Monday, May 28, 2012

HEADLINES

• CBI arrests Jagan Mohan Reddy in a disproportionate assets case; YSR Congress calls for 3 day bandh in Andhra Pradesh
• Maj. Neikhrietuonuo Linyu, an Army doctor posted in Agra, has become the first Naga to scale Mount Everest. She was part of a team that reached the summit on May 25

NATIONAL NEWS

• At India-Pakistan border, a visa-free 400 metres
  • In a significant move that could show the way for putting in place a liberal visa regime between them, India and Pakistan have agreed to do away with requirement of a visa to cross the border on both sides within a radius of 400 metres at the Attari-Wagah point in Punjab for Customs and other related border officials;
  • It was agreed that officials monitoring and administrating trade would be issued “special permits'' to work within the 400-metre radius. At present, such permits are issued to drivers and workers to drive in and out of the border carrying goods and unloading them;
  • However, this limited access is unlikely to be available to the BSF or Pakistan Rangers. The move is to faciliate trade between the two countries.
• World Heritage Status still out of reach for the Western Ghats
  • The coveted World Heritage Site tag may remain elusive for the Western Ghats as the IUCN technical evaluation report says the “property does not meet conditions of integrity or protection and management requirements for serial properties”. The 36th session of the WHC, which will begin at St. Petersburg, Russia, on June 24, will consider the report;
  • India had nominated 39 serial sites of the Ghats including Agasthyamalai, Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve, Padinalknad reserved forest, Kerti reserved forest, Aralam Wildlife Sanctuary, Kudremukh National Park, Someshwara Wildlife Sanctuary, Chinnar Wildlife Sanctuary, Mannavan Shola, and Silent Valley National Park for declaration as World Heritage Site;
  • Picking holes in India's claim, the IUCN stated that “the protection status of at least parts of the re-nominated property does not meet the requirements, principally owing to concerns about land tenure and the strength of legal controls over development.” The boundaries of the nominated property “did not meet the requirements set out in the Operational Guidelines primarily due to ongoing concerns regarding site selection, inclusion of inappropriate land uses and buffer zone effectiveness,” it said;
  • While staking its claim, India had stated that there would be a three-tier management system for all the 39 sites. However, IUCN observed that there was “no overarching management plan for the nominated property” despite the three-tier coordination mechanism proposed by India. Though the management plans for the nominated sites are in place, “they are complex and it is not clear how they contribute to an overall management strategy for the proposed World Heritage Site as a whole,” it pointed out.
• Alcohol content in beverages to be regulated soon
  • For the first time, India's food regulator FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) has finalised draft standards for all categories of alcoholic beverages such as wine, beer, whisky, rum, gin and vodka, to set the maximum permissible limits of alcohol in these drinks and thus, mandate safety standards;
  • The draft standards will come up for final discussions at the coming meeting of the FSSAI, which plans to notify these by July 1. So far, there was no benchmarking in place for prescribing safe and permissible limits of alcohol in drinks. The new standards will apply to practically all branded alcoholic beverages that are permitted for sale in India. The move has been strongly resisted by the alcohol industry.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

• Nepal's constituent assembly (CA) fails to write constitution
  • Four years after being elected, Nepal's CA got dissolved on Sunday night without delivering a statute. Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai's Cabinet, despite opposition from a major ruling partner, decided to hold fresh elections on November 22 for a new CA;
  • Sources say the political parties involved decided that the chances of a constitution were “nil” and began discussing other “appropriate arrangements” in the chamber of the CA Chairman to avert a crisis. The first option discussed was elections for a new assembly, while the second was declaring an emergency to extend the term of the House. The key ruling allies, the Maoists and the Madhesis, chose the first option.
• Slowly but surely the Web warms up to the new protocol
  • A number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), hardware makers and websites, including a few from India, will start running IPv6, a new generation Internet protocol, permanently from June 6. It is part of a global effort to move away from the IPv4 regime that now rules the cyberspace;
  • But the ‘World IPv6 Launch,' being spearheaded by the global non-profit organisation, Internet Society, will make little difference to most users for, they will most probably continue to use IPv4 by default, as the switch to IPv6 is possible only when their computers, the networks and the content and service providers are ready for it;
  • The Internet Society says major ISPs, home-networking equipment manufacturers and web companies will join the global initiative, which comes after a test drive conducted on June 11, 2011, when many companies went the IPv6 way for a day;
  • Version 4 is made up of a set of numbers that helps to identify web addresses, facilitating communication from one point to the other. With the rapid expansion of Internet, the sets of numbers that could be used as digital addresses started getting exhausted. This necessitated a new version that offers an almost inexhaustible address pool;
  • The ISPs taking part in the launch will try to run IPv6 for at least 1per cent of their residential wire-line Internet subscribers. And importantly, companies offering web-based services — such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft Bing and Yahoo — will make it possible for users deploying IPv6 to use their sites. Participating home-networking equipment makers such as Cisco and D-Link will enable IPv6 by default on their products by June 6;
  • The handful of organisations and companies from India taking part in the initiative at the time when was written included ISP Sify, Bangalore International Airport (website), ERNET (Education and Research Network) and Bharat Heavy Electricals.
• Sri Lankan Tamil party retains 'separate state' constitution
  • The Ilankai Tamil Arasu Katchi (ITAK), the main constituent of the Tamil National Alliance — the lone credible representative of Tamil people in the Northern Province — has refused to revisit its constitution, which seeks the establishment of a separate state, at its 14th national convention in the Eastern headquarter town of Batticaloa;
  • The Sixth Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, enacted in August 1983, prohibits political parties from having as one of their aims the establishment of a separate state. A petition was filed recently in the Supreme Court that sought the disqualification of the parties for retaining the demand for a separate state in their party documents.
• Scots roll the dice for independence
  • The Scots have finally rolled the dice which, depending on the way it falls, will decide whether Scotland will remain part of the United Kingdom or become an independent country;
  • A high-profile pro-independence campaign, backed by a clutch of celebrities including actor Sean Connery, one of Scotland's most famous sons, is in full swing ahead of a referendum expected in 2014. The basis of the referendum (independence or autonomy) is also being debated.
• Massacre in Syria leaves 90 dead including 32 children

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS & COLUMNS

• Read this article about child marriages
• Read this editorial on the poverty line estimates in India
• Read this article by Aamir Khan on the health care system in India