3 NOVEMBER 2014: Bomb blasts @ Wagah in Pak

Ø  At least 55 people, including children and security personnel, were killed and nearly 200 injured in a powerful suicide blast at Wagah in Pakistan, minutes after the popular flag-lowering ceremony at the main Indo-Pakistan land border crossing.

Ø  India is looking to export indigenously developed hull-mounted sonars and negotiations are at an advanced stage with the navies of three to four friendly nations. SONAR (an acronym for Sound Navigation and Ranging) is used to detect underwater targets. Like radar, used to detect long-range aerial and other targets, sonars have applications in underwater surveillance, communication and marine navigation. Three units of these sonars have been exported to Myanmar. Officials from Bharat Electronics Limited and the Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory visited the neighbouring country and installed them a fortnight ago. BEL produced the sonars while the Kochi-based NPOL, a naval lab of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), designed and developed them. BEL had signed the Rs.150-crore contract for the three sonars with Myanmar in January 2013. Director-General of DRDO (Naval Systems and Materials) Bhujanga Rao told The Hindu that there was a demand from other nations too. Naval officials from three to four countries came to India and held discussions.  Mentioning different sonars developed for the Navy, he said that a versatile, new-generation system USHUS has been installed on India’s first indigenous nuclear-powered submarine, Arihant. It has a higher range and can withstand high static pressure of water. Observing that it was superior to Russian equivalents and comparable to the best in the world, he said that sonars on all Russian-class submarines being operated by the Indian Navy would be replaced with USHUS.  Another advanced hull-mounted sonar HUMSA-NG (new generation) was also developed and the Navy had placed orders for its installation on different platforms such as destroyers, frigates and corvettes.

Ø  Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that the Union government was on the right path in bringing back black money stashed away abroad. Opinions on how to bring black money back, he said, could differ, but “whatever I understand and based on the information I have, I assure you we are on the right path. Today nobody knows — not me, not you, not the government, not even the previous government — how much money is stashed abroad. I don’t want to get into complex numbers, but I assure you that my efforts will not fall short,” he said in a radio address to the nation.

Ø  India told Mauritius that it will not take any decisions that will “adversely impact” bilateral relations while reassuring the country that amendments to the bilateral tax treaty would be made only after considering the legitimate interests of both sides. This was conveyed by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj during her meetings with the top leadership of Mauritius, including President Rajkeswur Purryag and Prime Minister Navinchandra Ramgoolam. She assured them that “India was in the process of reviewing the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) and will not do anything that will adversely impact the island nation’s ties with India,” Ms. Swaraj, who is here on a three–day visit, also said that enhanced relations between the two countries will benefit people-to-people contacts. She recalled that the first batch of Indians had arrived in Mauritius on November 2, 1834.