21 November 2013
·
India and Vietnam on Wednesday reached an
understanding on enhancement of bilateral ties in the areas of defence, energy
and investments.
·
In the presence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
and the visiting general secretary, Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu
Trong, Defence Secretaries of the two countries signed an agreement on the
protection of information — the enabling clause will lead to the transfer of
defence hardware as well as training of 500 Vietnamese submariners, a process
that has already begun.
·
Dr. Singh said, “We reaffirmed the importance of
defence and security cooperation and agreed to strengthen it further. India
will continue to assist Vietnam in modernisation and training of its defence
and security forces, including through a $100-million line of credit for
defence purchases.”
·
Vietnam has offered India seven oil blocks in
South China Sea, including three on an exclusive basis, and joint prospecting
in some Central Asian countries with which both Hanoi and New Delhi have good
political ties.
·
The MoU on oil exploration is for three years
and its contents have not been made available. Hence it could not be
ascertained whether the allocation will fall foul of China which lays claim to
a portion of South China Sea that has been under Vietnam’s jurisdiction.
·
China had not objected to Vietnam allotting the
lucrative Block 6.1 to India during the Cold War years in Nam Con Son Basin of
South China Sea. But it objected to India taking up exploration in blocks 127
and 128 in Phu Kanh Basin. Chinese objections have included demarches, pressure
on companies not to sell equipment to India and the alleged buzzing of an
Indian warship that had transited through the disputed portion of South China
Sea.
·
On the economic front, an MoU formalised
Vietnam’s decision to award Tata Power a $1.8-billion thermal power project
after a failed bid by the same company to set up a $5-billion steel plant. An
air services agreement, which was also among the eight to be signed, could lead
to direct flights giving a boost to trade and tourism.
·
On November 21, 1963, as the sun slid into the
Arabian Sea, a small American-built rocket was fired from a newly established
launching station near Trivandrum (now Thiruvananthapuram).
·
Reaching a height of almost 200 km, it released
a cloud of sodium vapour that glowed in the rays of the setting sun and was
visible from places far afield.
·
Although few who watched from the ground would
have believed it at the time, the rocket’s flight heralded the beginning of a
long and difficult journey that would establish India as a space power.
·
Today, the country has been able to embark on
its first interplanetary voyage with the launch of the Mars Orbiter probe.
·
Fifty years ago, however, a small rocket being
fired from southern Kerala was an insignificant event. Sputnik, the world’s
first artificial satellite, had gone into orbit just six years previously.
·
The first human went into space four years
later, setting off a race to the moon by arch Cold War adversaries, the United
States and the Soviet Union.
·
Although the space age was still in its infancy,
Vikram Ambalal Sarabhai, scion of a wealthy, well-connected business family and
an accomplished scientist himself, quickly perceived how satellites and the
services they provide could benefit a poor country.
·
Moreover, he believed that creating the
capability to design, build and launch those satellites would contribute to
India’s technological development and economic progress.
·
It was a vision he shared with his close friend
and mentor Homi J. Bhabha, who initiated the country’s nuclear programme.
·
The early efforts in space had Bhabha’s backing
and were carried out under the protective umbrella of the Department of Atomic
Energy.
·
Launching sounding rockets was just the first
step. Although Sarabhai did not live to see it, an Indian-built launch vehicle,
SLV-3, put a satellite into orbit for the first time in July 1980. India now
makes its own satellites in the three application areas identified by him –
weather, earth observation and communication.
·
The idea of establishing a rocket launching
station in Kerala came about because scientists in India and abroad wished to
explore phenomena that occur high up in the atmosphere above the magnetic
equator.
·
Data about it could be gathered by using
sounding rockets that carried instruments for making various measurements
during the ascent. (The word ‘sounding’ is a nautical term to denote taking
measurements from a vessel.)
·
The magnetic equator passes through southern
Kerala. The choice of where to have the launch station narrowed to two places –
one near Kollam and the other a short distance from Trivandrum.
·
Sarabhai was much struck by the beauty of the
former location. But there was a problem – its name. ‘Vellana Thuruthu’ would
translate into English as ‘white elephant island,’ a colleague explained to
him. “We steered clear of it for fear of it becoming a national joke,” he later
remarked.
·
On January 21, 1963, Lakshmi N. Menon, a
Minister of State in Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s Cabinet, replying on his
behalf to a question in Parliament, announced that India would be locating its
first rocket-launching facility at Thumba, a fishing village close to
Trivandrum.
·
Sarabhai, with a wide circle of friends and
acquaintances in international scientific circles, was able to get help from
the United States, France, and the Soviet Union in establishing the new
station.
·
In February 1968, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
dedicated the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) to the United
Nations. Initially, the Thumba facility launched foreign sounding rockets.
·
The first Indian sounding rocket flew in
November 1967.
·
The Rohini 75 (RH-75) was only about a metre
long and weighed less than 7 kg.
·
The indigenous rockets grew bigger, more
powerful and became more sophisticated. Experience with those sounding rockets
set the stage for the next step that Sarabhai envisaged – making launch
vehicles that could put satellites into orbit.
·
The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle that carried
the Mars Orbiter into space stood 44 metres high on the launch pad and weighed
320 tonnes. The Indian space programme has come a long way.
·
India is today able to build and launch its own satellites. It all began 50 years
ago from a coastal village near Thiruvananthapuram
- · British biochemist Frederick Sanger, the “father of genomics” and the only person to win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry twice, following his death at the age of 95. Mr. Sanger first won the prize in 1958 for his work on the structure of proteins, notably insulin, and shared it with two others in 1980 for pioneering developments in DNA sequencing that are still being used today.
22 November 2013
·
RH 200 takes to thesky to
commemoratethe 50th anniversaryof the TERLS in Thiruvananthapuramon Thursday On
November 21, 1963, a small U.S.-built rocket was fired from Thumba
·
India and France will spearhead an
international, 10-member country project to study the impact of melting polar
ice caps and glaciers on the monsoon.
The other countries in the project include the United States of America,
the United Kingdom, Japan, South Africa, Brazil and Germany.
- · A 4.4-billion-year-old ‘black beauty’ rock discovered in the Sahara Desert may be the oldest Martian meteorite ever found, scientists say. A 4.4-billion-year-old ‘black beauty’ rock discovered in the Sahara Desert may be the oldest Martian meteorite ever found, scientists say.
23 November 2013
·
World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen unseated five-time
world chess champion Viswanathan Anand in Chennai on Friday. The 22-year-old
Norwegian, who needed half-a-point to claim the title, drew the 10th game to
win the 12-game match 6.5-3.5. It was Anand’s first loss in a world title match
since 2007.
·
cyclonic storm ‘Helen’ left a trail of
destruction while crossing the coast close to south of Machilipatnam in Andhra
Pradesh on Friday afternoon.
24 November 2013
·
Environment ministers and officials at the
United Nations climate change talk straining through 24 hours of non-stop
negotiations in Warsaw stared at the limited choices before them – either a
complete collapse of the negotiations or the passage of such a weak set of
decisions that no country would lose or gain much.The Empowered Committee of
State Finance Ministers on Goods & Services Tax (GST) has recommended that
an independent mechanism also be created for the purpose of compensations to
States that will lose out on revenue due to the introduction of proposed levy.
The States have demanded that the Centre settle the Central Sales Tax
compensation claims immediately. Though the Union budget for 2013-14 provided
Rs.9000 crore for settling of the CST compensation claims relating to
2010-2011, the Centre is yet to disburse it. committee headed by Jammu &
Kashmir Finance Minister A. R. Rather has unanimously rejected the Centre’s
proposal to enter GST into the Union and State Lists in the Constitution,
saying it is unnecessary as the clause 246A in the Bill already provides the States
and the Centre the powers to levy the GST. “The States have some apprehensions
about this,” Mr. Rather said.
The committee has rejected the Centre’s proposal to include alcohol and
petroleum in the GST. It also rejected the UPA government’s proposal on powers
to the Centre to notify “declared goods.” “A provision on declared goods would
have empowered the Centre to lower GST rates on any item without consulting
states,” Mr. Rather said.
The States have also rejected the Centre's move to exclude petroleum and
alcohol from the list of products exempt from the GST.
The committee recommended that the special status enjoyed by J&K under
Article 370 of the Constitution be maintained even in the case of GST so the
proposed Constitutional Amendment should not be applied to it. “In the case of
J&K Article 368 of the Constitution prescribes how Constitutional
Amendments are to be made and for the GST that is what will have to be
followed,” Mr. Rather said. “It could be taken up after the GST Amendment is
cleared.”
·
Environment ministers and officials at the
United Nations climate change talk straining through 24 hours of non-stop
negotiations in Warsaw stared at the limited choices before them – either a
complete collapse of the negotiations or the passage of such a weak set of
decisions that no country would lose or gain much. The talks had to provide a
time line against which the developed countries were to ratchet up their
contributions to reach the promised $ 100 billion annual fund by 2020 for the
poor countries to fight climate change. the negotiations were to draw up a plan
for how the developed countries would increase their emission reduction cuts
between now and 2020 and provide funds to the poor countries for adaptation as
well as taking greater emission reduction burden upon themselves. At the last,
the negotiators from 193 countries were supposed to draw out the rough sketch
and elements of a new global climate change compact to be signed in 2015 and to
become operational in 2020.
·
Indian director Shubhashish Bhutiani’s short
film “Kush” has been selected by the Academy in the short-list of 10
live-action shorts that will advance in the Oscar race.
The climate crisis of the 21st century has been caused largely by
just 90 companies, which among them produced nearly two-thirds of the
greenhouse gas emissions generated since the dawning of the industrial age, new
research suggests. amounting to about 914 gigatonne CO2 emissions, according to
the research. All but seven of the 90 were energy companies producing oil, gas
and coal. The remaining seven were cement manufacturers. The list of 90
companies included 50 investor-owned firms — mainly oil companies with widely
recognised names such as Chevron, Exxon, BP, and Royal Dutch Shell and coal
producers such as British Coal Corp, Peabody Energy and BHP Billiton.
Some 31 of the companies that made the list were state-owned
companies such as Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Aramco, Russia’s Gazprom and Norway’s
Statoil.
Nine were government-run industries, producing mainly coal in
countries such as China, the former Soviet Union, North Korea and Poland, the
host of this week’s talks.
·
Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel on Friday released
the Pentagon’s first “Arctic Strategy,” designed to safeguard U.S. security
interests and the region’s environment. The Pentagon’s Arctic strategy places a
priority on preparations to detect, deter, prevent and defeat threats to the
United States even as the nation “will continue to exercise U.S. sovereignty in
and around Alaska,”
25
November 2013
·
BREAKTHROUGH:(From left) Iranian Foreign
Minister Mohammad JavadZarif, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, U.S. Secretary
of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and French Foreign
Minister Laurent Fabius, during the announcement of the agreement, in Geneva
·
Mount Sinabung spews volcanic ash in Karo in
western Indonesia on Sunday. Authorities raised the alert status to the highest
level
26
November 2013
·
The severe cyclonic storm ‘Lehar’ over southeast
Bay of Bengal lay centred over southeast Bay of Bengal about 1,050 km
east-southeast of Kakinada and 980 km southeast of Kalingapatnam on Monday
evening.
·
Marking the beginning of the utilisation of the
vast network of the country’s waterways for bulk movement of goods, two barges
carrying coal were flagged off — here on Monday by Union Shipping Minister G.K.
Vasan — through National Waterway 1 (which comprises the
Ganga-Bhagirathi-Hooghly River System).
27 November 2013
·
A CBI special court on Tuesday awarded life
imprisonment to dentist couple Nupur and Rajesh Talwar for the murder of their
daughter Aarushi and domestic help Hemraj at their flat in Sector 25 in Noida
in 2008.
·
Ten days after it was commissioned into the
Indian Navy at the North Russian shipyard of Sevmash at Severodvinsk, INS
Vikramaditya left the yard’s pier, setting course for its homeport at Karwar in
Karnataka
·
Railway Minister Mallikarjun Kharge on Tuesday
appointed the former Railway Board chairman, Vivek Sahai, as his adviser. Mr.
Sahai was board chairman during Mamata Banerjee’s tenure as Railway Minister
and held the additional charge of member-traffic.
·
Prince Harry has arrived in Antarctica ahead of
a nearly 322—km difficult trek to the South Pole to raise money for injured
army veterans.
·
China on Tuesday announced plans to launch its
third lunar probe early next month, which will, according to officials, attempt
to carry out the first “soft landing” on the Moon by any nation in more than
three decades.
·
The Chang’e-3 probe will carry a moon rover –
named Jade Rabbit, or Yutu in Chinese – and conduct a soft-landing on the lunar
surface in the middle of December. The rover, which takes its name from a
popular Chinese mythological story about a rabbit that lives on the moon, will
spend three months exploring the surface. Media reports said this would mark
the first “soft landing” on the moon since 1976, when the former Soviet Union
achieved the feat.
28 November 2013
Ø
The Kanchi Sankaracharya, Sri Jayendra
Saraswathi, and the junior Acharya, Sri Vijayendra Saraswathi, were acquitted
by a Sessions Court here on Wednesday in the Sankararaman murder case, bringing
an eight-year trial to a close.
Ø
Pakistan Prime
Minister Muhammed Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday promoted and appointed Lt. Gen.
Raheel Sharif as army chief.
Ø
Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA), the
national higher education mission, is a way to provide funding to larger number
of institutions. The funding will be based on performance indicators relevant
to students, faculty, and research, H. Devaraj, Vice-Chairman of University
Grants Commission (UGC), said here on Tuesday. Out of the Rs. 50,000 crore that
was allotted for higher education, UGC would get Rs. 25,000 crore and RUSA
would get the other half. RUSA would be spread over two plan periods – the XII
and XIII and is seen as a new approach to bring into its fold many institutions
for funding purposes
Ø
Ø
Three days after China announced the setting up
of an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) to bolster its claims over parts
of the disputed East China Sea, a persisting lack of clarity about how Beijing
plans to enforce its control over the contested area has risked fuelling
regional tensions, analysts say.
Ø
The President on Wednesday approved the
appointment of Justice Tassaduq Jillani as the next chief justice of the
Supreme Court, according to official sources.
29
November 2013
Ø
NASA is planning to grow plants and vegetables —
such as turnip and basil — on the Moon, by 2015, to understand whether humans
can live and work on the Earth’s natural satellite.
30 November 2013
Ø
India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at the
rate of 4.8 per cent during July-September 2013,
Ø
Gujarat Governor Kamla Beniwal on Friday
approved the appointment of Justice (Retired) D.P. Buch as the Lokayukta,
paving the way for filling up of the post which has been lying vacant for the
past 10 years.
Ø
Comet ISON, touted as “comet of the century,”
has fizzled out during its swing around the sun, leaving a trail of dust
rolling through space and disappointing stargazers.
Ø
The Argentinian government has dramatically
increased the pressure on British companies drilling for oil off the disputed
Falkland Islands by passing laws that could impose 15-year jail sentences on
their executives. The Argentinian Congress has also agreed to levy £100 million
fines on companies involved in “illegal exploration and exploitation” off the
Falklands, or Malvinas as they are known in Argentina. Premier Oil, Rockhopper
Exploration and Falklands Oil and Gas are among the British-based firms who
have been actively looking for oil and gas in the area.
Ø
Tehelka editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal was
arrested close to 9.30 p.m. on Saturday on charges of sexually assaulting a
young colleague after Sessions Court judge Anuja Prabhudesai rejected his anticipatory
bail application.
Ø
Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife Gursharan Kaur,
upon their arrival at Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi on
Saturday. Apart from New Delhi, the royal couple will visit Chennai during
their six-day trip.
Ø
China will on Sunday night launch a lunar probe
that will attempt to carry out the first “soft landing” on the Moon in almost
four decades, underlining the rapidly growing capabilities of the country’s
ambitious space programme. The Chang’e-3 lunar probe, which will be
launched from the Xichang centre in western China at 11 pm IST on Sunday night
(1.30 am Monday morning local time), will carry a Moon rover that will survey
the lunar surface and explore for natural resources. Chinese officials have highlighted the launch as
the most difficult objective yet of the space programme, as it involves
carrying out the first “soft landing” on the Moon since the Soviet Union landed
a probe in 1976. Cen Zheng, the rocket system commander-in-chief
of the mission, said on Saturday engineers had adopted new “technologies of
high-precision guidance and control” and a first-of-its-kind transmission
system for remote sensing. The Chang’e-3 mission, if successful, will land
on the moon in mid-December, following which the Jade Rabbit rover — or Yutu in
Chinese, named after a popular Chinese mythological story about a rabbit that
lives on the Moon — will spend three months exploring the surface. Only the U.S. and the erstwhile Soviet Union
have carried out soft landings, and no country has done so since 1976.
2 December 2013
Ø
With India’s spacecraft to Mars slung out of its
earth-bound orbit in the early hours of December 1 and towards the sun-centric
orbit, its 300-day voyage to the Red Planet has begun. The Indian Space
Research Organisation (ISRO) accomplished this tricky manoeuvre called
Trans-Mars Injection (TMI) of the spacecraft by giving commands to the
spacecraft’s propulsion system to start firing at 00.49 hours on Sunday. The
propulsion system came up with a cameo performance for 23 minutes, imparting
the required velocity to the spacecraft. Eight control thrusters on board also
erupted into life, aiding the propulsion system, called 440 Newton engine.
Ø
Gopal Kharvi, a 37-year-old fisherman from
Kodikanyana village in Udupi district, created a Guinness World Record by
swimming the farthest distance “wearing handcuffs and leg irons”, here on
Sunday. He swam 3.07 kilometres from St. Mary’s Island to Malpe Beach wearing
handcuffs and leg shackles.
Ø
Poet K. Satchithanandan has been selected for
the first Kamala Surayya award instituted by the Gulf Madhyamam daily.
3 December
2013
Ø
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who recently acquired
the Washington Post newspaper for a song, announced on Sunday during a
prime time interview to the CBS news channel that his company was working on
getting products to customers in 30 minutes or less using unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs). According to Mr. Bezos, “Octocopters” would pick up customers’
boxed orders from a “fulfilment centre” and then use GPS coordinates to carry
it to the customer’s address and drop it in the front yard of the house.
Ø
The Current Account Deficit (CAD) of the country
has narrowed down sharply to $5.2 billion, or 1.2 per cent of the Gross
Domestic Product (GDP), for the second quarter — July to September — in the
current financial year.
Ø
a section of Japanese opinion, including senior
Ministers, wants India to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
India has been averse to this idea and wants to sign a civil nuclear deal with
Japan on the basis of its existing strong anti-proliferation credentials. On
the first full day of official engagements, the Emperor laid flowers at Rajghat
followed by a meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. the Emperor visited
Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Centre for East Asian Studies.
4 December 2013
Ø
Ø
Though the Centre planned to garner Rs.40,000
crore in 2013-14 from minority stake sale in PSUs, so far it has managed to
collect only Rs.1,325 crore through stake sale in six PSUs.
Ø
The government has been cautious in its approach
while dealing with the CIL stake sale as trade unions are opposing the move.
The government originally planned to divest 10 per cent in CIL, but after stiff
opposition from the unions, it lowered it to five per cent.Similarly, the
Centre is also wary of unfavourable conditions in the stock market while going
for disinvestment, fearing that it might not be able to achieve its targets. The
government also plans to sell residual stake in Hindustan Zinc Ltd. and Bharat
Aluminium Company Ltd.
Ø
United States Trade Representative Ambassador
Michael Froman, who is expected to land in Bali Tuesday night for the Ninth WTO
Ministerial Conference, has sought a meeting with Commerce Minister Anand
Sharma.
Ø
The Supreme Court on Tuesday directed all States
to put in place by March 31, 2014 draft rules for regulating sale of acids and
other corrosive substances. By a July 18 order, the court had prohibited over-the-counter
sale of acid, unless the seller kept a log to record transactions
Ø
Scientists from the Structural Biology
Laboratory of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) have shown
the precise mechanism through which all organisms, including human beings,
exclude D-amino acids from protein synthesis. Amino acids are ‘chiral’
molecules and have two different forms — called D and L, which are mirror
images. An enzyme called DTD was responsible for excluding D-amino acids from
infiltrating into proteins during their synthesis. The study revealed one of
the fundamental processes in evolution of life.
Ø
The Centre will have the powers to step in to
decide the sharing of water resources and assets in the river basins between
Andhra Pradesh and proposed Telangana after the bifurcation, if the two are
unable to do so through a mutual agreement within specified time.
Ø
The Navy, wanted to give life extension to four
Kilo-class (Sindhughosh class) and two HDW (Shishumar class) submarines “to
plug the gaps of reduction in its conventional submarine fleet.”
Ø
The Prime Minister was inaugurating the 8th Asia
Gas Partnership Summit during which he dedicated GAIL India Ltd.’s
1,000-km-long Dabhol-Bangalore gas pipeline to the nation. The pipeline
connects South India to the national gas grid for the first time.
Ø
Iconic Indian Naval Ship (INS) Vikrant will soon
go under the hammer. The Defence Ministry has decided to auction the aircraft
carrier in the open market. If anyone wants to convert the ship into a museum then
the Navy will help them. The last date of auction would be December 14.
Ø
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on
Tuesday, allowed holding companies or core investment companies (CICs) to raise
funds through external commercial borrowings (ECB) for project use in special
purpose vehicles (SPVs) involved in infrastructure sector.
China’s yuan currency overtook the euro in October, becoming the
second-most used currency in trade finance, global transaction services
organisation SWIFT said. The market share of yuan usage in trade finance, or
letters of credit and collection, grew to 8.66 per cent in October. That
improved from 1.89 per cent in January, 2012. The yuan, also known as the
renminbi, now ranks behind the U.S. dollar, which remains the leading currency
with a share of 81.08 per cent.The top five countries using the yuan for trade
finance in October were China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Germany and Australia.
5 December 2013
Ø
After being on the run for almost two months,
self-styled godman Asaram Bapu’s son Narayan Sai, accused in a rape case, has
been nabbed by a team of Delhi Police from Punjab. At the time of arrest, the
41-year-old ‘bearded’ Sai was trying to pass off as a turbaned Sikh.
Ø
Microplastic particles, measuring less than 5mm
in size, have been accumulating in the oceans since the 1960s and are now the
most abundant form of solid-waste pollution on Earth.
Ø
EU anti-trust regulators fined six financial
institutions, including Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and Citigroup, a
record total of 1.71 billion euro ($2.3 billion) on Wednesday for rigging
financial benchmarks. The other banks penalised are Societe Generale, JPMorgan
and brokerage RP Martin. Deutsche Bank received the biggest fine of 725.36
million euro.
6 December 2013
The Union Cabinet on Thursday night approved a bill for the
creation of a Telangana state with 10 districts, paving the way for the
bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh to give birth to the country’s 29th state.
Telangana will have 10 districts and the rest of Andhra Pradesh will have 13
districts; Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation area will remain the common
capital for both states for a period not exceeding 10 years; an expert
committee will identify the alternative capital for the residuary State of
Andhra Pradesh within 45 days of the gazette notification; a joint public
service commission will be in place for the two States; both States will have
special status under Article 371-D of the Constitution for equitable
opportunities. The Governor of Telangana will have a special responsibility for
security of life, liberty and property of all those who reside in the common
capital area. The Governor may be assisted by two Advisers to be appointed by
the Union Government. While the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council will have 50
seats, Telangana will have 40. There will be seven Rajya Sabha seats from
Telangana and 11 from Andhra Pradesh. There will be 17 Lok Sabha MPs from
Telangana and 25 from Andhra Pradesh. Telangana will have 119 Assembly seats
and Andhra Pradesh 175 seats. Both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana will get
special economic packages for development of backward regions. All tax
incentives will continue for the two states. National-level institutions such
as IITs and IIMs and an AIIMS will be set up in Andhra Pradesh to ensure that
careers of students do not get affected. All educational facilities in
Hyderabad will continue for another 10 years under existing system Singareni
Collieries in which Andhra Pradesh has 51 per cent stake will be given to
Telangana and the Centre will continue to hold its share of 49 per cent.
Polavaram project will be declared a national project and will be financed and
executed entirely by the Centre. There will be two separate boards for Krishna
and Godavari rivers. Both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana would have a common
Governor for 10 years.
Ø
In a last-ditch effort to salvage the global
trade talks, WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo has called an urgent meeting
of the Trade Ministers of the U.S., India and Indonesia to end the impasse over
the food security issue.
Ø
A Rs. 100-crore nano park, complete with an
incubation centre and an institute for nanoscience, will take shape on the
outskirts of Bangalore. It is being funded by the Union government’s Nano
Mission.
Ø
Over one million people will benefit from the
Asian Development Bank (ADB)-supported flood control programme along the
Brahmaputra river, the first tranche of which is likely to be completed by May
2014. The $150 million project to protect the urban and rural areas along the
Brahmaputra river in Assam will cover areas of Palasbari-Gumi, Kaziranga and
Dibrugarh in the State. About 7 per cent of the land in the State’s 17
districts has been lost because of river erosion over the past 50 years. Nearly
23.91 lakh people were affected by floods during 2012 which also damaged about
2.55 lakh hectares of crop areas and claimed 112 lives.
Ø
A complex plan to destroy Syria’s stockpile of
chemical weapons, has been finalised, which, once implemented will bring the
upcoming talks in Geneva to steer its political transition into sharper focus.
The extricated chemical weapons will be taken aboard a Danish ship docked in
Syria’s Mediterranean port of Latakia. This ship will then transfer its
hazardous cargo to Cape Ray, a specialised American naval vessel that is
equipped to destroy chemical agents. The transfer of the weapons could take
place either on the high seas or at another port outside Syria. Sigrid Kaag,
the head of the U.N. mission for the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons,
said “there are factors beyond our control” that could interfere with efforts
to eliminate the 1,000-tonne chemical weapon stockpile by mid-2014.
Ø
South Korean shipbuilder Samsung Heavy
Industries has floated a tanker-shaped vessel tagged as the world’s largest “floating
facility” with a length of 1,601-feet
floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) platform — named “Prelude” — was set in
the water on November 30. The vessel
cannot be described as a “ship” as it is unable to move under its own steam and
must be towed.
7 December 2013
Ø
Nelson Mandela, the towering figure of Africa’s
struggle for freedom and a hero to millions around the world, has died at the
age of 95. South Africa’s first democratically elected President was in the
midst of his family at home in Johannesburg. It was a transcendent act of
forgiveness after spending 27 years in prison, 18 of them on Robben Island,
that will assure his place in history. He led the African National Congress to
victory in the country’s first multiracial election in 1994. Mr. Mandela was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
Ø
India has had its way on the Bali Package at the
Ninth Ministerial of the World Trade Organisation here. The draft Ministerial
Decision put up for endorsement to the member-countries is the draft India submitted;
it takes care of India’s position on both food security and trade facilitation.
The draft proposes an interim mechanism to safeguard minimum support prices to
farmers against WTO caps till a permanent solution is adopted. Food Security
Law may push India’s minimum support prices above WTO limits, but interim
mechanism provides safeguards till WTO rules are corrected Agreement on Trade
Facilitation could boost India’s exports. India spearheads first agreement in
the nine Ministerials held after the Doha Round. India gains global leadership
by getting a crucial poor-rich country imbalance corrected on a multilateral
forum Support subsidies to poor farmers across all developing countries get
safeguards against WTO rules With Bali outcomes, Doha Round and therefore WTO
remain alive. Success a tribute to Nelson Mandela, says Anand Sharma.
Ø
The AP States Reorganisation Bill 2013 was
referred to the President on Friday, a day after it was cleared by the Union
Cabinet.
Ø
After almost two years of testy ties, India and
Maldives will seek to repair their relationship in the run-up to the visit by
the newly elected President, Abdulla Yameen, from December 23 to 25, according
to sources in the government. The process will begin next week during the visit
of Maldives Defence Minister Col. (retd.) Mohamed Nazim when India will
formally hand over an indigenously made helicopter for surveillance and domain
awareness operations in northern Maldives. India has already gifted Maldives an
advanced light helicopter (ALH) for its southern most island Addu. This ALH
will be for the northern most inhabited island. his visit could also see the
gifting of a landing craft to Maldives. both sides would be signing a package
of measures to resume projects that include the construction of a national
police academy, refurbishing of the Indira Gandhi Hospital in Male and setting
up a faculty for teaching tourism and hospitality.
8 December 2013
Ø
NONE
9 December 2013
Ø
The BJP has swept Rajasthan, and retained
Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. In Delhi it emerged as the single largest
party, five short of a clear majority. Here, Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party
(AAP) made a stunning debut, winning 28 seats, marking the end of 15 years of
uninterrupted Congress rule in the national capital.
Ø
Former NSG commando Surender Singh, who was
severely injured during 26/11 Mumbai attack while flushing out militants from
the Taj hotel, won from the Delhi Cantt seat on Aam Aadmi Party ticket.
With the
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) winning 28 of the 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly
elections, the Election Commission is all set to recognise it as a ‘State
party.’ The party was registered as a political party only in March this year. To
get recognition as a State party, all the candidates set up by the party
together should get a minimum of eight per cent of the valid votes polled in
the entire State or secure a minimum of six per cent of the total votes polled
and one Assembly seat for every 25 seats in that State. The AAP, which
was allotted “broom” as the election symbol by the Commission, will now have
the choice of retaining it as the party’s permanent election symbol or design
its own symbol provided it is within the rules and regulations of the
Commission. The EC recognition would mean that the AAP can participate in the
all-party meetings convened by the EC/the State/Central governments, get a
permanent common symbol for all their contestants, and can address the voters
through the All India Radio and Doordarshan during poll. If a party is
recognised as a “State Party” in four or more States, then it will
automatically become a national party. It will lose the recognition if it
performs poorly in the subsequent polls.
Ø
Egypt said today it has recovered a statue of
pharaoh Tutankhamun’s sister looted from the southern Mallawi museum during
riots by supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi. The 32-centimetre
limestone statue of Ankhesamon, sister of the famous boy king and daughter of
pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled around 1,500 BC, was stolen on August 14.
Ø
President Pranab Mukherjee will lead the delegation that will
represent India at the memorial service for former South African President and
anti-apartheid crusader Nelson Mandela on Monday night. The delegation will
include UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha
Sushma Swaraj, Union Minister Anand Sharma and CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury
and Bahujan Samaj Party leader Satish Mishra.
Ø
A race to the South Pole involving Britain’s Prince Harry and
teams of injured troops has been cancelled due to safety concerns, organisers
said on Saturday, but the veterans will trek on together to the globe’s most
southerly point. The three teams, made up of wounded veterans
from Britain, the United States and the Commonwealth (represented by Canada and
Australia), will trek the final 112 km together and aim to arrive by next
Friday or Saturday
10 December 2013
Ø Internet giants Google, Microsoft and Apple were among a group of
companies that sent an open letter to U.S. President Barack Obama, calling for
the scaleback of the expansive surveillance programmes of the National Security
Agency (NSA), Eight household names of the tech world including Facebook,
Twitter, AOL, Yahoo and LinkedIn announced that they had formed an alliance
called the Reform Government Surveillance group,
Ø
The Guardian ’s “Person
of the year” for 2013 is Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency
(NSA) contractor-turned whistleblower.
Ø
Thailand’s Premier called for a snap election
on Monday to try to defuse the kingdom’s political crisis, but protesters vowed
to keep up their “people’s revolution” as an estimated 140,000 demonstrators
flooded the streets of Bangkok.
Ø
Google India, on Monday, said it would kick-off
its three-day-long online shopping festival—the Great Online Shopping Festival
(GOSF)—from December 11. The shopping carnival will see participation from
about 241 e-commerce players, including Flipkart, Myntra, Homeshop18, Amazon India,
Jabong and Snapdeal, among others.
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