National
Rs.
580-cr. loss as Modi govt. favoured corporates: CAG
The Comptroller
and Auditor-General of India has come down heavily on the Gujarat government
and State
public sector undertakings
for causing a loss of nearly Rs. 580 crore to the exchequer by bestowing
“undue”
favours on large
corporate entities. Major industrial houses to which the Narendra Modi
government played
benefactor
included Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL), Essar Steel and Adani Power Ltd (APL),
said the CAG
report for the
year ended March 31, 2012.
AAP
is now a registered party
The Election
Commission has formally registered social activist Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi
Party (AAP) as
a political party.
This will pave the way for it to contest elections to the 70-member Delhi
Assembly whose
term ends on
December 17. During the Delhi polls, it may get a one-time concession of
choosing a common
symbol from among
the free symbols. Mr. Kejriwal, a former member of the India Against Corruption
movement, founded
by social activist Anna Hazare, launched the AAP on November 26, 2012, after he
fell
out with the
latter. The AAP has a 23-member national executive and Mr. Kejriwal is its
convener.
Stringent
anti-rape laws get President’s nod
President Pranab
Mukherjee has given his assent to stricter laws to check crime against women,
particularly
cases of sexual
assault. The Criminal Law [Amendment] Bill, 2013 was passed by the Lok Sabha on
19th
March, 2013, and
by the Rajya Sabha on 21st March, 2013. The President of India has accorded his
assent
to the Bill on 2nd
April, 2013 and it will now be called the Criminal Law [Amendment] Act, 2013.
The new
laws have
provisions for increased sentence for rape convicts, including life-term and
death sentence,
besides providing
for stringent punishment for offences such as acid attacks, stalking and
voyeurism.
Through the
revised Bill, the government has amended various sections of the Indian Penal
Code, the Code
of Criminal
Procedure, the Indian Evidence Act and the Protection of Children from Sexual
Offences Act. As
per the amended
law, a rape convict can be sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for a term not
less than 20
years, which may
extend to remainder of the convict’s natural life. It also provides for the
death sentence to
repeat offenders.
And for the first time, stalking and voyeurism have been defined as
non-bailable offences if
repeated for a
second time, while acid attack convicts can get a 10-year jail sentence.
Nod
for changes to Civil Services Examination
The government has
approved modifications to the Civil Services Examination, 2013. According to a
notification a
candidate can use any one regional language from the 8th Schedule of the
Constitution or
English as the medium
of writing the examination. The conditionality that there should be a minimum
of 25
candidates opting
for a medium and the requirement that the language should have been the medium
of
examination at the
graduation level have been dropped. Further, a candidate will be allowed to
take up
literature as an
optional subject (from 22 of the languages in the 8th Schedule and English)
without the
conditionality of
his/her graduation in the literature of that language. Similarly, the English
component (of 100
marks) from the
Essay Paper has been dropped and two qualifying papers of 300 marks each in any
Modern
Indian Language
(MIL) and in English have been restored. The Essay Paper will now be of 250
marks to be
written in the
language of candidate’s choice. Papers I and II will be only of a qualifying
nature — one in any
MIL and another in
English — of 300 marks each, while Paper III will be the compulsory Essay
Paper, with
no English
Comprehension test, to be written in the medium of the candidate’s choice. This
paper will carry
250 marks. There
will be four compulsory papers of General Studies of 250 marks each — Paper-IV
(Indian
Heritage &
Culture, History and Geography of the World and Society), Paper-V (Governance,
Constitution,
Polity, Social
Justice and International relations), Paper-VI (Technology, Economic
Development, Bio
Diversity,
Environment, Security and Disaster Management) and Paper-VII (Ethics, Integrity
and Aptitude).
U.S.
Navy Commander leaves for New Delhi
Vice-Admiral Scott
H. Swift, Commander of the United States Navy’s potent 7th
Fleet operating as part of its
Pacific Fleet,
concluded his two-day visit of India’s Southern Naval Command and left for New
Delhi. In India
to co-chair the
Indo-U.S. Navy Executive Steering Group, the Commander of the largest fleet of
the U.S.
Navy,
forward-deployed in Japan and South Korea, called on Vice-Admiral Satish Soni,
Flag Officer
Commanding-in-Chief
of the Southern Naval Command.
Maharashtra
drought man-made, says study
With 3,712 major,
minor and medium projects, Maharashtra has the highest number of dams in the
country;
yet its irrigation
coverage was 17.9 per cent in 2009-10. Its projects are plagued with delays and
cost
overruns. The
Maharashtra Economic Survey 2012-13, does not give any figure for irrigated
area, saying it is
not available.
Last year, this same figure had created a furore, since it had increased by a
mere 0.1 per cent
from 2000-01 when
it was 17.8 per cent, after a decade-long expenditure of nearly Rs 70,000
crore.
Questioning the severity
of the drought and the government’s claims, South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers
and People
(SANDRP), in its analysis, says that while the 1972 drought could be called a
natural calamity,
the 2012-13
drought is a disaster of water management, accompanied by corruption,
water-intensive
cropping patterns
and absence of a long-term view to manage water and drought.
Ibobi
assures Myanmar of help in health sector
A Myanmar
government team led by Power Minister U Kyaw Win called on Manipur Chief
Minister Okram
Ibobi Singh to
seek help in power, healthcare and improvement of trade. Soon after their
arrival the
delegates visited
the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences, a Union government undertaking, a
private
hospital and a
diagnostic centre in Imphal. Mr. Singh had assured the team, consisting of 11
members, of all
assistance to the
Myanmarese nationals in the health sector.
GRI
students bag national award
Two students of
Gandhigram Rural Institute have won the first prize with a cash award of
Rs.40,000 under
health science and
allied sciences category at the National Student Research Convention held in
Mumbai
recently. Ph. D.
student S. Karthigai Selvi and MCA student M. Raj Kumar said that their project
titled
‘radiological
support system of brain abnormality detection from MRI Scans’ was selected
under health
science category.
Two-day
APCON 2013 from May 16
The Indian
Institute of Materials Management (IIMM) has to host APCON 2013 (Asia-Pacific
conference), the
flagship event of
the International Federation of Purchasing and Supply Management (IFPSM), on
May 16
and 17 in
Bangalore. This event has to bring together top management executives and
supply chain
management (SCM)
professionals from around the world. The conference is back in India after 11
years.
Rashtrapati
Bhavan decks up to receive guests
Noted classical
singer of the Benaras Gharana Girija Devi, who was invited to perform at
Rashtrapati
Bhavan recently,
became the first guest to be hosted at the newly-refurbished Vivekananda Suite
in the
guest wing of the
President’s House.
Army
mountaineering expedition flagged off
Army Chief General
Bikram Singh flagged off a joint Indo-Nepal Army mountaineering expedition to
the
Mount Everest.
Katju
to set up ‘Court of Last Resort’
Asserting that a
large number of people, particularly minorities, languish in prisons as
undertrials for years, or
remain ‘unjustly
incarcerated’, Press Council of India (PCI) chairperson Justice Markandey Katju
has decided
to set up a ‘Court
of Last Resort’ to examine such cases. He noted that many such people were from
the
minority community
because of ‘suspicions and preconceived notions that all persons of that
community are
terrorists’.
International
Pak.
youth favour Shariah: survey
Shariah has
trumped democracy and military rule as the preferred option among the youth of
Pakistan in a
survey conducted
by the British Council, ahead of the coming elections. Of the 5,000 youngsters
mapped
across the
country, 38 per cent chose Islamic Shariah as the best political system for
Pakistan. While the
study “Pakistan
Next Generation Goes to the Ballot Box” reflects the deep disappointment with
democracy
among the youth,
with only 29 per cent opting for it, the preference for Shariah is primarily
because the
respondents do not
have a “direct experience of a non-democratic system of Islamic government”.
Shariah
was favoured for
its ability to advance moral and religious values. It is also thought to be the
best system for
giving people
their rights and freedom; for promoting tolerance; and making the country a
fairer one.
However, not many
expected it to improve security, a major concern. On the security front, the
military was
found to be the
best option and continues to enjoy a better acceptance than democracy with 32
per cent of
the respondents
voting for it. In fact, military rule was found to be most popular in the
restive province of
Balochistan
besides Sindh and Gilgit-Baltistan.
China,
Russia, Pak. discuss Afghanistan situation
Officials from
China, Russia and Pakistan held talks at Beijing to coordinate their positions
on Afghanistan
and said they
would back the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) grouping to play a
greater role as
Nato forces
prepare to withdraw in 2014. The talks followed a similar meeting India, China
and Russia held
in Moscow
recently, reflecting the delicate balancing act and increasingly complicated
regional dynamics as
different
countries look to push their interests in the lead up to 2014.
Indian,
Chinese varsities sign agreement
The Beijing
Institute of Technology, a government-run research university known for its
work on China’s
space programme
signed a first of its kind Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with
Karnataka-based
Manipal University
paving the way for closer collaboration on joint research projects. The MoU
says both
universities will
take forward exchanges of students and faculty, and issue dual degrees. They
will also
undertake
cooperative research and development activities.
Business and Economy:
Thousands
of shareholders sue RBS for $6 billion
Thousands of
investors in Royal Bank of Scotland launched a potential £4-billion ($6
billion, 4.7 billion euro)
claim against the
bank and its old bosses over a controversial 2008 shares sale conducted just
before its
state bailout.
Hassad
Food buys major stake in Bush Foods
Qatar-based
investment firm Hassad Food has acquired an undisclosed majority stake in New
Delhi-based
basmati rice
company Bush Foods Overseas Ltd., for an estimated $100 million. Hassad Food
Company is a
wholly-owned
subsidiary of Qatar Holding, which is part of Qatar's sovereign wealth fund
Qatar Investment
Authority (QIA).
It invests in agriculture and livestock sectors.
Science and Tech:
New
light on ‘dark matter’
An international
experiment aboard the International Space Station (ISS) reported the
observation of an
excess of
positrons in the cosmic ray flux, the source of which could be the elusive dark
matter. This forms
the most important
part of the first results from the experiment, called the Alpha Magnetic
Spectrometer
(AMS), which were
reported by the the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) at the meeting
of the
American
Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) at Boston, Massachusetts. The
mysterious dark
matter, which is
believed to account for a quarter of the universe’s mass-energy balance and is
distributed
isotropically,
invariant with respect to direction, in the space, can be observed indirectly
through its
gravitational
interaction with visible matter but is yet to be directly detected.
Sports:
IBL
to be held at six venues from June 24
The prestigious
Indian Badminton League (IBL), a star-studded event of the the Badminton
Association of
India (BAI) is to
be held from June 24 to July 14 at six venues, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore,
Hyderabad, Pune
and Lucknow. The
three-week long tournament, with prize money of Rs. 5.5 crore, will feature a
galaxy of
international
stars from China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea and Denmark, along with national
stars and
emerging players from India.
No comments:
Post a Comment