Monday, 18th June, 2012

HEADLINES

• Divided NDA forced to defer decision on contest
• Monsoon making rapid progress

NATIONAL NEWS

• India's first river-lake link project launched in Bundelkhand
  • The Madhya Pradesh government claims to have launched the country's first ever river-lake linking project in the water-scarce Bundelkhand region.
  • The Harpura irrigation and river-lake link project, launched in the Tikamgarh district, will be implemented under the Centre's Rs.7266 crore Bundelkhand package. It will link the perennial Jamni river to the nearby lakes and water bodies built during the Chandel era. Under the project, an additional 1,980 hectares of land are expected to come under irrigation.
  • Incidentally, the country's first ever river linking project — the Ken-Betwa river link — was expected to be launched in the Bundelkhand region. However, it was shelved last year after the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests refused environmental clearance, citing the probable submergence of major portions of the Panna Tiger Reserve.
    
    
• Taliban praises India for resisting US pressure on Afganistan
  • The Afghan Taliban has praised India as a “significant country” in the region. It said New Delhi has done well to resist the U.S. calls for greater military involvement in Afghanistan.
  • The Taliban said Mr. Panetta, in his recent visit to India, encouraged New Delhi to take a more active role in Afghanistan as most foreign combat troops leave the country in 2014 but failed to “gain any success or progress in his efforts.”
  • The Taliban linked militant groups, especially the dreaded Haqqani Network, have been repeatedly attacking Indian interests. In one such attack, 58 people were killed and 141 wounded when the Indian Embassy in Kabul was bombed in 2008.
  • In the statement, the Taliban said it wanted to have cordial relations with India on the basis of sovereignty, equality, mutual respect and non-interference in each other's internal affairs.
  • India is one of the biggest donors to Afghanistan, spending about $2 billion on civilian projects ranging from the construction of highways to the building of Afghan parliament.
  • Though India extends assistance to Afghanistan in civilian areas, it has avoided involvement in bolstering Afghan security, except for running training programmes for small groups of Afghan army officers in India.
    
    
• Endosulfan detoxification begins
  • Authorities started the process of detoxifying endosulfan stocked in three warehouses of the Plantation Corporation of Kerala.
  • Operation Blossom Spring was first taken up at the warehouse at Periye, transferring 914.55 litres of the pesticide in six corroded barrels to high-density polyethylene barrels.
  • A team of personnel from Hindustan Insecticide Ltd.and the Kerala State Pollution Control Board and medical experts did the highly delicate transfer.
  • The two-phase process of detoxification is expected to allay the fear of the people that the remaining stock of the pesticide, blamed for deaths and debilitating diseases in villages where the corporation used to aerially spray it on cashew estates, will cause more health and environmental hazards.
  • The corporation had carried out the aerial spraying twice a year from 1978 to 2001 on its cashew estates in 11 panchayat limits. A court in Kanhangad banned it followed by the Kerala High Court in 2003. The unutilised stock of around 1,600 litres has been kept in the three warehouses. The prolonged storage began to corrode the barrels, causing fear.
    
    
• Mausoleum in memory of Mehdi Hassan
  • In memory of Ghazal maestro Mehdi Hassan who passed away this week, a 2,000-square yard mausoleum is being constructed in north of Karachi.

INTERNATIONAL

• Taliban links vaccination to drone strikes
  • The Taliban in North Waziristan has declared a ban on the polio vaccination programme in the tribal agency as long as drone attacks continue in the region
  • After consultation with the Taliban Shura, servant of Mujahideen in North Waziristan Agency Hafiz Gul Bahadur has decided that there will be a ban on polio campaign as long as drone strikes are not stopped.” The statement also argued the polio campaign was just a front for the U.S. to spy inside Pakistan and made a reference to Shakeel Afridi, the doctor who helped the CIA confirm the presence of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad by getting his family's DNA samples through a health programme.
  • The boycott would deprive over a lakh children of the vaccination. Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria are the last three countries struggling to eradicate polio. Earlier, terrorists in Swat had banned the vaccine on the premise that it was a Western ploy to sterilise Muslims.

• Iran, world powers set for showdown in Moscow
  • World powers resume crisis talks with Iran amid hope that a crippling oil embargo and pressure from host Russia will finally force the Islamic Republic to scale back its nuclear drive.
  • Host Russia, however, is keen to flex its diplomatic muscle and make Iran an example of how Moscow's influence over Soviet-era partners could be used to avoid foreign military intervention in the 16-month crisis in Syria.
  • Failure in Moscow could leave the process in tatters and raise the threat of air raids from arch-foe Israel — a fateful scenario in which a broader conflict would lead to a spike in oil prices that could tip over the world's teetering economy.
  • But a July 1 deadline for a full EU oil embargo and the June 28 rollout of tough U.S. sanctions against a host of Iranian oil clients is providing added pressure for Tehran to bargain more seriously.
    
    
• Apple's first byte
  • A rare surviving first model of the Apple computer — a stripped down, clunky device that bears no resemblance to today’s sleek gadgets — sold for $374,000 at an auction in New York.
  • The Apple I computer was created by Apple co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs and sold in 1976 at the birth of Jobs’s career as the world’s computer design guru.

• A message of gloom in Rio
  • U.S. President Barack Obama heads a list of high profile absentees for the Rio sustainable development summit this week where U.N. leaders say some tough decisions will have to be taken for the future of the planet
  • Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and China's President Hu Jintao will also go to the Group of 20 rich nations' summit in Mexico but then head straight home before the Rio de Janeiro event starts.
  • The U.S. presidential election, the debt crisis across Europe and China's looming leadership transition have all weighed heavily on acceptances to the Rio summit that will seek to set some ground rules for global growth that helps the poor and does not wreck the environment.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS AND COLUMNS

• Article on Rio+20
• Article on desertification
• Editorial on the recent draft law on the rights of persons with disabilities
• A must read article on what PYI are doing to liberate the dalits