Tuesday, May 29, 2012

HEADLINES

• Andhra Pradesh High Court sets aside the office memoranda of the Central Govt which carves out a sub-quota of 4.5% for religious minorities within the 27% OBC quota
• India to operationalise $500 million line of credit to Myanmar that was announced in October 2011 during President Thein Sein's visit to Delhi

NATIONAL NEWS

• List of pacts signed between India-Myanmar
  • — Memorandum of Understanding regarding US$ 500 million Line of Credit (Myanmar has identified Agriculture and Irrigation as key areas for spending of this LOC)
  • — Air Services Agreement between India and Myanmar.
  • — Memorandum of Understanding on the India-Myanmar Border Area Development.
  • — Memorandum of Understanding on Establishment of Joint Trade and Investment Forum.
  • — Memorandum of Understanding on the Establishment of the Advance Centre for Agriculture Research and Education (ACARE).
  • — Memorandum of Understanding on Establishment of Rice Bio Park at the Department of Agricultural Research in Nay Pyi Taw.
  • — Memorandum of Understanding towards setting up of Myanmar Institute of Information Technology.
  • — Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation between Dagon University and Calcutta University.
  • — Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation between Myanmar Institute of Strategic and International Studies and Indian Council of World Affairs.
  • — Agreement on Cooperation between Myanmar Institute of Strategic and International Studies and Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis.
  • — Cultural Exchange Programme (2012-2015).
  • — Memorandum of Understanding on establishing of Border Haats across the border between Myanmar and India.
• Myanmar's capital, Naypyitaw, is not a teeming capital
  • One million people are said to live in Myanmar's capital city, Naypyitaw, but its infrastructure is very limited as the Govt does not focus on this city as the capital;
  • Almost all Ministries have completed the shift to this new city that the Tatmadaw, Myanmar's Army, quietly began constructing in 2002 and inaugurated four years later as the new capital.
• Monsoon decline caused rise and fall of Harappan civilisation, say scientists
  • Why did the Harappan civilisation, which flourished for hundreds of years and once extended across a vast area from northwestern India and across Pakistan, suddenly go into a terminal decline some 4,000 years ago and wither away?
  • Like their script that has remained indecipherable, the question what caused a sophisticated urban culture, capable of great feats of town planning and which had established a trading network that extended across the Middle East, to suddenly collapse is one that has aroused much scholarly debate and writing;
  • It has been suggested that reduction in water availability, perhaps as a result of climatic change or because tectonic activity caused rivers to change course, could have played a significant part in the decline of this ancient civilisation;
  • In a paper being published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a team of scientists from the U.S., U.K., Pakistan, India and Romania has argued that long-term changes in monsoon rainfall altered river flow, creating conditions that initially allowed the Harappan civilisation to thrive but led later to its demise;
  • There is evidence that about 10,000 years back the Indian subcontinent went through a period when monsoon rainfall was greater than it is now, according to R. Ramesh of the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad who works on reconstructing the past climate and is not an author of the PNAS paper;
  • Then an eastward shift of the monsoon reduced rainfall in the northwestern part of the subcontinent, which became particularly marked some 5,000 years ago;
  • The Harappan towns tended to be established on higher elevation, “in close proximity to floodable, agriculturally viable land,” the scientists noted. Lacking canal irrigation, these people relied on floods, which had to be regular and also benign enough to foster intensive agriculture without crippling their towns and cities;
  • But it was a delicate balance that ultimately tipped against the Harappans. As the monsoon continued to weaken, “rivers gradually dried or became seasonal, affecting habitability along their courses,” the paper pointed out;
  • The PNAS paper also examined the Ghaggar-Hakra river system that some have identified with the legendary Saraswati, which was described as a mighty glacier-fed river in the Rig Veda. These days, the Ghaggar has a sustained water flow only during a good monsoon.
• From 2013, single entrance test for IITs and NITs
  • The joint entrance examination (JEE) for admission to the undergraduate engineering programmes will be held from the next academic year, with the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) managing a separate merit list for those aspiring to join them. The examination will also consider the marks obtained in Class XII Board examinations;
  • A meeting of the Joint Councils of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the National Institutes of Technology (NITs), the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) and other Central educational institutions approved the common admission process with weightage to performance in the Class XII Board examinations.
• DRDO test fires two Akash Missiles
  • The DRDO test-fired two surface-to-air ‘Akash' missiles from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur of which one was successful. The Akash is a medium range surface-to-air defence system that is operational with the Army and the Air Force. The missile can target aircrafts upto 30km away and upto a height of 18km (18000metres). It is nuclear capable.
• A new tiger reserve proposed in Srivilliputhur
  • Wildlife officials have submitted a proposal to the Tamil Nadu State Government to create a new tiger reserve in the existing Grizzled Giant Squirrel sanctuary in Srivilliputhur in Virudhunagar district;
  • In the recent population monitoring exercises, tigers were sighted frequently in the sanctuary's middle and upper ridges. In the recently concluded census, participants sighted an adult tigress with two of her cubs in the foothills of Rajapalayam Range of the sanctuary. Apart from this several evidences of movement of tigers were recorded in the recent past in the sanctuary spreading over parts of Madurai, Theni and Tirunelveli territorial divisions;
  • The sanctuary is the meeting place of two distinct geographical regions of biodiversity landscape in the Western Ghats of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. This is an important landscape for elephant conservation programme for the Periyar Tiger Reserve in Kerala, owing to its large contiguous forests and connectivity with adjoining Grizzled Giant Squirrel sanctuary. It is also a habitat for endangered species such as elephant, tiger, leopard, Nilgiri Tahr, Lion-tailed Macaque besides Grizzled Giant Squirrel.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

• Kofi Annan in Damascus, Syria to salvage peace plan
  • The killing on May 25 in Syria's Houla region of around 108 people, including a large number of women and children, spurred Kofi Annan, U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria to visit Damascus on Monday. He renewed his call for reconciliation;
  • In a unanimous decision, the UN Security Council expressed outrage at the tragedy, which has acquired a sharp emotional edge as among the killed are 49 children. The Council also mandated a U.N. investigation into the carnage;
  • The Syrian government has denied any role in the bloodbath, but the head of the U.N. monitoring mission in Syria, Major General Robert Mood, pointed to the use of heavy weaponry, to which non-state actors are unlikely to have access. Russia, however, has cautioned against hasty conclusions, pointing to the so called “massacre” of 45 Albanians in the Kosovo village of Racak, which could never be established but became the basis for NATO attacks on former Yugoslavia.
• Shadow over Sudan talks
  • South Sudan said on Monday that Sudanese war planes and artillery had bombarded its territory on the eve of peace talks, as Southern officials set off to attend African Union-led negotiations in Ethiopia;
  • The former civil war foes fought heavily in contested border regions last month, the worst fighting since the South won independence last July and sparking international concerns of a return to all-out war. International pressure has pushed both sides to return to the long-running talks stalled by the fighting in April, when Southern troops seized an oilfield from Khartoum's troops for ten days as Sudan launched repeated air strikes.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS & COLUMNS

• Read this editorial about the opportunity that is lost to frame a constitution in Nepal
• Read this article which discusses racism in India against people from the North-East