Daily News Notes: 26th Feb, 2012

• ·         The Delhi High Court has held that the Indian Railways is an enterprise and the Competition Commission of India, CCI is empowered to hear complaints against it for alleged abuse of its dominant position in the goods transport sector.
• ·         The Supreme Court has asked the Ministry of Civil Aviation to file its response to a plea challenging the Centre notification, which fixes different compensation amounts for international and domestic fliers. At present the compensation is 7.5 lakhs rupees in case of a domestic air passenger's death against 75 lakhs rupees for international fliers. A Bench of Justices issued notice to the Ministry on a plea challenging a 1973 notification of the Union government, which fixes airliners' liability in respect of passengers, baggage and cargo in different eventualities.
• ·         Twenty-two Tamil fishermen and their five boats were taken into custody by Sri Lankan naval personnel when they were fishing near the International Maritime Boundary Line. Lankan naval men alleged that the fishermen had crossed the IMBL while fishing.
• ·         In Odisha, 34 tribal poachers have been arrested in the world-famous Similipal Tiger Reserve Forests. More than 500 armed poachers have entered Similipal Tiger Reserve ahead of the Akhanda Shikar, the traditional mass hunting by the tribals. The arrests came during intensified crackdown by forest department security personnel.
• ·         The Odisha Government has imposed restriction on the visit of foreign tourists and researchers to the areas inhabited by primitive vulnerable tribal groups like Bondas, Dongaria Kandhas and other such communities without valid permission from the concerned district collector and magistrate. The decision has been taken following the controversy over the human safari in the tribal areas of Odisha. In case of any violation, criminal cases will be lodged against the tourist, sponsor, and tour operator under appropriate sections of the law. Besides, no photography and videography of the tribals belonging to the primitive vulnerable tribal groups will be allowed.
• ·         As per Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi, the incidence of cancer in North-East is the highest in India and it is well over the national cancer incidence of approximately 10 to 13 thousand individuals per crore of population. Cachar Cancer Hospital & Research Centre was started in 1996 by a voluntary organization at Silchar, and today it has become one of the three specialized hospitals for Cancer patients available in the entire north east India.
• ·         The Union Health and Family Welfare Minister has said that learning a lesson from the Polio programme could prove to be extremely useful in accomplishing the tasks of elimination of measles related child deaths and neonatal tetanus in India. Thus 2012 have been declared the year of the intensification of Routine Immunization. Shri Azad added that 26 million mothers and children have already been registered under the web enabled mother and child tracking system set up by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The system generates weekly work plans for the Auxiliary Nurse Midwives through SMS. Alerts are also sent to the beneficiaries to remind them of the date of the due health services. Shri Azad urged Rotary International, WHO, UNICEF, CDC, Gates Foundation, GAVI and other partners to now work to provide impetus to routine immunization and synergize polio eradication and Routine Immunization strategies. He informed that in 14 States where coverage is less than 80 percent, introduction of second dose of measles has been started.
• ·         The Neuro Spinal Surgeons Association of India is planning a formal recommendation to medical universities and also the Medical Council of India that a full-fledged five-year post-graduate course in spine surgery be introduced. What seems to be driving this idea is the failure rate of spine surgeries and also the confusion among patients over whom to approach – neuro surgeon or orthopaedic. It is a combination of spinal bone and the cord that was made up of nervous tissues and support cells. Therefore, the new course should be a combination of both orthopaedic surgery and neurosurgery. Scoliosis, a congenital defect that left the spine S-shaped, was another area that needed specific minute focus.
• ·         In Assam, in a bid to improve the social and economic condition of the people of insurgency affected Sadia, Kakopathar and Tinsukia areas, the Governor has taken the initiative to launch a white revolution. Bharat Integrated Social Welfare Agency has already submitted the detailed project report on it. Self Help Groups, dairy development societies and local banks to implement the scheme. There are 200 dairy development societies and 15 SHGs being involved in this process. It will cover Tinsukia in the first phase and will extend to Majuli in the next phase.
• ·         The Vice President Mohammed Hamid Ansari today released a collection of poems titled 'LAVA', written by renowned Bollywood lyricist and Member of Parliament, Javed Akhtar. The poems are both in Hindi and Urdu.
• ·         China on Saturday called on India “to refrain from taking any action that could complicate” the border dispute, in a statement that appeared to hit out at Defence Minister A.K. Antony's visit to Arunachal Pradesh earlier this week to mark the 25th anniversary of its statehood. It added that “China advocates seeking a fair and rational solution through equal and friendly negotiations”. China first began to strongly stress its claims and refer to the region as “south Tibet” in the late 1980s, coinciding with the declaration of Statehood. India and China have held 15 rounds of talks over the long-running border dispute, making little progress towards arriving at a framework to resolve disputes in the western, middle and eastern sectors. Before the late 1980s, analysts say, China had appeared more concerned about the western sector and the Aksai Chin region, which is presently under its effective control. However, it has since begun to increasingly stress its claims on Arunachal, particularly the Tawang region which is the site of an important Tibetan Buddhist monastery.
• ·         India will make a fresh appeal before the London-based Joint War Committee, a body of insurance underwriters, to exclude India's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) from the war zone notification considering that there have been no piracy incidents in Indian waters for the last nine months as the Navy had sanitized the country's EEZ. Exclusion of India's EEZ from the war zone has implications on premiums on insurance cover. More importantly, it has a security angle to it because once within the war zone list, ships plying the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea will hug the Indian coast for safety from perceived threats.
• ·         Syria votes on a referendum for a new constitution in the country today. The referendum comes in the wake of President Bashar Al Assad’s move to push for reforms in Syria. The proposed constitution promises to establish a plural democratic political system in Syria, ending decades of monopoly by the ruling Baath Party. It bans parties on regional and religious basis from contesting elections. It also limits the tenure of President for a maximum of two terms of seven years each.
• ·         Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev has warned that the crisis in Iran and Syria could spill over to Central Asia and called for closer security cooperation with former Soviet states in the region i.e. Central Asia. It added that the western powers were exploiting concerns about Iran's nuclear programme as a pretext to “re-carve the geopolitical map of the large hydrocarbon-rich region that includes Central Asia.”
• ·         People in Senegal are voting today in a Presidential election, with incumbent Abdoulaye Wade seeking a controversial third term. Mr Wade's re-election bid sparked protests in which several people died. Last month, the country's highest court, the Constitutional Council, announced that he could stand for a third term despite a two-term limit. The court also barred world-renowned singer, Youssou N'Dour, from standing in the election. Mr. Wade was first elected in 2000, ending 40 years of rule by the Socialist Party. Senegal, a former French colony, is seen as a stable democracy with an unbroken series of elections since independence in 1960. It remains the only West African country where the army has never seized power.
• ·         Tons of gold and silver from the wreck of a 19th-century Spanish warship have finally arrived in Spain, more than 200 years after a British fleet sank it. British warships sunk the Spanish frigate off the coast of Portugal near the Straits of Gibraltar during the Battle of Cape Santa Maria in October 1804.
• ·         Nearly 8,000 people, including 550 children below the age of 10, were killed in Sri Lanka's war-torn north during a final offensive to crush Tamil rebels, the census department of SL said on Saturday. Another 6,350 people went missing after government forces finally crushed the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009. The census did not cover security forces killed in the war zone, but the military had previously said 6,000 personnel were killed in the final stages of the war. The census did not cover security forces killed in the war zone, but the military had previously said 6,000 personnel were killed in the final stages of the war.
• ·         Commenting on its decision to allow uranium exports to India, the Australian government this week said if India diverted its domestic uranium to weapons uses after receiving such exports it would be “very upsetting and very bad”, nevertheless it “would not alter the direction of the Australian government's policy”. Responding to a question on whether resistance to nuclear trade with India in certain international institutions was problematic, it explained that Australian policy in this regard was driven by two considerations: (1.) they are prepared to sell uranium to India as previously their position was to sell uranium to India.” (2.) the question of the fungibility of the uranium supplies in India had been addressed in the context of the agreement between India and the U.S. in that “The Americans had... got themselves a set of provisions that gave them a tracing capacity to make sure that [the uranium] they supplied India [with], they could trace it to the point where they could be certain that wasn't itself going into the manufacture of weapons. The same would apply to them.”
• ·         The tiny gulf nation of Qatar has been ranked as the richest country in the world. Luxembourg is second followed by Singapore in the third position. The list of the richest nations was compiled by the Forbes magazine. It said Qatar, has achieved this rank due to a rebound in oil prices and its massive natural gas reserves.
• ·         Indian women team's dream of qualifying to the London Olympics shattered as they suffered a crushing 1-3 defeat against the top-ranked South African.