GyanGurus Daily News: Tuesday, Dec 4th, 2012

HEADLINES

NATIONAL NEWS

Atbir Singh, lodged in Tihar Jail, New Delhi, is the first death-row convict whose sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment by President Pranab Mukherjee.

Admiral D.K. Joshi, has termed the situation in the South China Sea “complex,” as China is rapidly modernising its Navy, and said India would protect its economic interests in the disputed waters by sending forces, if need be.
ONGC Videsh has three offshore deepwater blocks, on the southern Vietnamese coast, and invested $600 million in oil and gas exploration in these blocks in the past few years.
everyone is of the view that they [the disputes] have to be resolved by the parties concerned, aligned with the international regime, which is outlined in UNCLOS [the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea]
New rules announced recently by Hainan province (which administers the South China Sea for China) to allow for interception of ships have raised concerns in the region, with fears of simmering disputes with Southeast Asian nations escalating.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

United Nations climate talks on Monday entered their final week amid rows over the Kyoto Protocol and funding for poorer countries, despite fresh warnings of the peril from greenhouse gases
Poor countries were insisting Western nations sign up to deeper, more urgent cuts in carbon emissions under Kyoto after the pact’s first round of pledges expires at year’s end.
They were also demanding the rich world commit to a new funding package from 2013 to help them cope with worsening drought, flood, storms and rising seas.
Both questions are key to a new treaty that must be signed by 2015 and enter into force in 2020 to roll back global warming.
A new study warned on Sunday that Earth could be on track for warming above five degrees Celsius (nine degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 — at least double the 2C (3.6 F) limit enshrined by the U.N..
It follows other research which said polar ice-cap melt had raised sea levels by nearly half an inch (11 millimetres) over the last two decades, and that Arctic ice shrivelled at an unprecedented rate in 2012.

The head of the U.N.’s telecommunication overseers sought to quell worries about possible moves toward greater Internet controls during global talks in Dubai, but any attempts for increased Web regulations are likely to face stiff opposition from groups led by a major U.S. delegation.
The 11-day conference, seeking to update codes last reviewed when the Web was virtually unknown, highlights the fundamental shift from tightly managed telecommunications networks to the borderless sweep of the Internet.
But others at the Dubai conference, including the 123-member U.S. delegation with envoys from tech giants such as Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., worry that any new U.N. oversight on Internet security could be used by nations such as China and Russia to justify further tightening of Web blocks and monitoring.
The Dubai gathering will confront questions that include how much sway the U.N. can exert over efforts such as battling cyber-crimes and expanding the Internet into developing nations.
The gathering is also powerless to force nations to change their Internet policies such as China’s notorious “Great Firewall” and widespread blackouts of political opposition sites in places, including Iran and Gulf States. Last week, Syria’s Internet and telephone services disappeared for two days during some of the worst fighting in months to hit the capital, Damascus.

EDITORIALS, OPINIONS & COLUMNS

GyanGurus Daily News