Friday, 13th April, 2012

HEADLINES

• Court Uphelds RTE act; However it would not be applicable to unaided minority schools.
• Bosusco Paola released by Maoists
• 18 handed life sentence in Gujarat riots case.

NATIONAL NEWS

• Court uphelds RTE act
  • The Supreme Court, by a majority of 2:1 upheld the constitutional validity of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, which provides for free and compulsory education to children between the age of 6 and 14 years and mandates government/aided/and non-minority unaided schools to reserve 25 per cent of the seats for these children.
  • while upholding the law, however, the bench held that it would not be applicable to unaided minority schools.
  • This will apply from the academic year 2012-13.
    
    
• Rs. 30000/- plan bail out for Air India
  • Govt announced that it would infuse additional funds into the airline to the tune of Rs. 30,000 crore till 2020, hive off the engineering services and ground handling business, and go ahead with the induction of 27 new Boeing 787 Dreamliners.
  • Air India would get the government guarantee for repayment of principal amount and payment of interest on the non-convertible debentures of Rs. 7400 crore proposed to be issued to financial institutions, banks, the Life Insurance of Corporation and used to repay part of working capital loans.
  • government has also approved a proposal to make the airline's MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul) business and its Engineering Services as two wholly-owned subsidiaries. The MRO unit will get Rs. 375 crore over three years and is projected to be a profit-making company from 2017-18. About 7,000 employees of Air India will migrate to the subsidiary company.
  • The ground handling unit, planned to be developed as a separate profit centre, will get Rs. 393 crore over a span of 12 years.
    
    
• Wednesday's quake was caused by a strike slip fault
  • Besides the subduction zone (where the Indian plate dives under the Burmese plate) that lies to the west of Indonesia, the Indian Ocean has a diffused seismicity zone. This zone lies to the west of the subduction zone.
  • The east-west trending zone extends from 80 degree East longitude to around 93 degree East longitude (where the April 11, 2012 quake occurred). The length of the zone is around 1,300 km.
  • “It is an intra-plate earthquake,”An earthquake is called intra-plate when it occurs within the plate and not at the edges of two plates.
  • Since it is an intra-plate earthquake, no subduction takes place and the fracturing causes a strike-slip fault — where one edge of the plate grinds past the other horizontally. The strike-slip fault has an east-west direction. This fault could have formed as a result of westward transfer of stress from the subduction zone.
  • “There is a belief that a new boundary is developing in the Indo-Australian plate along the diffused zone of seismicity,” he said. “Some scientists speculate that this may become the new boundary between the Indian plate and the Australian plate.”
    
    
• There is huge potential for india – pakistan trade
  • Pakistan businessmen and fashion fraternity personalities, who have descended upon New Delhi to take part in the first ever ‘Pakistan Lifestyle' show in India see a huge potential for trade between the two countries but want easing of visa rules and allowing across-the-border operation of mobile phones.
  • At present, bilateral trade between the countries is around 2.7 billion US dollars, which is largely in favour of India. However, the two-way trade through third country is estimated at around 10 billion US dollars. Pakistan is expected to grant India the Most Favoured Nation (MFN) status by this year-end, paving the way for a direct, comprehensive and broad-based economic engagement.
• Foreign ministers of China – India to discuss recent spat over south china sea
  • The Foreign Ministers of India and China will meet today in Moscow to discuss the recent spat over the South China Sea, the next steps to resolve the border dispute, terrorism and the forthcoming calendar for high level meetings.
  • India's preoccupation is with the block in the portion of the sea claimed by Vietnam. There is no issue with a well that has been in the production mode for a decade. But China is suspicious of India having taken up exploration activity in an area that is much closer to Hainan where it has built a nuclear submarine base. Vietnam is firm in its assertion that the new block to India is in its territorial waters.

• Are auctions the only route, president asks supreme court.
  • The President has sought an advisory opinion from the Supreme Court on 14 questions including whether, following its 2G spectrum judgment, “the only permissible method for disposal of all natural resources across all sectors and in all circumstances is by the conduct of auctions.”
  • “in view of the court's reasoning and finding that natural resources of the state must be auctioned, doubts have now arisen inter alia regarding the pricing of spectrum historically granted to the earlier licensees and how that should be dealt with…”
  • President also wanted to know whether imposing a ceiling on the spectrum with the aim of avoiding market domination by any licensee is constitutionally valid.
  • Article 143 (1) of the Constitution says: “If at any time it appears to the President that a question of law or fact has arisen, or is likely to arise, which is of such a nature and of such public importance that it is expedient to obtain the opinion of the Supreme Court upon it, he [she] may refer the question to that court for consideration and the court may, after such hearing as it thinks fit, report to the President its opinion thereon.”
  • The Supreme Court has powers not to give an opinion. The hearing of a reference is conducted before at least five judges. It will be restricted to the questions on which the reference has been made and the court has no power to either substitute the facts or formulate/supplement questions not mentioned in the reference.

• Registration of marriages to be made compulsory
  • The government will amend the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, to include registration of marriages under the purview of this law. The amendment bill to be introduced in Parliament during this session. This will provide legal protection to couples, especially in cases of inter-religious matrimony.
  • The Union Cabinet on Thursday also approved amendment to the Anand Marriage Act, 1909, to provide for registration of marriages of Sikhs that has been a long-standing demand of the community.
  • The proposed Bills will be beneficial to women, protecting them from unnecessary harassment in matrimonial and maintenance cases. It will also provide evidentiary value in matters of custody of children, right of children born from wedlock of two persons whose marriage is registered and the age of the parties to the marriage,

• India pakistan close to new visa agreement
  • India and Pakistan would, in all likelihood, will announce a new liberal visa regime by next month to facilitate easy movement of businessmen and give a fillip to trade.
  • There are possibilities that businessmen from both countries would be given multi-entry visas for more than one year with access to multiple cities. officials said these visa holders could be exempted from reporting to the police also.
• SPV approved for smooth roll out of GST
  • In a step towards facilitating implementation of the proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST), possibly from next fiscal, the Union Cabinet approved the setting up of a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to provide the IT infrastructure and services for smooth roll-out of the new indirect tax regime.
  • According to an official statement, the GSTN SPV, with an equity capital of Rs. 10 crore, would be incorporated as a Section 25 (not-for-profit), non-government, private limited company in which the government is to retain strategic control.
  • While the Centre and the states would hold equal stakes of 24.5 per cent each in the SPV, non-government institutions together would have the majority equity stake of 51 per cent

INTERNATIONAL

• North Korea launches a five day launch window
  • North Korea's five-day window to launch a rocket opened on Thursday with no confirmed firing, but Asian countries remained on alert as Washington rallied world opinion against the Communist state.
  • The morning timeframe in which North Korea plans to launch its 30-metre rocket came and went with no sign of liftoff from a newl space centre on the country's northwestern Yellow Sea coast.
  • But the North says the Unha-3 (Galaxy-3) rocket, ostensibly carrying a satellite payload, could go up any day between now and Monday to coincide with Sunday's centenary of the birth of its founding leader Kim Il-Sung.

• More millionaires sign up for 'Buffet role'
  • The Wednesday instalment of President Barack Obama's campaign to raise the taxes of millionaires featured a group of wealthy people who stood by his side as he said that the idea was popular among the gilded elite from Warren E. Buffett on down.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS AND COLUMNS

• An article on fighting graft; Important for sociology students.
• Editorial on the RTE
• Editorial on the Syrian governments last chance
• A nice article on India's foreign policy in west Asia

ECONOMICS

• Zee tv the first Indian channel to land in China
  • Zee TV has become the first Indian television channel to be granted landing rights in China, following a long six year wait and a concerted campaign to win over Chinese authorities long reluctant to open the door to Indian entertainment in this country.

• Moody down ONGC GAIL ratings
  • Moody's, downgraded the local currency rating of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and GAIL (India).
  • While the rating of ONGC has been downgraded to Baa1 from A2, in the case of GAIL India, it has downgraded to Baa2 from A3. The rating is now aligned with GAIL's Baa2 foreign currency rating, which has been affirmed by Moody's.