Saturday, 6th july, 2013

HEADLINES

HEADLINES

• President gives assent for food security ordinance
• Indo Israel bilateral trade touches $6bn

NATIONAL NEWS

• Bid to make rail tariff authority's decision binding
  • Passenger fares may no longer be part of the Railway Budget announcements if the proposal of the Railway Ministry on the powers of the proposed Rail Tariff Authority is to be accepted.
  • The Railways doesn’t want the authority to be just advisory in nature but that its ruling should be binding on the government to protect the Railways from the political pulls and pressures

• Article on IORARC

• BSF plans haats along Indo – Bangladesh border
  • The Border Security Force (BSF) plans to set up haats (open-air village marketplaces) along the Indo-Bangladesh border in south Bengal in its bid to check smuggling and also to facilitate trade at local level between the two countries.
  • Household products including local produce are among the items smuggled across the border and the initiative will put a check on such practices as traders can sell their goods legally once the haats come up.
  • The first such border haat along with the Indo-Bangladesh border is operational at Kaliachar in Meghalaya. There are plans to set up 40 such haats along the entire Indo- Bangladesh border in the eastern and north eastern parts of country

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

• Largest ever China – Russia naval drill
  • China and Russia kicked off their largest-ever joint naval drills on Friday in the Sea of Japan, a further sign of the broad-based progress in ties between the former Cold War era rivals.
  • Eighteen surface ships, one submarine, three airplanes, five ship-launched helicopters and two commando units were taking part in the “Joint Sea-2013” exercise

• WHO emergency talks on MERS virus
  • The World Health Organidation announced Friday it had convened emergency talks on the deadly MERS coronavirus for (electron microscope image in picture) Tuesday, but said the move did not mean it was hiking its global alert level
  • The first recorded MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) death was in June 2012 in Saudi Arabia. The number of infections stands at 79, with 43 dead — an extremely high rate of 54 per cent, compared to nine per cent of the 8,273 recorded patients with SARS. Like SARS, it has flu-like symptoms but causes kidney failure

OPINION/EDITORIALS

• Article on lawyers
• Article on environment protection in Uttrakand and Kerala
• Editorial on food security and the politics behind it
• Editorial on mitocondria replacement technique
• Article on disability