Friday, 29th June, 2012

HEADLINES

• Pranab, Sangma file nominations
• Surjeet singh released. Meets family after 30 years

NATIONAL NEWS

• Prime minister to clarify pranab's tax measures
  • Taking charge of the Finance portfolio after the resignation of Pranab Mukherjee, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has kindled hopes of a rethink on the controversial tax measures the departing Minister leaves behind
  • While the Finance Ministry maintained on Thursday that there were no plans to defer the roll-out of the General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR) beyond April 1, 2013, it said it was committed to providing “clarifications” to the PMO within two or three weeks on tax matters, which have raised the hackles of industry
  • Besides transfer pricing issues, the clarifications, in particular, would pertain to the retrospective amendment of Section 9 of the Income Tax Act — now popularly known as the Vodafone tax
    
    
• Will UGC norms review help 44 deemed universities escape deregulation
  • Just two years after the University Grants Commission laid down stringent guidelines for granting deemed-to-be university status to educational institutions, the Human Resource Development Ministry has constituted a committee to review the UGC (Institutions Deemed to be Universities) Regulations, 2010. It will also make provision for foreign universities, ranked among the best in academia and intending to open campuses in India, to be recognised as deemed-to-be universities.
  • The new committee, set up on April 17, has at least four members who were part of the Professor P.N.Tandon Committee that had recommended de-recognition of the 44 universities. The universities facing the threat of de-recognition had moved the court and the matter is pending in the Supreme Court. The validity of the Tandon Committee itself has been challenged.
  • Earlier this month, the UGC shelved a move to allow foreign universities through the deemed university route, though the Commission came up with regulations allowing twinning programmes and joint degree programmes between the foreign and Indian institutions
    
    
• Hypersonic missile to be ready by 2017
  • India and Russia could be one of the first nations to test hypersonic missiles, which fly at five-seven times the speed of sound.
    
    
• Menon in Colombo with an unenviable task at hand
  • National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon arrived in colombo to discuss issues arising out of Sri Lanka’s reluctance to fulfil its promises, more than three years after the crushing defeat of the Tamil Tigers.
  • The Northern Province continues to be the only one without an elected council. The reason the government gave on Thursday was that demining was yet to be completed. Even without completing demining, the government did find it comfortable to hold the local body elections — which the Tamil National Alliance, the only credible representative of the people of the North, swept.
  • The most important issue that has affected India-Sri Lanka relations is the Indian vote for the United States-backed resolution in the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, asking Colombo, among other things, to implement the recommendations of a post-war commission that it had set up.
    
    
• INS vikramaditya undergoing sea trials
  • INS Vikramaditya, India’s second aircraft carrier, has set sail on comprehensive sea trials. The extensively modernised Soviet-era carrier Admiral Gorshkov is scheduled to be delivered to the Navy this year-end after much delay. It set off from the Sevmash shipyard in the northern port city of Severodvinsk on the White Sea.
  • The towering 45,300-tonne, 284 metre-long and 60 metre tall INS Vikramaditya had undergone pre-trial exercises last month. It is now fitted with modern communication systems, a protective coating, a telephone exchange, pumps, hygiene and galley equipment, lifts and many more facilities.

• CII – world bank tiger conservation platform announced
  • Tiger conservation efforts in India received an important shot in the arm this week after the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the World Bank to improve the dialogue on sustainable development and conservation between business, conservation stakeholders and decision-makers in policy.
  • The new initiative to promote tiger and biodiversity conservation is called the India Wildlife Business Council (IWBC). As an institutionalised platform for collaboration, its objective will be to reverse the massive dwindling of the tiger population owing to rapid industrialisation, habitat fragmentation, poaching and illegal trade.

• UCC, Anderson cleared of direct liability for Bhopal tragedy
  • A District Court judge in New York sided with Union Carbide Company (UCC) and its erstwhile CEO Warren Anderson in denying that they faced any direct liability towards the victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy.
  • In dismissing the case, Judge John Keenan argued that “there can be no individual liability for defendant Anderson,” because he did not personally approve the location of the Bhopal plant of Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL). Instead, the ruling hinted that it was the Government of Madhya Pradesh that was responsible for allotting the land for the plant.
  • In arguing this, the Court essentially voiced its support for the separation of corporate identity between the UCC and UCIL, in the process clearing the UCC of what is known as “Alter Ego liability” under local laws in the process

INTERNATIONAL

• European leaders meet to map growth
  • Economic growth was the mantra among European leaders as they began a crucial summit on Thursday, though expectations of a breakthrough on the explosive issue of pooling government debt appeared to have fallen by the wayside.
  • European Commissioner for Economic Affairs Olli Rehn said he expected leaders would agree on new growth measures, as well as on action to reduce borrowing rates for Spain and Italy, which are approaching unmanageable levels.
  • The leaders of Italy, France and Spain have been pressing Germany to agree to share debts before markets push the 17-nation eurozone closer to collapse. But Chancellor Angela Merkel isn’t budging. She has argued repeatedly that short-term solutions such as pooled debt or a more active European Central Bank are useless unless some form of central control is established over national budgets.

• Russia stops missile system to Syria
  • Russia has suspended its contract with Syria for the supply of deadly anti-aircraft missile systems
  • By refusing to supply Russia’s most potent air defence systems to Syria, the Kremlin demonstrated its restraint to the West, which has been accusing Moscow of indiscriminate arming of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad

• US supreme court hands Obama health care victory
  • The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday may have virtually handed President Barack Obama a second term in the White House after it upheld a core provision of his landmark healthcare reform policy. The individual mandate requires every American to purchase insurance or face a penalty.
  • In a legally dense 110-page ruling, the Court said the argument that the individual mandate should be upheld under the U.S. constitution’s commerce clause was not valid. However in a 5-4 split decision, the Justices argued the individual mandate could be allowed to stand as a tax.

• When a minute lasts 61 seconds
  • Horologists around the world on Saturday will carry out one of the weirdest operations of their profession: they will hold back time.
  • The last minute of June 30, 2012 is destined to be 61 seconds long, for timekeepers are to add a “leap second” to compensate for the wobbly movements of our world.
  • The ever-so-brief halting of the second hand will compensate for a creeping divergence from solar time, meaning the period required for Earth to complete a day. The planet takes just over 86,400 seconds for a 360-degree revolution. But it wobbles on its axis and is affected by the gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon and the ocean tides, all of which brake the rotation by a tiny sliver of a second.
  • As a result, Earth gets out of step with International Atomic Time (TAI), which uses the pulsation of atoms to measure time to an accuracy of several billionths of a second.
  • To avoid solar time and TAI moving too far apart, the widely used indicator of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is adjusted every so often to give us the odd 86,401-second day
  • The adjustments began in 1972. Before then, time was measured exclusively by the position of the Sun or stars in relation to Earth, expressed in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) or its successor UT1. This will be the 25th intervention to add a “leap second” to UTC
  • TAI is kept by several hundred atomic clocks around the world, measuring fluctuations in the atom of the chemical element caesium that allows them to divide a single second into 10 billion smaller bits. Every time the discrepancy between TAI and UT1 becomes too big, the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service jumps into action and announces a “leap second”. The extra second is added to UTC, also known as Zulu time, only ever at midnight, either on a December 31 or a June 30

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS AND COLUMNS

• Article on Improper dumping of wastes in Mining
• Madhav Gadgil on the report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel
• An interesting article on the US role in Bangladesh
• Editorial on ILO's new global standard on social security floor