HEADLINES

• PM Manmohan Singh visits Kokrajhar in Assam; announces 300 crore in Central assistance
• Anna Hazare starts his fast from today
• The Civil Service Prelims 2012 results were announced last evening. Congrats to all the candidates who have cleared the exam. Keep following this webpage – we will have more information catering to the mains from now on

NATIONAL NEWS

• Prime Minister's office resolves tussle between Arunachal Govt and AAI
  • The PMO has stepped in to put an end to the dispute between the Airports Authority of India (AAI) and the Arunachal Pradesh Government, paving the way for construction of a new greenfield airport at Itanagar at a cost of Rs. 650 crore;
  • The Union Ministry of Civil Aviation will soon move a note to the Union Cabinet for approval of the strategic project which will link the border State with the rest of the country directly. The new site of the airport will be at Holongi;
  • Both AAI and the State Government had been locked in a tussle regarding the exact location of the airport, with the Government sticking to its choice of Banderdeva, while the technical committee of AAI had recommended Holongi;
  • The AAI had protested the Govt’s choice on the ground that Banderdeva was surrounded by hilly terrain and hurdles. It also argued that there was limited scope for future expansion, and pointed out the poor safety environment and high cost of construction involved. AAI had further stated that Holongi was on flat ground, and had better usability in poor weather, besides offering scope for easy construction and a safe operating environment.
• TRAI to bring out paper on the grave danger of cross-media ownerships
  • Warning that cross-media ownership leading to a monopoly of opinions could pose a grave danger, new Telecom Regulatory Authority of India chief Rahul Khullar has announced plans to bring out a consultation paper on media ownership soon;
  • “If one newspaper controls all contents of opinion through cross-media ownership, if one TV group owns both channels and cable distribution, it could pose grave danger. No democracy can survive if you do not have plurality and diversity of opinion,” he said;
  • The issue of cross media ownership had come into the spotlight recently when stock market regulator SEBI started probing whether Reliance Industries had made requisite disclosures before announcing its investment in the TV18 group which would ultimately fund a consolidation with the Eenadu TV group. The investment potentially creates a cross-media empire which spans digital divides to encompass print publications, news and entertainment broadcasting, consumer internet, film production and e-commerce;
  • Media monopoly was a larger issue than corporate monopoly in other fields, said Mr. Khullar, pointing out that unlike manufacturers of ice-cream, shoes or bed linen, “media products are competing to influence you”. He also drew a parallel with the financial sector, where industrial establishments are denied banking licenses. Similar problems can arise when television and radio channels and newspapers in different languages have a common owner, who also owns the means of distribution, whether a cable or internet network. “Should a broadcaster here swallow the distributor?” he asked;
  • The regulator will explore the need for a mandatory disclosure requirement for affiliation and ownership and the limits on market share needed to ensure plurality and diversity, he said. He drew cautionary lessons from the scenario in the U.K., where the British Parliament has seen a threat in the cross-media ownership of the Rupert Murdoch empire. “Freedom to form one’s own opinion is denied in such monopoly,” he said.
• Sanitation, hygiene services almost nil in India
  • Over 50 million people in urban India defecate in the open every day. Sixty-six per cent of the wo-men in Delhi slums are verbally abused, 46 per cent are stalked and more than 30 per cent are physically assaulted while accessing toilets;
  • Eighty per cent of India’s surface water pollution is on account of sewage alone. As many as 4,861 of 5,161 cities across the country do not have even a partial sewerage network;
  • These findings are from a new survey conducted across the country by Dasra, a strategic philanthropy foundation. With services related to sanitation and hygiene for the poor almost missing, the foundations says organisations involved in philanthropic work should now focus on these areas;
  • The survey, which began in April this year in collaboration with Forbes Marshall, shows there is an adverse impact of poor sanitation and hygiene on various aspects including the environment, economics, education and gender;
  • To buttress this claim, the survey reveals that poor urban households pay 65 per cent more than the average urban household and 75 per cent more than a rural household for sanitation facilities. Explaining the impact on education, it cites the high dropout rate of girls. “Almost 23 per cent of girls drop out of school when they start menstruating. In some places, nearly 66 per cent of girls skip school during menstruation and one-third of them eventually drop out. Also, 40 per cent of schools lack functional toilets,” the survey reveals.
• The concern over the structural safety of Parliament House, a heritage building, and the clamour for more space for Members of Parliament has forced the authorities concerned to look for an alternative to the existing set-up. It may be set up on the south side of Vijay Chowk in Delhi

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

• U.N arms trade treaty fails
  • A U.N. treaty to regulate the multibillion-dollar global arms trade will have to wait after member states failed to reach an agreement, and some diplomats and supporters blamed the United States for the unravelling of the month-long negotiating conference;
  • Many countries blame the U.S., saying “they derailed the process”, adding that nothing will happen to revive negotiations until after the U.S. presidential election in November;
  • The draft treaty would require all countries to establish national regulations to control the transfer of conventional arms and to regulate arms brokers. It would prohibit states that ratify the treaty from transferring conventional weapons if they would violate arms embargoes or if they would promote acts of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes;
  • In considering whether to authorise the export of arms, the draft says a country must evaluate whether the weapon would be used to violate international human rights or humanitarian laws or be used by terrorists, organized crime or for corrupt practices;
  • Many countries, including the U.S., control arms exports but there has never been an international treaty regulating the estimated $60-billion global arms trade. For more than a decade, activists and some governments have been pushing for international rules to try to keep illicit weapons out of the hands of terrorists, insurgent fighters and organized crime;
  • The U.N. General Assembly voted in December 2006 to work toward a treaty regulating the growing arms trade, with the U.S. casting a “no” vote. In October 2009, the Obama administration reversed the Bush administration’s position and supported an assembly resolution to hold four preparatory meetings and a four-week U.N. conference in 2012 to draft an arms trade treaty;
  • The U.S. insisted that a treaty had to be approved by all 193 U.N. member states (that means by absolute consensus).
• Ebola breaks out in Uganda
  • The deadly Ebola virus has killed 14 people in western Uganda this month, Ugandan health officials said on Saturday, ending weeks of speculation about the cause of a strange disease that had many people fleeing their homes;
  • There is no cure or vaccine for Ebola, and in Uganda, where in 2000 the disease killed 224 people, it resurrects terrible memories. Ebola, which manifests itself as a hemorrhagic fever, is highly infectious and kills quickly.