Monday, July 2, 2012

HEADLINES

• 77 dead in Assam floods, which is the worst in a decade
• Two earthquakes hit north eastern states; no damage reported
• Questions of Chhattisgarh encounter as reports of innocent villagers being killed emerges
• Yeddyurappa camp sets deadline for BJP top command to replace present CM

NATIONAL NEWS

• Western Ghats now in World Heritage List
  • The Western Ghats has made it to the coveted list of World Heritage Sites. The World Heritage Committee, meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, late on Sunday, decided to inscribe 39 serial sites of the Western Ghats on the World Heritage List;
  • The Western Ghats was inscribed under criteria 9 and 10 of the Operational Guidelines of the World Heritage Convention;
  • Criterion 9 of the guidelines deals with properties which are “outstanding examples representing significant ongoing ecological and biological processes in the evolution and development of terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems and communities of plants and animals.” Criterion 10 is relevant for “those properties which contain the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity, including those containing threatened species of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation”;
  • The nomination processes thus successfully ended India’s six-year campaign for getting the sites inscribed on the list. Read the guidelines at http://whc.unesco.org/en/guidelines (look at para 77 on page 30).
• 2G: can Pawar deliver what Pranab couldn't?
  • The telecom industry is anxiously waiting to see if the newly appointed chairman of the Group of Ministers (GoM) on Telecom, Sharad Pawar, will deliver on the difficult mandate of finalising the reserve price for 2G spectrum auctions at his first meeting on Monday;
  • The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had recommended Rs. 18,348 crore as the reserve price for 4.4 MHz of spectrum — a quantum jump from Rs. 1,658 crore, the price at which the former Telecom Minister, A. Raja, allocated pan-India licences/spectrum in 2008. Following a CVC complaint on corruption, a CBI FIR and the Supreme Court’s February 2, 2012 judgment, the 122 licences were declared illegal and cancelled. Spectrum from these licenses is now required to be auctioned within the next 60 days;
  • Following widespread industry opposition, the government had sent a reference back to the TRAI to reconsider and explain its high reserve price. However, the TRAI remained unyielding;
  • Since then, the decision has been pending with the GoM led by the former Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee. Now that Mr. Mukherjee has demitted office, Mr. Pawar has been asked to step in as the GoM chairman.
• Indian Air Force to acquire 75 swiss pilatus trainer aircrafts
  • The Air Force will acquire 75 Swiss-made Pilatus PC-7 basic trainer aircraft to replace the ageing Kiran aircraft at a cost of over Rs.2,900 crore. The Kiran aircraft would be used only for stage II training of cadets after the acquisition of the Swiss aircraft;
  • In January 2013, a few such pilatus aircraft would be inducted into the IAF. From then on, two aircraft would be added every month, and by 2014 all the basic training for flight cadets would be on these aircraft, he said adding a team of 75 pilots and technicians would visit Switzerland in October for training.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

• Geneva talks a failure: Syria, opposition
  • Both official media and the opposition branded as a failure a world powers deal on a transition plan for Syria. World powers meeting in Geneva on Saturday agreed a transition plan that could include regime members, but the West did not see any role for President Bashar al-Assad in a unity government;
  • Russia and China insisted that Syrians themselves must decide how the transition happens, rather than allow others to dictate their fate. Moscow and Beijing, which have twice blocked Security Council resolutions, both signed up to the final agreement that did not make any explicit call for Mr. Assad to cede power.
• Nikki Haley cleared of wrongdoing by ethics panel
  • South Carolina’s Indian-American Governor Nikki Haley has been cleared of wrongdoing by an ethics committee which probed allegations that she lobbied on behalf of her employers when she was a legislator;
  • Ms. Haley (40) became the first Indian-American woman Governor of a U.S. State last year. She is also the first non-white governor of South Carolina.
• India shows little interest in new top-level-domains
  • The screening of hundreds of new Internet top level domain names, proposed by over 1,900 applicants worldwide, including a handful from India, will begin on July 12, as the domain name system gets set for a massive expansion;
  • At the end of the exercise lasting several months, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is expected to approve the addition of hundreds of generic top-level domain names (gTLDs), the concluding part of the web address after the dot. Now, the gTLDs are restricted to a few names — such as .com or .org, and many country code domain names such as .in for India or .uk for the United Kingdom — and the big expansion in their number has been on the anvil for years. For the first time, it will include non-Latin scripts;
  • At a recent meeting in Prague, the ICANN authorities revealed that of the 1,930 applications received, 751 were vying for TLDs, for which more than one party had staked claim, such as .app, .site and .news. More than 100 applications were for domain names in non-Latin scripts, including a few in Hindi. The three Hindi TLDs, for which applications have been made, are transliterations for .com and .net and the equivalent of .org — ‘sanghatan';
  • Only 20 applications have come from India. In line with the global trend, most seem to have been made by companies intending to protect or further their brand names rather than enter the domain name registry business.

EMINENT PERSONS IN THE NEWS

• Read this article about Joan Dunlop, a global leader on women's rights issues who passed away recently

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS & COLUMNS

• Read this editorial on the delay in the arrival of the monsoon
• Read this editorial on the current state of the economy
• Read this article on the issues in the administrative system faced by civil servants
• If you have time, read this article on the RTI for the disclosure of the 1962 war report