28 MARCH 2014

Ø  The Supreme Court on Thursday suggested the appointment of the former India cricket captain, Sunil Gavaskar, as the interim president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to replace N. Srinivasan until its final order on the Indian Premier League spot-fixing and betting scandal.

Ø  The U.N. Human Rights Council launched an inquiry into alleged war crimes in Sri Lanka, despite Colombo’s fierce efforts to block an investigation. In a 23-12 vote, the council backed a Western-sponsored resolution that said it was time for a “comprehensive investigation into alleged serious violations and abuses of human rights and related crimes by both parties in Sri Lanka.” India, for the first time, abstained from voting on a resolution against the island nation at the UNHRC.

Ø  The discovery of two more mounds in January at the Harappan site of Rakhigarhi in Hisar district, Haryana, has led to archaeologists establishing it as the biggest Harappan civilisation site. Until now, specialists in the Harappan civilisation had argued that Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan was the largest among the 2,000 Harappan sites known to exist in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The archaeological remains at Mohenjo-daro extend around 300 hectares. Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and Ganweriwala (all in Pakistan) and Rakhigarhi and Dholavira (both in India) are ranked as the first to the fifth biggest Harappan sites. With the discovery of two additional mounds, the total area of the Rakhigarhi site will be 350 hectares.

Ø  ANNUAL REPORT OF AMMENESTY INTERNATIONAL: Despite a marked global trend towards the abolition of the death sentence, the pattern was disrupted by a sharp spike in the number of executions in Iran (369) and Iraq (169) in 2013, leading to a 15 per cent increase in the global figure for executions as compared to 2012. In India 72 new death sentences were known to have been imposed throughout the year and at least 400 people were believed to be on death row at the end of the year, Excluding China, at least 778 executions are known to have been carried out worldwide in 2013, compared to 682 in 2012. Amnesty International says that it stopped publishing Chinese execution numbers from 2009 in protest against the Chinese government’s refusal to provide the organisation with figures. Nevertheless, it claims China accounts for the single largest number of executions, running “into thousands. There has been a steady decline in the number of countries using the death penalty over the last 20 years. Twenty years ago, 37 countries actively implemented the death penalty. This number fell to 25 by 2004 and to 22 last year. Only nine of the world’s countries have executed year on year for the past five years. Significantly, the USA is the only country to have carried out executions in the Americas, although the numbers fell by four between 2012 and 2013 that saw 39 executions. There were 3108 people on death row last year, with Texas accounting for 41 per cent of all executions in the country.

Ø  Outgoing Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has threatened action by India against Switzerland at global forums such as G20 for its persistent denial to share information on Indians stashing money in its banks. The G20 can impose sanctions for the protection of the member countries’ public finances and financial systems.