{DNN} Daily News Notes: 30th Oct, 2012

· In order to release liquidity into the system to support growth and credit lending to productive sectors, the Reserve Bank of India, RBI, has reduced the Cash Reserve Ratio, CRR, by 25 basis points from 4.50% to 4.25%. The RBI has said that this cut in CRR will immediately release 1,75 billion rupees in the banking system. The CRR is the amount of money that banks are required to park with RBI. The policy Repo Rate or the rate at which RBI lends to banks has been kept unchanged at 8%. Consequently, the Reverse Repo Rate, which is the rate at which RBI borrows money from banks, has remained unchanged at 7%. The Marginal Standing Facility Rate and the Bank Rate have also been kept unchanged at 9 per cent. RBI Governor said that GDP growth forecast has been reduced from 6.5% to 5.8%. He also said that inflation is expected to rise in the near term but ease by January 2013. He also said that managing inflationary expectations remains the focus of RBI’s monetary policy.
· In Karnataka, the culling of chicken, ducks and emus infected with Avian Influenza – H1N1 is under progress in the Central Poultry Development Organisation near Bangalore. The 150 acre institute is quarantined. Over 3600 Turkeys had died of H5N1 influenza in the institute last week. The High Security Animal Disease Hospital in Bhopal has confirmed that the death of birds in the institute is due to bird flu.
· In Assam people from all walks of life paid tribute to the victims of serial bomb blast on the completion of four years of blast. 90 persons were died and over 400 injured in devastating blast in Guwahati. Chief Minister of Assam has unveiled a Swahid Bedi (memorial) in memory of the blast victims. Meanwhile, Police and other security agencies are on alert after intelligence report said that insurgent groups may trigger blast via courier agency in the first or second week of November. More than one insurgent group may jointly trigger courier blast.
· The President of India has said the canvas of Indian culture is a vast and unique Kaleidoscope, enriched by the heritage and cultural traditions of its constituent societies. He said India's unity in diversity has always provided the space that is required for their sustenance and growth. The President was inaugurating the Viswa Malayala Mahotsavam 2012 at Thiruvananthapuram. Further, paying rich tributes to P N Panicker, the father of library movement in Kerala, the President said the movement has contributed significantly in increasing literacy levels in the state. He said with just 47 rural libraries initially, the number of rural libraries in the state have increased to over 6000. He said the mass contact programmes like the Jan Vigyan Vikas Yatra has instilled a thirst for learning and a scientific temper for knowledge among the masses. The Jan Vigyan Vikas Yatra, which was flagged off by the President at the Raj Bhavan, aims to educate the rural masses about the need of participatory democracy and the significance of Gram Sabhas. The yatra will cover a distance of 1500 kms in the state within a month, interacting with farmers, unorganised labourers and other under privileged sections of the society.
· The observance of Vigilance Awareness Week 2012 commenced all over Indian Railways with a pledge taking ceremony by officers and staff. The pledge is aimed to sensitize and educate the public servants about the dangers of corruption, as corruption is anti-national, anti-poor and anti-economic development. Banners and multi-coloured posters with catchy slogans have been displayed for creating vigilance awareness amongst railway men.
· Launching a blistering attack on the Union government, anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare and the former Army Chief, General V.K. Singh, termed the government “unconstitutional” and called for dissolution of Parliament. The duo would tour the country from January 30 to “awaken masses” to their programme of choosing their able representatives who would take up their causes in Parliament. Mr. Hazare said a working committee, comprising 1,200 Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) engineers had been constituted to facilitate his programme.
· India has the emerged as the world's largest rice exporter in 2012 beating its Asian counterpart Thailand with shipment of 9.75 million tonnes, according to USDA's latest report. Thailand was the top rice exporter with exports of 10.65 million tonnes in 2011. However, its volume slipped to 6.5 million tonnes in 2012. India is followed by Vietnam, which shipped 7 million tonnes of rice, Thailand (6.5 million tonnes), Pakistan (3.75 million tonnes) and the US (3.5 million tonnes), it added. The global rice production in 2012 is estimated at 464.87 million tonnes in 2012. India is the world's largest grower.
· Stepping up pressure on India, Russia warned it would go for international arbitration if the issue of cancellation of 2G licence involving Russian telecom giant Sistema was not resolved in Indian courts. Russia, which has been conveying its unhappiness over the issue time and again, had earlier said the row over Sistema would have “great repercussion” not only on Indo-Russian bilateral co-operation but also foreign investments in India. Sistema holds 56.68 per cent stake in Sistema Shyam Teleservices, whose 21 out of 22 licences were cancelled by the Supreme Court in February on the grounds that the 122 permits issued by the then Telecom Minister, A. Raja, were “arbitrary and unconstitutional”. The Russian government holds 17.14 per cent stake in SSTL. Russia had previously asserted it would not let Sistema’s $3.1 billion investment in its Indian telecom venture go waste due to “internal problems” here.
· The Union government has asked all mobile operators and telecom service providers (TSPs) offering BlackBerry smartphone services to implement the interception solution being offered by the Canada-based firm Research In Motion by December 31 to enable security agencies to check misuse of the encrypted service. RIM had, following much persuasion from the government, agreed to provide Indian security agencies a solution for lawful interception of encrypted data and monitoring in a readable format and has put up its server in Mumbai to enable TSPs to connect with it. This will help Indian law enforcement agencies to monitor data on a real time basis. However, the DoT and Indian agencies are yet to give their nod to the RIM solution after final testing.
· Improbable as it may appear, but the Indian consumer is the most optimistic globally said Nielsen online survey. Improbable because the global gloom-doom talk, lower-than-expected salary hikes and persistent inflation have had savaged the consumer sentiment in India. Experts explain that India fares better not because Indian consumers are a very optimistic lot but because consumers in other countries are much more pessimistic. A closer look at the Nielsen Global Consumer Confidence Index (NGCCI), currently at 92 points, reveals as much. Last quarter, Indonesia with 120 points led India (119). This (July-September) quarter, consumers in Indonesia lost some confidence and slipped by one point, leveling with India where there has been no change for two consecutive quarters. A score of over 100 signals optimism; all else pessimism. [click here for Infographic]
· The wife of a senior Ethiopian politician was charged with funnelling money from the Embassy of Saudi Arabia to Islamist terror groups (charges that could attract the death penalty), at a hearing at the Ethiopian Federal High Court. Those arrested were accused of belonging to, or supporting, the “Solution Seekers of the Muslim Community’s Problems”, a group that the prosecution contended is a terrorist organisation. Lawyers for the accused denied the charges. A predominantly Christian country, Ethiopia has positioned itself as a bulwark in the U.S.-led war on terror in East Africa and has promulgated laws, such as the anti-terrorism proclamation 652 of 2009, which have an unusually broad definition of terrorism.
· Chinese officials said members of separatist militant groups (East Turkestan Islamic Movement, ETIM) based in the country’s far-western Xinjiang region and called for Xinjiang’s independence were being organised to fight against the Syrian government and had forged ties with al-Qaeda and other terror groups. The ETIM has been behind a number of recent attacks in Xinjiang. China blamed the outfit for attacks in the Muslim-majority region that left at least 40 people killed last year in the cities of Kashgar and Hotan, located near the border with Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). Chinese officials say the ETIM has established terrorist camps in Pakistan. Further, in 2009, the XPCC’s paramilitary troops were deployed after riots broke out between Han Chinese and Uighurs, leaving at least 197 people killed in Urumqi. The slow response to the violence was cited by scholars as one reason behind the move to elevate the XPCC’s status. Thus, recently the government said it had elevated the status of a Xinjiang-based armed police force, Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), to “deputy corps command” which will allow it to directly liaise with Beijing and respond faster to incidents of unrest.
· IBM scientists are reporting progress in a chip-making technology that is likely to ensure the shrinking of the basic digital switch at the heart of modern microchips for more than another decade. The advance is based on carbon nanotubes, exotic molecules that have long held out promise as an alternative material to silicon from which to create the tiny logic gates that are now used by the billions to create microprocessors and memory chips. Against all expectations, the silicon chip has continued to improve in both speed and capacity for the last five decades. In recent decades, however, there has been growing uncertainty over whether the technology will continue to improve. The end of the microelectronics era would inevitably stall a growing array of industries that have fed off the falling cost and increasing performance of computer chips. Chip makers have routinely doubled the number of transistors that can be etched on the surface of silicon wafers by routinely shrinking the tiny switches that store and route the ones and zeros that are processed by digital computers. They have long since shrunk the switches to less than a wavelength of light. The process has been characterised as Moore’s Law, named after Gordon Moore, the Intel co-founder, who in 1965 noted that the industry was doubling the number of transistors it could build on a single chip at routine intervals of 12 to 18 months. In recent years, while chip makers have continued to double the number of transistors on microprocessors and memory chips, their performance, measured as “clock speed,” has largely stalled. This has forced the computer industry to change its design and begin building more parallel computers. Today, even smartphone microprocessors come with as many as four processors, or “cores”, which are used to break up tasks so they can be processed simultaneously. Carbon nanotubes are essentially single sheets of carbon rolled into nanoscale tubes. The IBM researchers described how they were able to place ultra-small rectangles of the material in regular arrays by placing them in a soapy mixture that makes them soluble in water. They used a process they described as “chemical self-assembly” to create the patterned array in which the nanotubes stick in some areas of the surface while others are left untouched.
· PM congratulates Pankaj Advani and Rupesh Shah for winning a world title at the World Billiards Ranking Championships at Leeds in England. Advani notched up his seventh World Billiards Championship title after comprehensively beating defending champion and seasoned Englishman Mike Russell in the time format final in Leeds. Advani has thus become the youngest Indian ever to win eight world titles in any sport after his recent triumph. Rupesh Shah had clinched the World Billiards (point frame) Championship crown after beating Australia's Matthew Bolton 6-2 in Leeds. He is only the fifth Indian to win the title twice. It is a memorable feat bringing honour to the country, and one that will inspire youngsters in the years to come.
· The International Cricket Council (ICC) gave its seal of approval to day-night Test matches while leaving the member Boards to decide on the type and colour of the ball to be used, as it announced new playing conditions for Tests, ODIs and T20 Internationals ahead of the Sri Lanka-New Zealand series this week. Some countries, including Australia and England, have been experimenting with day-night Test matches for some time now and with the ICC’s decision, the longest format of the game may be played under lights very soon. Under the new playing conditions, there would be two blocks of Powerplays in an ODI, instead of existing three. The first Powerplay will be restricted to the first 10 overs with only two fielders allowed outside the 30-yard circle. The second five-over batting Powerplay (in an uninterrupted innings) will have to be completed by the 40th over and only three fielders will be allowed outside the fielding restriction area at the time of delivery. In the non-Powerplay overs, no more than four fielders will be permitted outside the 30-yard circle. Regarding changes in One Over Per Side Eliminator (OOPSE) in T20Is, the ICC said: “In both innings of one over per side eliminator, fielding side shall choose from which end to bowl. Only nominated players in main match may participate in OOPSE.”