Thursday, July 26, 2012

HEADLINES

• Kokrajhar in Assam still affected by ethnic and communal tensions; shoot-on-sight orders and curfew are still active
• Delhi High Court restricts Kalmadi from attending opening ceremony of the Olympics saying it could be an embarrassment to the country

NATIONAL NEWS

• More comprehensive early childhood care plan required: Civil society groups
  • Concerned regarding the rights of children under the age of 6 years, civil society groups have asked the government to focus on a comprehensive approach towards providing a sound foundation for survival, growth, protection, development and early learning under the proposed Early Childhood Care and Education Policy;
  • The proposed ECCE policy, which would come as part of the restructuring of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme, refers to programmes for children from prenatal to six years, which cater to the needs of a child in all domains of development, including physical, motor, language, cognitive, socio-emotional, and creative and aesthetic appreciation, and provides synergy with health and nutrition aspects;
  • The activists want the policy renamed as the Early Childhood Care and Development. In a written submission made to the Ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD), the Alliance for Rights to Early Childhood Care and Development — comprised of grassroots-level academics practitioners and members of several networks across the country — it has said that the focus should be more on free and universal ECCE, because of a large number of children who live in marginalised and difficult circumstances, as against the affordable services as envisaged in the policy. There should be explicit listing of all the marginalised groups, to be considered before planning and budgeting, and not only with reference to children with disabilities;
  • The group has suggested that the focus be on the child in the context of the family, and the child-mother as an inseparable unit, the recognition of the multiple responsibilities of women, and the need to address their requirement of childcare support, and maternity entitlements across sectors to enable breast feeding, and safety, protection and optimal development of child;
  • The present policy focuses on the child without the context of family, and there is no mention of women as mothers, the submission said.
• Jeet Thayil on booker longlist
  • Jeet Thayil, noted Kerala-born poet and novelist, has been long-listed for the 2012 Man Booker Prize for his debut novel Narcopolis built around the opium and heroin dens of Mumbai;
  • A self-confessed former drug addict, Thayil is thought to have drawn on his own experiences of Mumbai’s “seedy underbelly,” as one critic put it. In an interview, he described Narcopolis as “Bombay’s secret history” as distinct from its “official” history of “money and glamour”;
  • Thayil (53) is among 12 writers long-listed for the £50,000 Prize, arguably the most prestigious literary honour in the English-speaking world. A shortlist of 6 will be announced in September and the final result will be in October.
• Magsaysay award for Tamilnadu activist, Kulandei Francis
  • Kulandei Francis has been chosen for the Ramon Magsaysay Award for the year 2012, for economic empowerment of thousands of women and their families in rural India;
  • Mr. Francis, who had just been informed by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, said that “it is a recognition of my hard and sincere work for over three decades for the development and livelihood improvement of the rural people in Krishnagiri and Dharmapuri districts besides parts of Vellore district”;
  • Mr. Francis, Director of the Krishnagiri-based NGO Integrated Village Development Programme (IVD), thanked his staff and self-help members for their cooperation. “I could not have won such a prestigious award without them,” he said;
  • Founded 22 years ago, the IVDP was responsible for the formation of more than 7,000 self-help groups in the three districts. So far, the value of transactions through the SHGs was over Rs.2,500 crore and nearly Rs.250 crore lay with the accounts of the SHG members.
• Alliance to make drugs affordable
  • The CEOs of the central drug procurement agencies of five State governments – Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala – who met in the capital on Wednesday decided to form an alliance to formulate common policies for drug procurement and sharing of data and best practices, so as to bring down the out-of-pocket expenditure on drugs and make drugs more accessible to the common man;
  • The five States have signed a ‘Thiruvananthapuram declaration,’ affirming their commitment to making drugs affordable to the common man and pledging to share their resources and capacities to make this possible;
  • This is the first ever attempt by States to put up a united front to tackle the issue of rising drug prices and drug shortage in the country;
  • Inter-State MoUs will be signed between the States for sharing of knowledge and skills, exchange of drugs during exigencies, and capacity building, so as to curb the unethical practices of non-State players who often form cartels to thwart government’s attempts to provide drugs at cheaper rates to the common man;
  • The next conclave of the CEOs will be held in Rajasthan in October, when more States were expected to join the alliance.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

• Dhaka wants Delhi to speed up boundary agreement
  • Though India and Bangladesh have covered a lot of ground on several issues at Foreign Secretary level talks in New Delhi, further movement in bilateral relations ran aground after Dhaka complained of non-implementation of the land boundary agreement and delay in a river water-sharing pact;
  • In turn, India did not raise the issue of demarcation of the maritime boundary on which it was prepared to negotiate in a manner that could have been acceptable to Dhaka, said government sources. The Union Cabinet’s Committee on Security had vetted a proposal in this regard, they added;
  • The issue of equitable sharing of Teesta river waters would have to await emergence of internal consensus. West Bengal has objected to the water-sharing pact that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had wanted to sign with his Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina and the Centre has been engaged with West Bengal to resolve the issue;
  • With both sides having moved forward on the line of credit for Bangladesh Railways and a more intense energy relationship, the sources said the delay in the Teesta water-sharing pact and the land agreement were the only blips in a quickly normalising relationship;
  • Bangladesh’s pitch at the talks for quickly implementing the agreements over land boundary demarcation and exchange of adversely-held enclaves “as it is important to deliver on it.” Bangladesh gains a few hundred hectares in the settlement that has doused many of the tensions that have dogged the Indo-Bangladesh border. The Govt is yet to get the agreement ratified by Parliament even though it was signed in September last year.
• Secondary uranium source may go dry soon: IAEA
  • The tremendous amount of energy in a uranium atom has always made sure that the price of nuclear power is driven by the cost of building the plant rather than that of fuelling it. But supporters of nuclear energy who argue, correctly, that such plants emit little carbon-dioxide, would do well to remember that uranium — like oil and coal — is a finite resource;
  • A recently released report by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Energy Agency underscores this fact and states that much of the ‘secondary’ uranium sources required to power the world’s existing nuclear plants are in danger of declining after 2013;
  • Around 80 per cent of the 63,875 tonnes of uranium needed to power the world’s existing nuclear plants is dug fresh from the ground every year. The remaining 15 – 20 per cent, comes from already mined or ‘secondary sources’, in the form of recycled fuel and redundant nuclear warheads;
  • As secondary supplies of uranium are reduced in the coming years, reactor requirements will need to be increasingly met by mine production. The market will have to provide sufficient incentives for exploration and mine development in order to continue to ensure that global nuclear fuel requirements will be met. The mining activity was dropped to correct prices after the Fukushima incident and therefore there is a mismatch in the supply.
• UN treaty on global arms trade sparks criticism
  • The first draft of a new U.N. treaty to regulate the multibillion dollar global arms trade sparked criticism from campaigners seeking to keep illegal weapons from fighters, criminals and terrorists and demands for changes before Friday’s deadline for action;
  • The UN General Assembly voted in December 2006 to work toward a treaty regulating the growing arms trade, now valued at about $60 billion, with the U.S. casting a “no” vote. Adoption of a treaty requires consensus among the 193 UN member states, a requirement the US insisted on in 2009 and diplomats said reaching agreement will be difficult;
  • With the conference scheduled to end on Friday, negotiators have been trying to come up with a text that satisfies advocates of a strong treaty with tough regulations and countries that appear to have little interest in a treaty including Syria, North Korea, Iran, Egypt and Algeria;
  • It would require all countries to establish national regulations to control the transfer of conventional arms and to regulate arms brokers.
• Pakistan Prime Minister Raja Parvez Ashraf on Wednesday got a breather with the Supreme Court giving him another fortnight to comply with its order asking the govt to write to the Swiss authorities to reopen graft cases against President Zardari. The court said that he could be liable to action if he does not carry out the requirements

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS & COLUMNS

• Read this editorial on the ban on Gutka and other chewable tobacco products in few states in India
• Read this very interesting article about the monsoon prediction in India

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

• Massive Greenland surface ice melt picked up by satellites
  • Greenland's surface ice cover melted this month over a larger area than ever detected in more than 30 years of satellite observations, NASA said recently;
  • According to measurements from three separate satellites analyzed by NASA and university scientists, an estimated 97 per cent of the ice sheet surface thawed at some point in mid July, the agency said in a statement;
  • The news comes just days after NASA satellite imagery showed that a massive iceberg twice the size of Manhattan had broken off a glacier in Greenland;
  • In the summer, on average about half of the surface of Greenland's ice sheet melts naturally, NASA said. Normally, most of that melt water quickly refreezes at high elevations, while in coastal regions some of it is retained by the ice sheet while the rest flows into the ocean;
  • “But this year the extent of the ice melting at or near the surface jumped dramatically,” NASA added. Researchers have yet to determine whether the melt, which coincided with an unusually strong ridge of warm air over Greenland, will contribute to a rise in sea level. NASA said that even the area near the highest point of the ice sheet, located 2 miles above sea level, showed signs of melting.
• Ocean wave power promising for Australia
  • The waves in the ocean could supply about 10 per cent of Australia’s electricity by 2050, a new study released Wednesday by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) found;
  • The report of CSIRO found that although wave energy could possibly provide 10 per cent of Australia’s electricity needs by 2050, there were many economic, technological, environmental and societal challenges that would determine its place in Australia’s future energy mix;
  • The report also found the areas that could benefit from wave energy technology include Perth, the southern coastline and to a lesser extent the east coast of Australia, while tidal technology could supply niche areas such as northeast Tasmania and the Kimberley region in Western Australia.