Wednesday, 4th July, 2012

HEADLINES

• AI pilots end strike. Delhi high court gives them 48 hours to join duty
• SC bans commercial and tourism activities in Jarawa region of Andaman and Nicobar
• Cabinet clears 25 crore plan to airlift Bhopal waste
• JPC withdraw witness list after glaring omission of PM's name and addition of Shri. Vajpayee and Fernadez

NATIONAL NEWS

• Mithin Lanka proposes Madurai – Colombo service
  • Madurai has inched one more step closer to finding a place on the international airport map, with the Sri Lanka-based Mihin Lanka Airlines coming forward to fly its direct flight between Madurai and Colombo
    
    
• No commercial tourism activity in Jarawa reserve, says SC
  • The Supreme Court has banned all commercial and tourism activities within a five-km radius of the Jarawa Tribal Reserve on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands with a view to protecting the indigenous people.
  • No tourist establishment such as resorts, hotels, restaurants, bars and paying guest accommodation, except government-run guest houses, will be permitted within the Buffer Zone. No commercial establishment/activities which may employ more than 20 persons or have an annual turnover of Rs. 1 crore or more will be allowed in the Buffer Zone.”
  • “It shall be the duty of the Principal Secretary (Tribal Welfare) and other officers of the Administration to ensure total compliance with the prohibition contained in the notification and this order. Any breach of this order will entail punishment under the Contempt of Courts Act.”
    
    
• Western Ghats infrastructure should stick to heritage norms : World heritage committee
  • The World Heritage Committee (WHC), which inscribed the Western Ghats as a World Heritage Site, has asked India to ensure that infrastructure development in the area is in tune with the Operational Guidelines of the World Heritage Convention.
  • The WHC said the “Western Ghats region demonstrates speciation related to the breakup of the ancient landmass of Gondwanaland in the early Jurassic period; secondly to the formation of India into an isolated landmass and the thirdly to the Indian landmass being pushed together with Eurasia. Together with favourable weather patterns and a high gradient being present in the Ghats, high speciation has resulted. The Western Ghats is an Evolutionary Ecotone illustrating “Out of Africa” and “Out of Asia” hypotheses on species dispersal and vicariance.”
  • This was India’s first serial nomination in both the culture and nature categories, which would be a model for other countries going in for serial nominations of their properties.
  • While the nomination was an accreditation of the sites at the global level for their biodiversity repository values, the management regimes of these sites would be on global radar
  • On the protection and management requirements, the WHC said: “Integrating the management of 39 sites across 4 States is a challenge, for which a three-tier governance mechanism will be set up that would operate at the Central, State and Site levels to provide effective coordination and oversight.”
    
    
• Climate change taking a toll on global production of tea
  • On the protection and management requirements, the WHC said: “Integrating the management of 39 sites across 4 States is a challenge, for which a three-tier governance mechanism will be set up that would operate at the Central, State and Site levels to provide effective coordination and oversight.”
  • The drop has been sharpest for countries like Kenya, where a shortfall of 22.4 per cent has been reported in the first four months in 2012. India, the world’s largest producer of black tea, has suffered a 14.4 per cent drop in the first four months, according to statistics just released by the industry regulator
  • dry weather since October had debilitated tea bushes. While irrigation is a way of reducing the impact, no irrigation system can substitute for the quantum of rainfall needed for a tea bush, which is a perennial crop, some of which are 70 years old
  • The industry is not only losing volume but also quality. India, which produces some of its best teas — called first flush — during the earlier part of the year, has already lost some of its most valuable crop due to the erratic rainfall and the prospect of second flush does not appear too good either
    
    
• Cabinet clears 25 crore plan to airlift bhopal waste
  • Almost three decades after deadly gases spewed out of the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, the Union Cabinet has finally approved the proposal to airlift 350 tonnes of toxic waste from the defunct pesticide factory site to Germany for safe disposal.
  • The Central government will pay Rs. 25 lakh to German firm GIZ to remove the waste.
  • This is merely the beginning of the process to clean up the abandoned factory site. One million tonnes of waste still remains, most of it contaminated soil from pollutants dumped by the company between 1969 and 1984. Bhopal residents and activists say this waste is still poisoning the land and groundwater of their city, damaging the health of 40,000 people, and drawing the effects of the tragedy far beyond the 1984 gas leak well into the present day.
  • While the Central government will bear the cost of the airlift and disposal in Germany, it is still engaged in litigation in Indian courts to ensure that Dow Chemical — the company which bought Union Carbide — pays the bill for the wider decontamination

• No exemption for raw, says CIC
  • The Central Information Commission (CIC) has directed the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) to disclose details of cases of sexual exploitation, human rights violation and corruption registered against its officials

INTERNATIONAL

• Iran hits back at US, EU sanctions
  • Iran has taken the first step towards military intervention in the Strait of Hormuz — a move that could skyrocket global oil prices and open the gates for a larger armed confrontation.
  • A day after the European Union (EU) imposed an oil embargo, the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of the Iranian Parliament moved swiftly. It drafted a bill which permitted the government to stop oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz that ferry crude oil for countries that had targeted Iran with harsh oil and financial sanctions.
  • Iran is the second-biggest oil producer after Saudi Arabia in OPEC, the oil cartel. The Paris based International Energy Agency (IEA) is forecasting that once sanctions are fully in place in the second half of this year, the world oil markets would lose a daily supply of around one million barrels — a standalone factor that would encourage higher oil prices.

• Stop distorting Geneva plan : Russia
  • Russia has accused the West of “distorting” the peace plan for Syria endorsed in Geneva
  • The Geneva ministerial conference of the “action group” on Saturday agreed that a “transitional government body with full executive powers” will be set up in Syria to end the ongoing conflict.
  • French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Sunday a text agreed in Geneva implied that President Bashar al-Assad would have to step down. Moscow strongly rejected this reading of the Geneva plan. Mr. Lavrov said the plan did not imply at all that the Syrian leader should go and added that it set down no precondition excluding any group from the proposed national unity government.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS AND COLUMNS

• An interesting article on the recent controversy surrounding the presence of cartoons in text books
• An article on Manmohan singh's idea of economics
• An article on why MGNREGA and Aadhar should go together
• Editorial on the NCERT controversy
• Editorial on the recent Mexican change of guard
• Editorial on India's Euro pledge
• A nice article on Af- US relationship