Saturday, 2nd June 2012

HEADLINES

• Ranvir Sena chief Bhrameshwar Singh shot dead. Violence in Bhojpur
• CBI judge who gave bail to Reddy suspended

NATIONAL NEWS

• Centre unveils steps to resolve AI crisis
  • Facing criticism for failing to resolve the crisis in Air India, the Centre has announced measures, including parity in the pay of the Air India and erstwhile Indian Airlines employees, uniform working hours and scrapping of the productivity-linked incentive.
    
    
• Indian scientist in team that sequenced the tomato genome
  • A group of 300 scientists from across the world, including India, have sequenced the genome of tomato.
  • The achievement is expected to lower the costs and speed up efforts to improve tomato production, making it better equipped to combat pests and pathogens, and to tolerate droughts.
  • The research would help scientists decipher the relationship between the tomato genes and traits, and broaden their understanding of genetic and environmental factors that interact to determine a crop's health and viability.
    
    
• Consider ecology expert panel's report on western ghats says IUCN
  • The Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel's (WGEEP) report had a bearing on the World Heritage Committee's decision on heritage status for the Western Ghats, though the government is yet to accept the findings.
  • The Committee recently deferred the decision following a report of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). India has been asked to consider the WGEEP recommendations “on land use and controls on development” in the region
  • The “IUCN believes it is appropriate to consider the findings of the WGEEP report, noting it was specifically commissioned by the government of India and tasked with comprehensive data compilation and identifying ecologically sensitive areas through GIS and an extensive consultation processes
    
    
• US unleashed stuxnet worm on Iran : leak
  • Exposing a dark underbelly of the U.S.' two-track strategy to contain Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions, a major leak to media outlets here revealed that President Barack Obama had, in parallel, authorised waves of crippling cyber-attacks aimed at destabilising the operation of Iran's key nuclear centrifuges.
  • The cyber-attacks authorised by Mr. Obama since his early days in office and codenamed “Olympic Games,” suffered their biggest exposure when Stuxnet became public in mid-2010 after a programming error resulted in it escaping Iranian systems and spreading around the world on Internet.
  • Only last week it was disclosed that Iranian computer systems had also been felled by a new super-virus named Flame, reportedly 20 to 40 times larger than Stuxnet.
  • While Stuxnet was designed for outright sabotage, Flame is described as an espionage virus, possibly intended to give its creators a detailed blueprint of Natanz's industrial computer control designs. Similar to its drone programme, the U.S. has never admitted using cyber weapons against other nations, although it is said to have recently acknowledged developing them.
    
    
• India to discuss Dhaka equity in Tipaimukh project
  • The Prime Minister's Office (PMO), backed by the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), has overruled the demurring among other Central Ministries over giving Bangladesh a stake in the mega Tipaimukh multipurpose hydel project in Manipur.
  • The project had given rise to misgivings in Bangladesh, which fears greater exposure to floods during monsoons and low flows during the lean season
  • Bangladesh has been flagging its interest in nine hydel projects under construction or being planned in the north-east and Sikkim. Besides Tipaimukh and Teesta III and IV, these include another mega project, Subansiri, and a host of under-100-mw projects.
  • India and Bangladesh have recently made progress in cooperation in the power sector. The two sides have agreed on a road map for supplying 500 mw of power to Bangladesh. A joint venture will set up a 1,320-mw coal-fired plant near the Sundarbans. An agreement on Tipaimukh would lend another dimension to cooperation in the power sector.
    
    
• Zinc supplements can reduce infant deaths
  • Giving zinc as a supplement along with antibiotics can significantly reduce mortality by lowering treatment failure in children suffering from serious infections such as pneumonia and meningitis, according to a study.
  • Worldwide, bacterial and other infections account for nearly two-thirds of deaths in children under five, with around two-fifths of the deaths occurring within the first month of life. In India, of the one million neonatal deaths that occur every year, more than a quarter are attributed to these infections.

• Centre pushes for 157 power projects in North-east
  • Even as anti-mega dam groups and organisations in Assam have intensified their agitation, demanding a halt to the ongoing 2,000-MW Lower Subonsiri hydroelectric project of NHPC Limited at Gerukamukh on the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border, the Union government is pushing for 157 hydro power schemes with an installed capacity of 57,672 MW in the North-East, including Sikkim, for meeting the shortfall in the country's power generation.
  • Of these, 114 schemes, with an aggregate installed capacity of 35,257.5 MW, have been allotted to the private sector.
  • The Centre has identified the ecologically fragile Arunachal Pradesh as the powerhouse of the country Of the 133 projects already allotted to the State, 125, with an installed capacity of 32,883.40 MW, have been given to private developers. The central public sector undertakings have got eight projects (8,735 MW).

• India joins 41 nations in condemning syrian killings
  • India joined 41 other countries at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva to vote for a resolution “strongly condemning'' the recent El-Houleh incident, which resulted in the death of over a hundred civilians including women and children.

INTERNATIONAL

• Google fires salvo in fight with China
  • Google has fired a new salvo in a censorship battle with Beijing by adding a feature that warns users in China who enter search keywords that might produce blocked results and suggests they try other terms.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS AND COLUMNS

• Editorial on the faltering growth
• Editorial on the newly developing middle class in J&K