Thursday, June 14, 2012

NATIONAL NEWS

• Dramatic twist in Presidential Race
  • Mamata Banerjee and Mulayam Singh Yadav, sent the Congress into a spin on Wednesday evening after they announced a list of three candidates for the Presidency that included the name of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh – the other two were the former President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and the former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee.
• Navy to deploy ships to Horn of Africa, Red Sea, Western Mediterranean
  • Even as four of its ships from the eastern fleet entered Shanghai on Wednesday on a four-day port visit to China, the Navy announced its pan-Indian Ocean Region (IOR) operations, demonstrating the reach of the country's maritime diplomacy;
  • According to official sources, INS Savitri is in Seychelles and plans to participate in the national day celebrations. Thereafter, it would be deployed for about two months to undertake surveillance of the Exclusive Economic Zones of Seychelles and Mauritius;
  • The Navy continues to maintain one Dornier aircraft in Seychelles to provide aerial surveillance for the EEZ and another Dornier has been deployed to meet Maldivian requirements of EEZ surveillance and anti-piracy patrol;
  • The Navy's support to Mauritius, Maldives and Seychelles is being provided in response to requests from their respective governments. In the Gulf of Aden, INS Tabar continues its deployment for convoy escort and anti-piracy patrol.
• Putting Sangeet Natak Akademi back on track is Leela Samson's mission
  • Leela Samson, noted Bharatanatyam exponent and chairperson of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, has taken it upon herself to “put the Akademi back on track” to pursue its originally stated mission of documenting and conserving art for posterity;
  • The objective of the institution, she maintains, should be to document art and archive it in the digital format; hold seminars and support art research; extend a helping hand to dying arts; and conduct educational programmes. Instead of being a post office for the government to dispense money, the Akademi should discuss national policies on art and counsel the Centre on streamlining, if not evolving, systems for the preservation of the country's rich cultural and artistic heritage;
  • At the request of the Centre, the Akademi played a stellar role to perk up the year-long celebration of Rabindranath Tagore in connection with the poet's 150th birth anniversary;
  • Earlier, it was called in to spice up the Commonwealth Games. “To sum it up, national priorities took over the Akademi's priorities,” she rues, adding that “this cannot be done at the cost of the regular functioning of the Akademi”;
  • The Akademi, she says, has academic research and conservation prime on its agenda and her motto as its head is to “clean up the house and set it in order” to provide scholars, artistes and institutions access to its historic archives;
  • Having been a repository of art, the Akademi, like the All India Radio, boasts an enviable archive featuring rare and distinguished records of performances and lecture-demonstrations by stalwarts. “Despite this, if it can't come out with great recordings and books, who else can? Why can't we reproduce them and disseminate them to those who matter. If Mallika Sarabhai wants to see a rare recording of her mother Mrinalini Sarabhai's performance, [currently] she can't access it.
• Demanding exclusion of legal education from the Higher Education and Research Bill, 2011, the Bar Council of India has warned that lawyers across the country would abstain from work on July 11 and 12 as they want legal education to continue to be controlled under the Advocates Act, 1961
• The Himachal Pradesh police have arrested eight Taiwanese nationals from a fortified residence-cum-monastery from Chauntra, Mandi district on charges of overstaying and also recovered INR 30 lakh along with other currencies as well as SIM cards from them

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

• Food and Agriculture Organisation: Food outlook good
  • The U.N.'s food agency said on Wednesday this year's forecasts for global food production were positive overall but warned that some areas would likely to struggle due to armed conflict and displacement;
  • The Food and Agriculture Organisation's report forecasts “a record increase of 3.2 per cent in world cereal production in 2012, mainly on the strength of a bumper maize crop in the United States”. “Wheat and coarse grains prices eased in May, mostly during the second half, driven by good supply prospects,” said the FAO;
  • Despite the positive trend, “several regions of the world are expected to struggle with the consequences of poor rainfall, severe weather, armed conflict and displacement,” the Rome-based agency said. Countries in the Sahel continue to face serious challenges to food security due to locally high food prices and civil strife, it said, adding that Syria and Yemen are also experiencing increasing difficulties. “The situation in Yemen and Syria reminds us of the clear link between food security and peace. Internal conflict is causing food insecurity. But it works the other way around as well.”
• Iran has commenced work on designing a nuclear submarine engine by pooling in elements of domestically developed technologies and using them for wider applications
• Israel's state watchdog criticised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday over his handling of a 2010 raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla that left nine Turks dead and ties with Ankara in shreds

EMINENT PERSONS IN THE NEWS

• Mehdi Hassan, the Ghazal King, passes away
  • Mehdi Hassan, 84, died in a Karachi hospital on Wednesday after a prolonged illness, will be remembered for bringing Indians and Pakistanis together in a shared passion for his songs of unrequited love;
  • Known as the Ghazal King, Mehdi Hassan was a Pakistani. But to say he belonged only to Pakistan is like saying the legend of Heer Ranjha is Pakistani. The roots of Mehdi Hasan's music, which inspired generations of ghazal singers in India, lay in the ancient tradition of dhrupad. A representative of the 16th generation of the Kalavant clan, Mehdi Hassan went from dhrupad, through thumri to ghazal and popular film music, retaining the purity of the medium until the end. Hindustani classical music pre-dates the Partition of India; it stems from the soul of the subcontinent and it is to this shared past that he belonged;
  • His own family roots were in Rajasthan. He may have made his home in Pakistan but Rajasthan stayed with him. It was like love across the salt desert. And he made no secret of it. His concerts almost always featured Kesariya Balam, the timeless Rajasthani ode to the vastness of the desert. And his voice, especially in his classic Ranjish hee sahee conveyed the loneliness of a companion left behind in the desert;
  • He sought that lost companionship whenever he visited India. He was a good friend of legendary classical vocalist Pandit Mani Prasad, whose disciple Jitender Singh Jamwal told The Hindu that the two always conversed in Rajasthani;
  • When Atal Behari Vajpayee was the prime Minister, he tried to facilitate Hassan's home coming to Luna in Rajasthan where he was born. But even back then, he was too ill to travel and the plan had to be given up. Just a little before he passed away, the Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Ashok Gehlot, offered to bear the medical expenses of the star;
  • His music retained an Indianness throughout. Contrary to the Islamic injunction against prostration, Mehdi Hassan often gave blessings to upcoming singers who sought them by touching his feet. He was steeped in the traditions of his music gharana. That tradition was paramount for him, not any religious dictate;
  • Mehdi Hassan performed throughout the world, especially in India and Pakistan. He cut down on his performances since 1980s due to his health problem. The last song he recorded with any Indian artist was for Sarhadein with Lata Mangeshkar, who he always wanted to sing with. That was the only song he recorded with her. It is famed that she called him the 'Voice of God';
  • Read more about Mehdi Hassan in this article.
• Dr.Hillel, Israeli micro-irrigation innovator wins World Food Prize
  • While leading nations of the world are engaged in conflicts over the entire range of physical resources, from rare earth minerals to oil, this week the U.S. recognised the importance of a resource that matters much more to the vast numbers of the poor the world over — water;
  • It was recognition of the importance of efficient water use in agricultural practices that undergirded the announcement of this year's winner of World Food Prize (WFP), Israeli scientist Daniel Hillel;
  • Dr. Hillel was given the prestigious award, established in 1987 by Nobel Peace Prize winner and Green Revolution champion Norman Borlaug, for pioneering a “radically innovative way of bringing water to crops in arid and dry-land regions”;
  • Dr. Hillel's path-breaking work, which could well be of high relevance to agriculture-dominated economies such as India, comprises a method known as micro-irrigation, which is said to maximise efficient water usage in agriculture;
  • It does so via the application of water in small but continuous amounts directly to plant roots, dramatically cutting the amount of water needed to nourish crops, maintaining their consistent health and resulting in higher yields to feed more people, the WFP Foundation said;
  • This reflects a major shift from prevailing methods in many developing countries, where farmers typically apply large amounts of water in brief periodic episodes of flooding to saturate their fields, followed by longer periods of drying out the soil.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS & COLUMNS

• Read this article which criticises the ICANN for certain practices after opening up the recent top-level domains
• Read this editorial on the communal problems in Myanmar
• Read this editorial on the protection for the Roma minority community in the EU region

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

• Diesel fumes cause cancer: WHO
  • Diesel exhaust causes cancer, the World Health Organization's cancer agency declared June 12, a ruling it said could make exhaust as important a public health threat as second-hand smoke. The new classification followed a weeklong discussion in Lyon, France, by an expert panel organized by the International Agency for Research on Cancer;
  • The panel's decision stands as the ruling for the IARC, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization. The last time the agency considered the status of diesel exhaust was in 1989, when it was labeled a “probable” carcinogen. Reclassifying diesel exhaust as carcinogenic puts it into the same category as other known hazards such as asbestos, alcohol and ultraviolet radiation.
• If you have time, then read this article on powdery mildew disease which impacts sunflower