Monday, June 4, 2012

HEADLINES

• Sudharshan Patnaik wins the Copenhagen sand art competition 2012
• Assam creates a new Limca record for Guitar ensemble in which 5406 guitarists paid tribute to the legendary Bhupen Hazarika

NATIONAL NEWS

• Saw fish struggles to stay afloat
  • Conservationists are working out strategies to protect them, as there has been a 90 per cent fall in their population. The sighting of the species has also become uncommon in Indian waters, where it was once in good numbers.
  • Society for Marine Research and Conservation — is reaching out to fishermen, vendors and agents and students, highlighting need to conserve the species
  • All the seven varieties of sawfish, including four from India, have been listed as critically endangered on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). They are also considered the most threatened marine fish.
  • In India, the sawfish has been brought under Schedule 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act.
    
    
• In a victory for India and China, WHO evolves mechanism to define counterfeit drugs
  • The World Health Organisation (WHO) has put in place a mechanism to define counterfeit medical products.
  • The set of definitions of sub-standard, spurious, falsely labelled, falsified and counterfeit products will be globally accepted and help to bring about uniformity in identifying such drugs, without interrupting worldwide supplies.
  • The meeting also limited the WHO's role to public health issues, taking it off Intellectual Property Rights matters in the context of defining counterfeit drugs.
  • At present, there is no uniformity on what constitutes a sub-standard, spurious, falsely labelled, falsified and counterfeit drug. Every country has its own quality standards, which differ vastly from the developed and developing countries.
  • This particular aspect of the WHO's program is directly under the control of pharmaceutical multinational companies (MNC) and the developed countries, and they use this program to pursue Intellectual Property Rights enforcement standards, instead of addressing issues relevant to tackling the circulation of medicines with compromised quality such as high prices,
  • The setting up of this mechanism was also important from the public health perspective, the sources said, as it took the WHO away from issues revolving round the trade and intellectual property considerations of medical products that hampered the supply of generic medicines to poor countries from India and China, which turned out a bulk of the world's generic medicines being used by millions of people.
  • According to the resolution adopted at the World Health Assembly, the mechanism will identify major needs and challenges; make policy recommendations; and develop tools for prevention, detection and control of sub-standard, spurious, falsely labelled, falsified and counterfeit drugs.
    
    
• Ramlila incident assault of basic democratic values : Supreme court
  • The action of the Delhi Police in evicting yoga guru Baba Ramdev and his followers on the night of June 4/5, 2011 — they were sleeping at the Ramlila ground — demonstrated the might of the State and was an assault on the very basic democratic values enshrined in our Constitution, the Supreme Court held.
  • The Bench, however, blamed Baba Ramdev for contributory negligence stating that he did not advise his followers to leave the Ramlila grounds once the order granting permission was withdrawn.
    
    
• On an urgent note India begins work on 26 major roads along the Chinese border
  • The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has sanctioned Rs.1,934 crore for strategic road projects, totalling 804 km, for operational use by the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) that guards the 3,488 km India-China border from the Karakoram Pass in Ladakh to Jachep La in Arunachal Pradesh.
  • After facing resistance from the Ministry of Environment and Forests as these roads pass through ecologically sensitive areas, the MHA has succeeded in getting clearances for the 26 projects in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.
  • In only one case — Chitkul-Dumpti road in Himachal Pradesh — forest clearance is awaited, though the Supreme Court had given the green signal for the road.
  • Significantly, the Centre has prepared a two-phase plan to construct border roads, mainly focusing on the India-Pakistan and India-China borders, to facilitate faster movement of troops and equipment.

INTERNATIONAL

• A Niche online network for researchers
  • Knimbus, a New Delhi-headquartered start-up, targets one such critical niche users — researchers worldwide — and seeks to provide them with a platform to access cutting-edge journals and network with people from their fields of study.
  • Knimbus hopes to become a mix of Google and LinkedIn for researchers online; a place to find relevant information and link with relevant people. The articles listed under the Knimbus search engine include both paid-for content from leading STM publishers as well as content from open source communities like the Open Science Project that is publishing free content.

• Super thin PCs, personal clouds at the Taipei show
  • Super-thin portable PCs, a new Windows version for mobile devices and customisable Internet clouds will lead a major computer show in Taiwan Computex Taipei 2012

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS AND COLUMNS

• An important article on the interlocutors report of reconciliation in J&K
• Editorial on the copyright laws