Thursday, 13th June, 2013

HEADLINES

• Bsnl ends telegram services
• UPA all set to push for ordinance on food bill

NATIONAL NEWS

• Campaign navajeevan helps 28 naxals to surrender
  • Twenty-eight extremists from different Naxal dalams here and Chhattisgarh border areas have surrendered before Gadchiroli police due to its initiative called ‘Campaign Navjeevan’.
  • Under Campaign Navjeevan, senior police officers visited families of Naxals belonging to the State and appealed them to surrender assuring them of fair treatment.

• Govt to focus on single window clearance for housing projects
  • Having paved the way for protection of consumers against inordinate delays in the completion of housing projects through the introduction of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Bill, 2013, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA) is now focusing attention on streamlining the process of seeking clearances for the real estate projects.
  • The Ministry has formed a committee that will soon present its report on the implementation of a single window clearance system for seeking approvals and necessary permissions for promoters. The system is aimed at reducing the time taken to secure permissions and cut down on the procedural delays.
  • While the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Bill, 2013 makes it mandatory for developers to seek all clearances before collecting money for or advertising for projects, a single window clearance system will allow developers to seek all the requisite permissions in a time bound and rationalised manner.

• Cabinet to take a decision on review of sectoral FDI caps
  • Stating that the review of foreign direct investment (FDI) caps in various sectors was almost complete, Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma on Wednesday said the Cabinet would take the decision but said his Ministry had strongly recommended hike in FDI limit for the telecom sector.
  • The aim of hike in FDI in defence is to infuse high end technology which will not only benefit modernisation of defence forces but also benefit many other sectors as has happened elsewhere in the world

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

• Khartoum proceeds with oil shut down amidst hectic diplomacy
  • Sudan’s government has formally instructed oil companies, including the Indian State-owned ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), to begin preparations to halt the transfer and export of South Sudanese oil through Sudan’s territories within 60 days
  • The formal intimation from the oil ministry came days after Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir accused South Sudan of aiding anti-government rebels and announced his decision to stop all cross-border oil transfers.

• Child domestic work suffers from statistical invisibility:ILO
  • The world over, around 15 million children work as paid or unpaid domestic workers, of which at least 10.5 million are below the legal minimum age, according to an International Labour Organization (ILO) report titled Ending Child Labour in Domestic Work
  • The report looks at the many factors that contribute to the abusive situation around domestic child labour; the vulnerability to physical and sexual abuse, the impact on health, how they move far from their homes and families leading to isolation and discrimination.
  • The ILO recommends stepping up research efforts — particularly by public institutions — to improve methodologies to capture and monitor the number of child domestic workers and working conditions, with a focus on those at the bottom rung
  • The report states: “Measures to improve education and make it more accessible range from building schools to the reduction or elimination of direct and indirect costs, improved teacher training and curriculum reform.” It adds that a common theme among all interventions to date has been linking trade union child labour efforts to broader national and international initiatives to ensure education for all and improve education quality

• Austrian UN peace keepers begin Golan withdrawal
  • Austrian troops in the U.N. monitoring force on the Golan Heights began withdrawing on Wednesday, days after Vienna decided to quit the mission over security concerns linked to Syria’s civil war
  • Austria, which has been a cornerstone of United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF), the U.N. force monitoring a ceasefire between Syria and Israel since 1974, announced on Thursday it would withdraw its peacekeepers because of deteriorating security.
  • A year ago UNDOF had more than 1,100 troops. But Japan and Croatia have pulled out their men in recent months as battles between Syrian troops and the rebels spilled into the ceasefire zone.

• Article on the Kosovo problem

OPINION/EDITORIALS

• Article on the problems with the ponzi scheme
• Article on the FYUP and why it is anti dalit
• Nawin Chawla article on ECI
• Article on Myanmar vs Burma
• Editorial on malnutrition

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

• Fitch revises India's outlook to stable
  • In a development that may bring some cheer and help the government in stemming the rupee slide, Fitch Ratings, on Wednesday, revised India’s sovereign credit outlook to ‘stable’ from ‘negative’ and affirmed the ‘BBB-’ rating assigned earlier.
  • In this regard, what may turn out to be a huge positive is the fact that Fitch has pointed to India’s inherent economic strength despite deterioration in the current account deficit (CAD), which in part has been due to an increase in gold imports. “Fitch considers India’s overall external position to be a relative rating strength. Foreign debt is moderate and RBI’s international reserves, which stood at $288 billion at the end of May, provide a cushion to absorb adverse external shocks
  • India’s investment-grade ratings, it said, are also underpinned by high domestic savings rates that limit the reliance on foreign savings for private investment and fiscal funding, as well as by a relative long maturity of government debt issued in its own currency
  • It also noted that the government has begun to address structural factors that have weakened the investment climate and growth prospects, notably regulatory uncertainty, delays in approvals of investment projects and supply bottlenecks in the power and mining sectors.