{Current Affairs} Daily News Notes: 6th Dec, 2013

· Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act 2013 comes into force from today. The Law prohibits the employment of manual scavengers, the manual cleaning of sewers and septic tanks without protective equipment, and the construction of insanitary toilets. It also provides for rehabilitation of manual scavengers and alternative employment for them in a time bound manner. Construction or maintenance of insanitary latrines has become an offence now. Also, under the law each local authority, cantonment board and railway authority is responsible for surveying insanitary latrines within its jurisdiction. They will also have to construct a number of sanitary community toilets. {INFOGRAPHIC}
· The Supreme Court today agreed to hear CBI's plea challenging the Gauhati High Court order declaring the agency (CBI) as "unconstitutional". A division bench of Gauhati High Court had on November 6 quashed the April 1, 1963 Resolution constituting CBI under the Delhi Special Police Establishment (DSPE) Act, 1946 and declared all its actions unconstitutional.
· 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. Now, the bill will go to President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday or Saturday, with a request to make a reference to the Andhra Pradesh Assembly for its views. The President will have the discretion to choose the timing of referring the bill to the Assembly and the time-limit for it. Some of the highlights of the bill are: 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 Telangana 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.
· Anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare on Thursday announced his decision to go on a hunger strike from next Tuesday to press for the Jan Lokpal Bill to be passed in Parliament. Despite poor health, the 76-year-old social activist would observe his fast — his fifth — at his village, Ralegan Sidhi, in Maharashtra. This agitation would be under the banner of Jantantra Morcha, a new organisation launched by him after he dissolved the India Against Corruption following parting of ways with Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal.
· The Reserve Bank of India will soon introduce cash-settled interest rate futures on 10-year government bonds, and has also permitted exchanges to launch these derivatives in other smaller tenor securities in the future, it said on Thursday. The RBI has twice attempted to launch the interest rate futures (IRFs), in 2003 and 2009, but both attempts failed largely due to what participants called faulty product design. Market participants were keen on cash-settled futures rather than a physical delivery, which requires financial firms to deliver an actual security to the investor, as was the case in 2009. An interest rate future is a financial derivative (a futures contract) with an interest-bearing instrument as the underlying asset. Examples include Treasury-bill futures, Treasury-bond futures and Eurodollar futures.
· Minister of Corporate Affairs, Shri Sachin Pilot, informed that the section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013 dealing with Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) requires companies under its purview to spend at least two percent of its average net profit made in the three immediately preceding financial years to be spent on its CSR policy. He said that the corporate sector has not expressed any reservations/ objections for spending towards CSR and as such there is no proposal to change this percentage.
· Minister of Corporate Affairs has informed that on account of increasing importance of businesses to the economics and complexities of operating in an inter-dependent world necessitated this Ministry to constitute a Committee to formulate a Policy document on Corporate Governance under the Chairmanship of Shri Adi Godrej on 07.03.2012. The Committee has since submitted its report to the Central Government. He said that the Companies Act, 2013 which has received the assent of the President incorporates certain important provisions with regard to following matters to facilitate Corporate Governance in India: [1.] Faster incorporation / registration of companies through fully electronic MCA-21 registry provided; [2.] Companies allowed to maintain records and hold meetings through e- governance mode; [3.] Companies empowered to function in a manner which is ‘self-regulated with disclosures/transparency’ rather than ‘Government/regulatory approval based regime’; [4.] Concepts of ‘One Person Company’ and ‘Small Company’ recognized to allow new entrepreneurs to take advantage of corporate form of business; [5.] Faster mergers and acquisitions including short form of merger and cross border mergers allowed; [6.] Time bound approvals through National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT); [7.] Summary liquidation process for a class of companies provided.
· Investment Information and Credit Rating Agency (ICRA) warned the banking industry that it may suffer more shocks due to the pile up of its’ gross bad assets which is set to touch 4.4 %, or Rs 2.9 trillion of total assets by this fiscal end. It expects net profit of state-run banks this fiscal year to be 30-40 % lower than FY13, which will pull down their return on equity to 6-8% from 9.7% in H1. ICRA analyzed 26 public sector banks and 15 private sector banks. These 41 banks collectively account for around 90 % of the total credit portfolio and deposits as of the September quarter this fiscal year. ICRA Limited , an Indian independent and professional investment information and credit rating agency credit rating agency was set up in 1991. Its headquarters are at Gurgaon.
· The final legal battle between India and Bangladesh over 4,000 square kilometres of the Bay of Bengal, holding out huge potential for fishing, shipping and underwater resources, will begin from December 9 at The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration. Bangladesh has proposed the ‘angle bisector’ method for delimitation of the maritime boundary, but India is pitching for the traditional and internationally recognized ‘equidistance’ principle to resolve the dispute. The tribunal is chaired by Dr Rudiger Wolfrom (Germany). The nearly 4,000 sq km of Bay of Bengal, which is at the centre of the longstanding dispute which started at the international forum with Bangladesh submitting its written arguments on May 31, 2011, encompasses all maritime zones -- territorial sea, exclusive economic zone, continental shelf and outer continental shelf.
· The Punjab government has reiterated its optimism over the proposal to open the land route for trade through the Attari-Wagah border and maintained that it would provide impetus to the investment in the State, which has been impacted by terrorism for more than a decade. A few days ahead of its big-ticket “Progressive Punjab Investors’ Summit”, the State government notified its Industrial Policy, 2013, which had been amended about six months ago.
· The latest edition of the Pakistan Army’s Green Book, a prestigious internal publication with essays by serving officers, reveals mounting fears among its officer corps that the deepening India-United States strategic relationship could pose a threat to the country. [read full article: click here]
· India ranked 98th in the Forbes list of world’s best countries for doing business that has cited poverty, corruption and discrimination against girls among the challenges facing the country. The rating of 145 nations was done on the several factors viz. property rights, innovation, taxes, technology, corruption, freedom (personal, trade and monetary), red tape, investor protection, stock market performance, etc. Ireland topped the Forbes ‘doing business’ list, as it maintains an extremely pro-business environment which attracts investments from world’s biggest companies. Ireland was followed by New Zealand and Hong Kong. The data for the report was collected from reports of various organizations viz. Freedom House, Heritage Foundation, Property Rights Alliance, Transparency International, World Bank and World Economic Forum, etc.
· US Vice-President Joe Biden is meeting South Korean leader Park Geun-hye on the third leg of an Asian tour dominated by tensions over China's newly-declared Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). Ms Park will brief Mr Biden on South Korea's possible proposal to expand its own zone, a move the US is expected to oppose. China's zone covers islands controlled by Japan and an area claimed by Seoul. The issue of North Korea is also expected to be high on the agenda.
· The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has been collecting mobile phone location data worldwide, to the tune of nearly five billion records per day, top-secret surveillance documents supplied by whistleblower Edward Snowden have revealed. NSA database, codenamed FASCIA, contained trillions of device-location records which enabled the U.S. intelligence community to track movements of individuals in other countries and map their relationships “in ways that would have been previously unimaginable”. The US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that governs such activities only bars snooping on American citizens. In the most recent expose, it was made clear that the FASCIA contained foreign-based data on mobile numbers, including area codes, unique numbers of handsets, the serial number of the SIM and the MSISDN number that indicated the country of operation. Further, in the face of NSA syping, software giant Microsoft is eyeing a stronger encryption and it is taking steps to protect the privacy of online communications. Microsoft plans to switch over to stronger 2,048-bit encryption keys by the end of next year – a technology that reportedly takes ten years to crack in real time because of computing power constraints.
· Witnesses and aid workers say at least 98 people are dead in the capital of the Central African Republic after a day of clashes between the Muslim armed fighters who rule the country and a Christian militia who opposes them. The Security Council unanimously voted on Thursday to authorise African and French military action. A French-drafted resolution gives a U.N. mandate to about 4,800 African and French troops.
· Bitcoins suffered a new setback after China’s central bank said Thursday its banks and payment systems are barred from handling the virtual currency. The central bank said bitcoins did not qualify as a currency but private individuals still are allowed to trade them at their own risk. “Bitcoins are virtual goods that have no legal status or monetary equivalent and should not be used as currency,” said a Chinese central bank statement. Bitcoin is an open source peer-to-peer electronic-money and payment network introduced in 2009 by pseudonymous developer "Satoshi Nakamoto".
· The nation is paying homage to Dr. B R Ambedkar on his 58th Mahaparinirvan Diwas today. Floral tributes were paid to the father of the Indian Constitution at his portrait in Parliament House complex, New Delhi. Lakhs of people thronged Chaityabhoomi, the final resting place of Bharat Ratna Dr. Ambedkar at Shivaji Park in Dadar, Mumbai. Over 15 lakh people are expected to visit Chaityabhoomi today following which security has been beefed up. Meanwhile, followers of Dr Ambedkar have hailed Centre’s announcement of handing over Indu Mill land to Maharashtra Government for developing the place into a memorial.
· South Africa's president Mr Jacob Zuma informed that the South Africa's first black president and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela passed away last night at the age of 95. Mandela led South Africa's transition from white-minority rule in the 1990s, after 27 years in prison. Mr. Zuma said Mandela would receive a full state funeral, and flags would be flown at half-mast until state funeral.
· The Supreme Court on Thursday lamented that it was because of businessmen heading sports bodies for hockey that India could not even qualify for the next Olympics. The bench observed: “You have brought the game to this abysmal low. One gold medal we used to get in the Olympics. Now, we don’t even enter the arena. Who are these people who are heading these organisations? Businessmen? Sports officials are only interested in visiting foreign countries and not in promoting the game. This showed the sad state of affairs.” It was hearing a petition filed by the Indian Hockey Federation on a dispute with Hockey India.
· FIFA, the international football body, awarded India the rights to host the Under-17 World Cup in 2017. The country beat stiff competition from Ireland, 2010 World Cup hosts South Africa and Uzbekistan to get the final nod from FIFA’s executive committee at the resort town of Costa Do Sauipe in Brazil. FIFA president Sepp Blatter told that the tourney, which will witness 24 teams in action, will be played at six venues. Among the cities in the fray to host the games are Mumbai, New Delhi, Goa, Bangalore, Pune, Kolkata, Kochi and Guwahati. The tournament, whose first edition was held in China in 1985,is a happy hunting ground for the young Super Eagles from Nigeria. They have won the trophy four times (1985, 1993, 2007 and 2013) followed by the samba boys from Brazil who have been victorious thrice. The tournament is held every two years. The Nigerians are the current champions after beating Mexico 3-0 in the 2013 final in Abu Dhabi. The 2015 edition is slated to be hosted by Chile.