20 MARCH 2015:Venki Ramakrishnan becomes president of Royal Society of London

Ø  Sir Venkatraman (Venki) Ramakrishnan, Nobel Laureate, Deputy Director of the British Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, and Fellow of the Royal Society, has been confirmed as President-elect of the Royal Society. “It is a great honour,” Dr. Ramakrishnan told on the phone from Cambridge. “Unlike many others, this is given by your peers, by fellow scientists.”

Ø  Holding that democratic principles should guide the functioning of cooperative societies, the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the ouster of Vipul Chaudhary as chairman of the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation through a no-confidence motion. Introducing uniformity in the functioning of thousands of cooperative societies, a judgment by a Bench of Justices Anil R. Dave and Kurian Joseph held that their laws should reflect the democratic principles for which they were created.

Ø  The two issues holding up the India-Japan civilian nuclear deal are data sharing and weapons testing. Japan wants India to give nation-specific data over nuclear material like uranium, plutonium and nuclear parts, which would account annually for every part of the nuclear chain, according to its manufacturing country. The second issue, which is a red line for India, is that if India were to break its self-imposed moratorium on weapons testing, Japan wants an immediate cancellation of the civilian nuclear deal. Japan would further seek a return of all Japanese-origin equipment and parts, which would damage India’s energy security considerably. The negotiations from the Japanese side are hardened by the fact that Japan’s key negotiator and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida is himself a staunch non-proliferationist, who belongs to Hiroshima, one of the two Japanese cities hit by atomic bombs by the U.S. in 1945, and insists on Japan’s key demand that India sign a test ban treaty (the NPT or the CTBT). Indian officials say they are hopeful of concluding the deal with Japan but that it is “not critical” to the U.S. civil nuclear negotiations. During a briefing after Mr. Obama’s visit held by the then Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh, officials said, in reply to a specific question about Japanese hurdles, that “there are alternatives available, and we do not think that the absence of an agreement with Japan is an obstacle to taking forward civil nuclear cooperation with the United States.” However, in the weeks that have followed, some of those concerns have grown. To begin with, the U.S. companies that have been earmarked for nuclear plants in India — GE and Westinghouse — produce nuclear reactors with Japanese companies Mitsubishi and Toshiba respectively. Even if, as some industry insiders suggest, they ‘bypass’ them, there would remain the problem of critical components like the 400 MT metal casing containers made only by Japanese company Nisshin Seiko Steel (with the only exceptions being Made in China), sources said. Further, the U.S. is part of a close knit group at the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), along with Japan and also Australia, whose nuclear deal with India is still awaiting parliamentary clearance in Canberra.

Ø   The Centre has decided to allow two more ports — APM Terminals, Pipavav Port in Gujarat and L&T Kattupalli Port near Chennai — to handle import of high-end cars/vehicles, taking the total number to 14. At present, six seaports and three airports are allowed to handle import of these high-end vehicles.