NATIONAL Railways may hike AC, first-class fares in express, special trains In the wake of increase in diesel prices, the Railway Ministry is planning to raise fares of AC and first-class travel in express and special trains. Passenger fares (second class), however, will not be touched. About Rs. 7,000 crore to Rs. 8,000 crore is spent on fuel and maintenance of trains per year. There has been significant increase in the fuel bill due to the rise in diesel prices. Work on the rail link from Banihal to Baramulla and Udhampur to Katra that would link Jammu with the rest of the country would be completed in a month. This would help pilgrims going to Vaishno Devi and surrounding areas reach their destination easily NSA planted bugs at Indian missions in D.C., U.N. Two of the most important nerve- centres of Indian diplomacy outside the country — the Permanent Mission of India at the United Nations and the embassy in Washington, DC — were targets of such sophisticated bugs implanted by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) that entire computer hard discs might have been copied by the American agency. The NSA selected India’s U.N. office and the embassy as “location target” for infiltrating their computers and telephones with hi-tech bugs, which might have given them access to vast quantities of Internet traffic, e- mails, telephone and office conversations and even official documents stored digitally The American officials claim that the surveillance was for preventing terrorist attacks. But the targeted spying of Indian diplomatic buildings could have been done for political and commercial reasons — not the core responsibility of the NSA. NSA eavesdropping may have done “extensive damage” to India’s stand on international issues ranging from Security Council reforms to peacekeeping operations Female education linked to under-5 mortality rate According to UNESCO , if all women in India had completed secondary education, the under-five mortality rate would be 61 per cent lower. India and Nigeria account for more than a third of child deaths worldwide. If all women in both countries had completed secondary education, the under-five mortality rate would have been 61 per cent lower in India and 43 per cent lesser in Nigeria, saving 1.35 million children’s lives. Simple solutions such as mosquito nets and clean water can prevent some of the worst child diseases, but only if mothers are taught to use them. Almost a quarter of child deaths in India are due to pneumonia and over one-tenth are due to diarrhoea, according to the WHO-UNICEF Report. If all women had attended secondary school, they would know the nutrients that children need, the hygiene rules that they should follow and they also would have a stronger voice in the home to ensure proper care. The analysis has been released in time for the UN General Assembly discussions on the post-2015 development agenda. UNESCO’s new analysis proves that in South and West Asia, and sub- Saharan Africa, nearly three million girls are married by the age 15 years — below the legal age of marriage. If all young women completed primary education, the number of child brides would be reduced by almost half a million. Completing secondary education would reduce that number by two million. a secondary, rather than a primary education, increases tolerance towards people of a different religion or those speaking a different language. According to Irina Bokova, Director- General of UNESCO –“The findings confirm more clearly than ever that education can transform lives and societies for the better” Our lives in danger, say sarpanches in J&K Representative of panches and sarpanches in Jammu and Kashmir, Shafiq Mir, on Tuesday has expressed apprehension of fresh militant attacks, holding the former Army chief General (retd.) V.K. Singh responsible for endangering the lives and properties of thousands of panchayat members. According to them, Gen. Singh has made reckless statements that have caused an extremely serious apprehension of militant attacks on more than 33,000 panches and sarpanches as the General had completely discredited and maligned the panchayat elections of 2011. In a recent interview, Gen. Singh had claimed that the successful panchayat elections in Jammu and Kashmir in 2011 were the “achievement” of his Technical Support Division, a crack military intelligence unit created by him. Govt. panel to promote excellence in research The Centre has set up a committee to create a framework for evaluation of research and rankings by promoting healthy competition among institutions, departments and individual researchers. The move follows a disappointing performance by India’s higher educational institutions in world rankings this year. The 18-member committee to improve research performance of academic institutions will be chaired by K. Vijay Raghavan, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, and will submit a report within three months. The committee will review the existing arrangement for funding of research — both core funding of research facilities and infrastructure and project funding in academic institutions. The aim is to identify gaps and ensure a more coordinated approach in research funding and develop a strategy for selective approach in allocation of research support to academic institutions. The committee will also develop a framework for excellence in research to ensure that increased funding supports the country’s most talented researchers and most effective research institutions. It also aims at ensuring that some of the institutions reach the global benchmarks in research performance. Supreme Court has no power to extend tenure of retiring judge The Attorney General G.E. Vahanvati has argued that, the Supreme Court in exercise of its powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to do substantial justice cannot extend the tenure of a retiring judge as such an order would be in conflict with the statutory provisions. According to Vahanvati, the retirement age of judges are fixed as per statutory provisions. One can’t pick and choose a person and give extension to him. The High Court can’t do it as there is a public policy behind the retirement age of a judge. When there is a law, the order passed by the court should be consistent with the law. There might be a litigant who would say that, his case is pending before a High Court judge who is due to retire at the age of 62 and hence his tenure should be extended to complete his case. This will set a bad precedent. Central authority to monitor indecent representation of women suggested In the recent report on Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Amendment Bill, 2012 , the Parliamentary panel has recommended setting up of a central regulatory authority to monitor indecent representation of women. The creation of such an authority as envisaged by the National Commission for Women would be quite appropriate in effectively tackling such cases. The committee has pointed out that having a central authority would also allay the apprehensions expressed by stakeholders regarding subjective interpretations of ‘indecent representation’ by police officers leading to unnecessary harassment. The committee was of the view that society in general and women in particular needed to be made aware of the rampant indecent representation of women. The Bill seeks to broaden the scope of the law to cover the audio-visual media and content in electronic form prescribing stringent penalties which would act as deterrent to violation of the law. INTERNATIONAL Siege of mall in Nairobi ‘under control’ Kenyan authorities said on Tuesday they were in complete control after a four-day battle with militants allied to the al-Qaeda affiliated al- Shabaab, holed up with hostages in an upscale shopping complex in Nairobi. Al-Shabaab spokespersons have denied the claim. The Somali militant group has maintained that the attack is in response to the presence of 4,000 Kenyan troops in Somalia. The official toll far stands at 62 killed and 175 injured, but numbers are expected to rise once rescue teams gain access to the building. Child labour has fallen by a third: ILO The number of child workers worldwide has dropped by a third over the past 13 years, according to a report from the International Labour Organisation (ILO). But campaigners say that protecting children from hazardous work and long hours remains a major challenge, with families in poor countries such as Bangladesh heavily reliant on the income they get from sending children to work. There are 168 million children working in situations that fit the ILO definition of child labour. That is “work undertaken by children below the appropriate legal minimum working age”, based on its minimum age convention. According to the ILO, most of the progress on child labour was made between 2008 and 2012, when the number of children classed as labourers worldwide fell from 215 million to 168 million. The report is being launched before a major conference on child labour in Brasilia, Brazil’s federal capital, on October 8. One key focus of the ILO’s work in the coming year will be the informal sector, including small-scale manufacturers to children working in a one-room house, roadside jewelers to children living with their family on a farm and working long hours during the harvest. The ILO report documents the number and type of actions over child labour taken around the world, including monitoring mechanisms, measures taken to push for universal education, changes in the legal age for working in some countries and stricter laws brought in to tackle slavery. ECONOMICS Coal block auction policy for private firms gets Govt nod The Cabinet, on Tuesday, approved the methodology for auctioning coal blocks, providing for upfront and production-linked payments and benchmarking of coal sale prices. According to an official statement, coal blocks will be put for auction after the Environment Ministry reviews them, and bidders have to agree to a minimum work programme. The methodology provides for auctioning the fully explored coal blocks, and also provides for fast- tracking the auction by exploration of regionally explored blocks The policy will ensure greater transparency. It provides for production-linked payment on a rupee per tonne basis, plus a basic upfront payment of 10 per cent of the intrinsic value of the coal block. The intrinsic value would be calculated on the basis of net present value (NPV) of the block arrived at through the discounted cash flow (DCF) method. To avoid short-term volatility, the average sale price will be calculated by taking prices of the past five years. For the regulated power sector, a 90 per cent discount would be provided on the intrinsic value. This would help rationalise power tariffs, the government said. To ensure firm commitment, there will be an agreement between the Ministry and the bidder to perform minimum work programmes at all stages. There will be development stage obligations in terms of milestones to be achieved such as getting mining leases and obtaining environment/ forest clearances, while the bidder will have to give performance guarantees. RBI fixes cut-off price at Rs. 82 for inflation indexed bonds The Reserve Bank of India set the cut-off price at Rs. 82 on inflation- indexed bonds (yield-to maturity 3.6624 per cent) for a notified amount of Rs. 1,000 crore at the bond auction held on Tuesday. The RBI received 83 competitive bids for an amount of Rs. 2,102 crore. It accepted 46 bids for an amount of Rs. 960 crore, and the devolvement on primary dealers amounted to Rs. 40 crore. At the special repo auction held on Tuesday for purchase of securities by the RBI with a fixed rate of 10.25 per cent, the Central Bank did not receive any bids. LAF auction- under the liquidity adjustment facility, the RBI conducted one-day reverse repo auction for sale of securities at a fixed rate of 6.50 per cent. CCEA nod for shale gas, oil exploration under nomination regime The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA ), on Tuesday, approved the shale gas and oil exploration programme to be executed by national oil companies (NOCs) on acreages under the nomination regime. This policy will allow NOCs to carry out exploration and exploitation of unconventional hydro-carbon resources, particularly shale gas and oil, in their already awarded onland petroleum exploration licence/ petroleum mining lease (PEL/PML) acreages under the nomination regime. The NOCs shall apply for grant of shale gas and oil rights in their interested PEL/PML acreages, and are required to undertake a mandatory minimum work programme. Royalty, cess and taxes would be payable at par with conventional oil/ gas being produced from the respective areas. It is well acknowledged that production requirements and profile for shale oil and gas were different from conventional gas and oil. In view of this and due to the fact that the technologies required for production have been developed in the recent past, it was felt that a policy be put in place to achieve early development of these resources and to address issues arising out of E&P activities in shale gas and oil.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 00:02:06 +0000
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