Friday, June 1st, 2012

HEADLINES

• Mixed response for Bharath bandh
• Union cabinet approves New national telecom policy

NATIONAL NEWS

• New telecom policy seeks to abolish roaming charges
  • The Union Cabinet approved the National Telecom Policy (NTP) 2012.
  • With the new policy in place, consumers who use national roaming can now expect to pay local call charges though it is unclear when ‘free roaming' will be initiated
  • The policy also allows national number portability, but again, with no visible timelines
  • Other forward-looking propositions like resale of services could become critical in the backdrop of the Supreme Court's cancellation of 122 licences, which will cease to exist as of August 1, 2012.
  • Additionally, it mentions cloud computing, next generation networks, IPV6 and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) as thrust areas.
  • The NTP 2012 expects to take India's presently 39% rural teledensity to 70% in the next 5 years with the target that every single Indian will have a phone by 2020
  • The policy also gets a formal approval on the new unified licensing regime which allows companies to provide ISP, fixed line, international long distance, national long distance, and a few other services through a single licence, whose cost has been proposed by the DoT at Rs. 10 crore.
    
    
• Foreign universities bill; Government trying backdoor entry
  • The Ministry has asked the University Grants Commission (UGC) to identify possibilities within the existing laws of regulating and allowing the foreign educational institutions into India.
  • The two possible ways of going about it are allowing these institutions to enter as ‘deemed universities' under Section 3 of the University Grants Commission Act, 1956, or as private universities under the State laws.
  • At the same time, the UGC is also drafting regulations on twinning programmes and joint degree programmes between the foreign and Indian educational institutions.
  • As per a study conducted by the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), 631 foreign education providers were operating in the country in 2010. Of these, 440 were functioning from their home campuses, 5 opened their own campus in India, 60 had programmatic collaboration with local institutions, 49 were operating under twinning arrangements and 77 had arrangements other than twinning or programmatic collaboration.
    
    
• President commutes death sentence
  • The death sentence of four prisoners, including a man convicted of rape and murder of a five-year-old girl, has been commuted to life imprisonment by the President
  • Three mercy petitions by four condemned prisoners — Om Prakash of Uttarakhand, Satish, Karan Singh and Kunwar Bahadur Singh of Uttar Pradesh — were considered under Article 72 of the Constitution and their death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment
    
    
• Kudankulam trial run to begin from June 10
  • The much-awaited power generation from the Rs.14,000-crore Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant is likely to begin in June. The trial run of the first unit (1,000 MW), after loading the reactor with fuel (enriched uranium), will begin on June 10.
  • The trial run would go on for 15 days, and in stages, the reactor would reach criticality.
    
    
• India – Pakistan plan homes for prisoners
  • India and Pakistan are planning to set up homes for prisoners on either side of the international borders to house those who have completed their jail term but were yet to be repatriated. They will be run by non-governmental organisations.
  • The two sides also reached an agreement on the release of fishermen who have completed their sentences, along with their boats, while an agreement has also been reached on transfer of prisoners.
  • In some cases Pakistan refused to accept them as their citizens despite being provided all documentary evidences, while in some cases these people did not want to go back. “There are over 30 Pakistani prisoners who are still in India despite completing their sentences

• Central experts team to visit Sriviliputtur sanctuary
  • A team of experts from the Central empowered committee, led by its chairman P.V. Jayakrishnan, will visit the Grizzled Giant Squirrel sanctuary at Srivilliputtur.
  • The team is visiting the area to assess the laying of a road between Kizhavankoil in Watrap Range in the sanctuary and Kodikkulam Kudisai in Theni forest division, which has been cleared by the State Wildlife Board.

• Innovation zone at start up village
  • Startup Village, said to be the first telecom incubator in the country, has tied up with Research in Motion (RIM), manufacturers of Blackberry.
  • RIM has set up an ‘innovation zone' called Rubus Labs, at the Kinfra Hi-tech park, Kalamasserry, near here, to showcase telecom innovations, with a view to motivating technology entrepreneurs.
  • Rubus Labs will conduct sessions and camps for students and entrepreneurs. Training programmes will be organised at more than 100 engineering colleges in the State under the BlackBerry BASE (BlackBerry Apps by Student Entrepreneurs) scheme.

• Ulloor awards announced
  • Poet K.G. Sankara Pillai and former bureaucrat R. Ramachandran Nair have been selected for Ulloor Awards 2011
  • Mr. Pillai has won the award for the best collection of poems for his work titled ‘KGS Kavithakal' and Mr. Nair the award for the best research study for his introduction to Ulloor S. Parameswara Iyer's collected works
    
    
• India – Iran talks to bypass western sanctions
  • India and Iran plan to hold intensive discussions on bypassing Western sanctions on Tehran's oil trade
  • The two sides are also likely to touch on joint efforts to combat piracy off the Gulf of Aden which has impacted their merchant shipping operations.
  • Mr. Mukherjee had helped smoothen the path for trade between the two countries by declaring himself to be in favour of granting tax exemptions on rupee payments made to Iranian oil companies.
  • This interaction as well as the one over lunch with Mr. Krishna would help in the deliberations of an Indian banking delegation which will visit Tehran in the third week of June to work out the modalities of paying for about half of Iranian oil in rupees and then Tehran using this amount to buy Indian goods.
  • Their experience will be useful for BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) which have resolved to move over to trade in local currency with each other from next year.
    
    
• Notorious poacher Sansar Chand gets bail
  • Notorious poacher and wildlife smuggler Sansar Chand, often termed as “the Veerapan of North India”, was on Thursday granted bail by a Delhi court in a 2005 case involving violation of the Wildlife Act.

INTERNATIONAL

• Tuition fee protests rock quebec
  • Student representatives and Quebec government officials emerged from a third day of talks aimed at ending weeks of protests over tuition hikes without an agreement after a laborious session aimed at ending weeks of protests.
  • Students have called for a tuition freeze, but the government has ruled that out as a possibility. Students also object to an emergency law put in place to limit protests.
  • The French-speaking province's average undergraduate tuition — $2,519 a year — is the lowest in Canada, and the proposed hike — $254 per year over seven years — is tiny by U.S. standards

• Efforts to stem Somalia's descent in to Chaos
  • Somalia needs a global reconstruction effort to back up ongoing stabilisation efforts and stop the Horn of Africa's 20-year descent into chaos
  • Representatives from 54 countries gathered in Istanbul to find a path towards a better future for the country for which the term “failed state” was coined two decades ago.
  • The two-day conference — which follows a London meeting in February — kicked off with discussions among senior officials, experts and businessmen on four key issues: water, energy, roads and sustainability.
  • The Istanbul meeting comes as government troops backed by the AU force and anti-Islamist militia attempt to wrest control of Somalia back from the al-Shabab, an insurgent group that has declared its allegiance to al-Qaeda.

• Dragon leaves space station for journey home
  • The privately funded SpaceX Dragon capsule left the International Space Station on Thursday and aimed for a Pacific splashdown to end its historic flight
  • Astronauts set the world's first commercial supply ship loose after a five-day visit, releasing the vessel with the space station's robot arm. The Dragon slowly backed away from the 400-km-high outpost, on track for a midday return to Earth
  • The U.S. space agency, NASA, has turned to American private business to take over cargo runs and, eventually, astronaut ferry flights after its space shuttles were retired last year. Several companies are in the running for the human missions, with SpaceX in the lead
  • SpaceX became the first private company to send a cargo ship to the International Space Station. And Thursday, it was on the verge of becoming the only supplier to return major items.
  • The unmanned Dragon capsule is returning more than half a tonne of old space station equipment and some science samples. Because it is a test flight, NASA did not want to load it with anything valuable.
  • The capsule was set to parachute down in the style of NASA's old Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft. A Dragon has returned from orbit once before, on a solo mission in December 2010.

• Cracks in Mali pact
  • Negotiations between two rebel groups in Mali's north, who signed an initial agreement to merge and create a new Islamic state, have run into problems over the imposition of Shariah law and the influence of an al-Qaeda-linked group
  • The National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad, a separatist group fighting for independence, and Ansar Dine, which wants to impose an extreme form of Islam, took over the northern half of Mali in late March when a coup in the distant capital, Bamako, caused disorder in the country.
  • The two groups had often fought together against the government before March, but there has been rivalry since they gained control of major towns. Fighters have occupied different parts of each city and compete for whose flag should fly over key buildings

• Internet cannot be under UN, says US
  • US officials, lawmakers and technology leaders offered a resounding “no” to proposals to bring the Internet under United Nations' control and said they would lead efforts to stop the move.
  • Intergovernmental controls over the Internet would lead to “very bad outcomes”. “It inevitably would diminish the dynamism of the Internet.
  • Some nations, including Russia and China, say the Internet is still controlled by the United States and that a U.N. effort would give a greater voice to the developing world. But many in the U.S. fear a U.N.-governed Internet would give authoritarian nations the power to throttle free speech, and allow others to impose tariff or other restrictions.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS AND COLUMNS

• If you have time read this article on Shakeel Afridi, A Pakistani Doctor who was arrested for colluding with the CIA to track down the Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden
• A nice article on Evidence based medicine movement
• A nice article on the mobile phone technology and its reach
• Editorial on India – Burma relations

ECONOMICS

• India, Bahrain sign pact to boost ties
  • India and Bahrain, on Thursday, announced the signing of a Tax Information Exchange Agreement to promote economic cooperation and joint investment between the two countries aimed at boosting bilateral trade that stands at $1.7 billion.
  • In addition to the Tax Information Exchange Agreement, a number of commercial and economic cooperation agreements were signed, including a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to promote mutually advantageous commercial and industrial interests.
  • The formation of the India-Bahrain Business Council, with the objective of developing economic, trade and technical relations between India and Bahrain, was also announced.
  • An MoU between Bahrain and India to undertake a sustained effort to boost joint ventures and initiatives in ICT, including measures on e-commerce, e-government and information security was also signed.