Thursday, June 5, 2012

HEADLINES

• Ashok Chavan chargesheeted along with 12 others in the Adarsh housing scam
• 10 die in heat wave in north India as hot and humid conditions prevail in MP and Punjab

NATIONAL NEWS

• After rigorous self-appraisal, CAG sticks to its guns on 2G
  • The CAG, after completing this month a detailed ‘internal appraisal’ of two of its most high-profile reports, has not just stood by its findings “regardless of media comments and the statements made by senior functionaries of the government,” but also substantiated them, citing additional crucial events;
  • The internal assessment has been done on its reports on the 2G spectrum scam of November 2010 and Civil Aviation (Air India) of September 2011.
• Herbal therapy for Malaria
  • Over 20,000 children from 49 schools, mostly residential, in Koraput district will get the benefit of OMARIA (Odisha Malaria Research Indigenous Attempt) tablets for preventing malaria in the next few days. The sun-dried rind of the immature fruit of pomegranate is presently used as a herbal formulation for the therapy and prophylaxis of malaria.
• Now unique identity uniform for Kendriya Vidyalaya students
  • More than a million students of Kendriya Vidyalaya schools in the country will sport a new uniform from this academic session. All along, the students have been identified with a dark blue and white dress since the inception of Kendriya Vidyalaya schools in 1963;
  • Designed by the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), the uniform will be more colourful and will have two sets of dresses for boys — one for Classes I to V and the other for Classes VI to XII. Girls will have three sets — for Classes I and II, Classes III to VIII, and Classes IX to XII;
  • Boys in junior classes will don a blue, grey and red checked shirt with mandarin collar and plain grey shorts, while students in the senior classes will have an identical shirt with grey trousers. In winter, the boys will also wear a navy-blue, V-necked sweater with a red stripe;
  • The new pattern will include blue, green, red, and yellow house-wise T-shirts with a white collar, and navy blue pants with a white lining, for both girls and boys, during physical and health education classes, in the more than 1,100 KV schools in India and abroad;
  • The girls in junior classes will don a blue, grey, white and red checked tunic, while those in Classes III to VIII will dress in a blue, grey, white and red checked shirt and a plain grey skirt. Senior school girls will sport a kurti of a similar colour with a mandarin collar, and a plain grey bottom. All girls will wear a navy-blue cardigan;
  • Approved by the Board of Governors at the 92nd meeting of the KVB recently, the new outfit has been designed with the view to remaining contemporary and providing a unique identity to its students, while keeping in mind the comfort, cost and availability factors.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

• Elusive particle found, looks like Higgs Boson
  • Scientists at the world’s biggest atom smashing facility near here claimed the discovery of a new subatomic particle on Wednesday. They found it to be “consistent” with the long-sought Higgs boson, popularly known as the “God particle” that helps explain what gives size and shape to all matter in the universe;
  • The Higgs boson, which until now was a theoretical particle, is seen as the key to understanding why matter has mass. It is mass that combines with gravity to give an object weight. The idea is much like gravity and Isaac Newton’s discovery of it. Gravity existed even before Newton explained it. But now scientists see something much like the Higgs boson and can put that knowledge to further use;
  • CERN’s atom smasher, the $10-billion Large Hadron Collider on the Swiss-French border, has for years been creating high-energy collisions of protons to investigate dark matter, antimatter and the creation of the universe, which many theorise occurred in a massive explosion known as the Big Bang.
• Malians seek to liberate north from Islamists
  • Protesters from northern Mali on Wednesday held a sit-in in Bamako against Islamists who have enforced strict Sharia, destroyed ancient shrines and trapped residents with landmines in their region (the North of Mali);
  • The protest came as the international community mulled over options to help Mali’s embattled interim government in Bamako save its north from the armed Islamists.
• Mexico elections runner-up seeks recount and sparks fears
  • The runner-up in Mexico’s presidential vote demanded a full recount of Sunday’s balloting, raising fears he could lead disruptive mass protests like he did six years ago;
  • Observers fear Mr. Lopez Obrador’s refusal to concede could trigger a repeat of the 2006 presidential election, when he lost by less than one per cent, claimed fraud and organised mass protests that paralysed Mexico City for more than a month;
  • The first official results from Sunday’s vote showed Mr. Lopez Obrador with 31 per cent of the vote against 38 per cent for Pena Nieto of the PRI — a difference of three million votes, election officials say, a much wider margin than the last presidential election. Final official results are due out by Sunday. However, there have been many reports of inconsistencies in the ballot counting and Mr. Obrador's allegations stem from these reports.
• Report bolsters Arafat poisoning claim
  • A nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera suggesting that Yasser Arafat may have died of polonium poisoning and not of natural causes has prompted Palestinians to demand an international investigation into the circumstances of their celebrated leader’s death;
  • Arafat died in a Paris military hospital in 2004 after he was airlifted from his besieged compound in Ramallah, where he had taken seriously ill. Arafat’s death triggered a torrent of conspiracy theories, especially because an autopsy was not conducted to establish the cause of death — unusual given Arafat’s larger-than-life international stature;
  • The case now appears set to be reopened after an investigation by Al Jazeera found that Arafat’s personal belongings, including his clothes, toothbrush and kaffiyeh — the headdress inseparable from his persona — contained elevated levels of polonium, a highly radioactive element. The Al Jazeera investigation centred on the findings at the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, where scientists analysed Arafat’s personal items supplied by Suha Arafat, his wife;
  • The Swiss facility maintains that Arafat’s bones could provide more evidence to substantiate the possibility of poisoning — an inference that has led Ms. Arafat to call for the exhumation of her husband’s remains from his grave in Ramallah, the West Bank city.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS & COLUMNS

• Read this article about certain rare inscriptions which were recently discovered which throw light on the administration during the Chola period
• Read this article on the Nalanda University
• Read this article on the Indian contributions to the Higgs Boson. If you have time read this article on what is next planed at CERN
• Read this interesting article on crystallography and the work of the Nobel Prize winner, Mr.Shechtman, on quasicrystals