Thursday, June 7, 2012

NATIONAL NEWS

• Reform Champion Chief Election Commissioner retiring, but paid news law still elusive
  • The Election Commission, headed by CEC S.Y. Quraishi, is unhappy the government has not considered the changes it has been pushing for long, including declaring “paid news” a poll offence. Quraishi, known for his voter-friendly reforms, is demitting office on June 10;
  • On February 3, 2011, the EC suggested that publication and abetment of “paid news” for furthering the election prospects of any candidate or prejudicially affecting the chances of other contestants be made an offence under the Representation of the People Act, 1951, entailing imprisonment up to 2 years. Howvever, the Govt has not moved on this proposal.
• Single authority oversight for intelligence agencies favoured
  • The Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), in its report on reforms in the intelligence setup, has recommended bringing all agencies under Parliamentary scrutiny, while suggesting that a single authority be put in charge of all agencies, civil and military;
  • In its report — A Case for Intelligence Reforms in India — the IDSA, an autonomous body funded by the Ministry of Defence, has advocated providing these agencies a legal framework for their existence and functioning. The report suggests a single authority for supervisory control. He could be the National Security Adviser in a modified role, Director of National Intelligence, or even a Minister for National Intelligence, answerable to Parliament, it adds. The IDSA has proposed several reforms for the working of all intelligence agencies.
• Court issues notice to Central Govt and social networking sites
  • The Delhi High Court on Wednesday issued notice to the Union Government and social networking sites Facebook India and Google India on a petition by the former Bharatiya Janata Party ideologue, K.N. Govindacharya, which accused the two sites of not verifying details of its subscribers, using the users' data for commercial purposes and evading taxes on their operations in India, and the government of not taking any action against them;
  • The petitioner submitted that of the 9 million users of Facebook, 5 million are Indians. The social networking site was transferring their data to the U.S. for commercial use without paying any taxes to the Indian government on their operations here as per the Double Tax Avoidance Agreement.
• States to get incentives for water sector reforms
  • In a bid to push water sector reforms, the Centre has decided to incentivise States that fast-track water sector reforms with liberalised funding criteria. The plan is to “grade” States as per the reforms process adopted by them. States that speed up reforms will get increased financial assistance from the Centre for water projects;
  • Water reforms calls for better management, utilisation and regulation of water majorly through mapping of ground water aquifers as a “common pool resource,” which may lead to regulation of groundwater use—a touchy subject with several States.
• Disability Affairs Department created
  • The government has created a separate department of “Disability Affairs,” which was earlier part of the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, to cater for the needs of an estimated 2.1-crore-strong disabled population;
  • With the new department in place, it will be easier to coordinate with various stakeholders, NGOs, the State governments, related Central ministries and international organisations like the United Nations, says a Ministry release;
  • The department will have a separate budget that would help in strengthening the existing schemes and formulating new ones, and also for technological innovations.
• Economy set for high growth trajectory
  • Jolted into action following the country's GDP growth plunging to a nine-year low of 5.3 per cent during the fourth quarter of 2011-12, the government on Wednesday decided to set in motion a host of measures to kick-start key infrastructure development projects and thereby provide a catalyst to revert the economy to a higher growth trajectory;
  • At a meeting held by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to finalise the infrastructure sector targets for the current fiscal, investment allocations were sought to be almost doubled for a number of key segments such as ports and shipping, roads, airports, and railways. The quantum jump in investment targets in these sectors, with the aid of private sector participation, is expected to provide a massive boost to manufacturing activity in allied sectors in a scenario when the economy is faced with turbulent times.
• ITBP climbers ski down Everest on the Chinese side
  • Climbers from the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) have made history by skiing down from the world's highest summit — Mount Everest — from the Chinese side, the maiden Indian squad to achieve the feat.
• Today is International Level Crossing Awareness day

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

• Syria allows relief to enter hotbeds
  • Syria has allowed international relief agencies to deliver badly needed aid to around a million people in four major cities, embroiled in the uprising against regime of President Bashar Al Assad, which has come under sharper focus after the brutal killings of scores last month in the Houla area.
• Solar-powered plane makes history
  • Swiss adventurer Bertrand Piccard has flown his way into the record books again after completing the world's first intercontinental flight in a giant solar-powered plane. Piccard, a 54-year-old balloonist, landed in the Moroccan capital Rabat under a full moon late Tuesday after completing the 19-hour voyage from Madrid on his experimental carbon-fibre aircraft;
  • Mr. Piccard made the first non-stop around-the-world balloon flight 13 years ago. The Solar Impulse is an aircraft as big as an Airbus A340 but as light as an average family car. “Simply the flight over the Gibraltar Strait was a magical moment and represents one of the highlights of my carrier as an aeronaut,” said Mr. Piccard;
  • To qualify as an intercontinental flight, Mr. Piccard had only to cross the Strait of Gibraltar — 14 km at its narrowest point — from Europe to Africa. “Solar Impulse has demonstrated that a solar-powered airplane can fly day and night using no fuel. The next challenge is to fly around the world,” the organisers said.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS & COLUMNS

• Read this article on India-China relations
• Read this editorial on recent supplements to the Foreign Trade Policy 2009-14 by the Commerce Ministry

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

• Visual treat as Venus makes a mark on the Sun
  • The rare and much-awaited transit of Venus unfolded in the morning sky all across the country on Wednesday, enthralling astro enthusiasts in the once-in-a-lifetime event that will not be seen for another 105 years. The celestial spectacle — Venus passing between the Sun and the Earth —offered a visual treat to many skygazers. Scientists and amateur astronomers alike peered up to the skies to watch a dark black spot slide across the fiery face of the Sun.
• Internet a trillion times roomier now
  • The world may be a finite place but its growing population will never run out of internet addresses. On the occasion of World IPv6 Day on Wednesday, an initiative of the non-profit Internet Society, trillions of new free addresses on the internet have been released to accommodate the growing numbers of websites on the World Wide Web. The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) was responsible for administering the release;
  • The addresses follow the new IPv6 protocol, successor to the IPv4 protocol whose deployment saw a dramatic boom starting in the late 1980s with the growth of the internet and was left almost exhausted by April 2011;
  • Although the IPv6 requires upgraded infrastructure to operate, its introduction does not mean IPv4 will be phased out. In fact, the infrastructure corresponding to IPv4 is expected to be in use for at least the next two years even as IPv6 is eased in. However, IPv4 will eventually be rendered obsolete;
  • The principal difference between the two protocols is the way they define the addresses between different devices logged in to the World Wide Web. The internet works by transporting packets of data from one host to the other using routers that identify each host by its address. The definition of this address is regulated by a standard protocol;
  • The number of addresses defined by the IPv4 protocol stopped at a little under 4.3 billion because each address was a 32-bit integer — 203.199.211.221, for example — building up to 232 possible addresses;
  • The IPv6 protocol overcomes this barrier by allowing 128-bit integer addresses to be assigned to hosts, or systems, bringing up the number of allowable addresses to a whopping 340 trillion, trillion, trillion. In essence, this provides an almost infinite plot of ground for the World Wide Web to grow in.
• ISRO plans to launch satellite for Navy
  • The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has built a dedicated satellite for the Navy which will be launched in a few months by an Ariane-5 rocket from the Kourou island in French Guiana;
  • The communication satellite that weighs 2.5 tonnes is currently undergoing thermo-vacuum tests at the ISRO Satellite Centre in Bangalore. But the space organisation has not so far officially acknowledged that the satellite is meant for the Navy and has given it an innocuous name, GSAT-7. The GSAT series, built by the ISRO, are communication satellites which cannot be used for surveillance;
  • The Navy will use GSAT-7 to communicate with its submarines, frigates, destroyers and aircraft from its centres on the shore.
  • Although the ISRO planned to launch GSAT-7 in 2011 onboard an indigenous Geo-Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) from Sriharikota, it has been forced to go abroad because of its failures with its GSLV in April 2010 and December 2010. The GSLV could not put GSAT-4 into orbit in April 2010 after its indigenous cryogenic engine failed to ignite. The next GSLV flight in December 2010, with a Russian cryogenic engine, failed too. It was to have hoisted into orbit GSAT-5P.
• Will the new type of oral polio vaccine be effective
  • Widespread use of the oral vaccine has brought the eradication of polio tantalisingly within reach. Since 1988 when the world embarked on an effort to wipe out the disease entirely, the number of cases has fallen by 99.8 per cent;
  • Developed by an American scientist, Albert Sabin, the oral polio vaccine (OPV) uses weakened strains of the virus. The vaccine is easy to administer — simply put a couple of drops of it in a child's mouth. The viruses in the vaccine replicate in cells in the gut and evoke an immune response that protects the child when a wild virus comes along;
  • Nevertheless, the oral vaccine has a major drawback, one that could stand in the way of the total eradication of all polioviruses. As it multiplies in the gut, the mutations that weaken the virus can get reversed, giving rise sporadically to vaccine-derived strains that are as virulent as wild forms and spread as easily. In India, although no child has so far fallen victim to the wild virus this year, one has already been paralysed by a vaccine-derived strain;
  • Consequently, the endgame for polio eradication could well involve introducing inactivated polio vaccines (IPV), which use ‘killed' viruses that cannot replicate and therefore carry no risk of turning virulent again. But IPV has its own problems, including higher cost and the fact that it has to be injected;
  • An oral polio vaccine strain that has been further crippled so that it cannot revert to virulence is therefore an attractive proposition.
• If you have time, read this question and answer which looks at the basics workings of electromagnets