears PSU share buy back
  • In an innovative mechanism devised to partly make up for the shortfall in the Rs.40,000-crore disinvestment target set for the current fiscal, the Union Cabinet has approved buy-back of the Centre's equity by cash-rich public sector undertakings (PSUs)
  • To facilitate quick transaction, market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has already relaxed the norms for buyback of shares and dilution of equity as a result of which PSUs will be able to complete the buy-out deals within days as compared to the normal disinvestment process through public offers which can take months
  • The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has permitted financial institutions to buy the government's equity stake in PSUs.
  • In the current market trend of high volatility and profit-taking, the auction route introduced by SEBI as a new mechanism called IPP (institutional placement programme) is unlikely to yield the desired results; with the floor price of an ONGC share pegged at Rs.290, very close to the price on the bourses, being higher than FII expectations, the response has been lukewarm and the mop-up at the end of the day's trading is believed to be in the region of Rs.8,500 crore. Rather than the expected 12,000 -13,000 crore