{DNN} Daily News Notes: 21st Nov, 2012

· The much awaited service of the Women Powerline 1090 call centre was inaugurated by UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on November 15. Unlike the emergency police and fire service of dial 100 and 101, the women powerline number will not be toll-free though the service is at normal, applicable call rates. Reason being, claim officials, that it is not an emergency service and secondly it will help restrict hoax calls made on the number. According to a rough estimate, only 10 per cent of the calls made to city control room dial 100 service are genuine and worth taking action. Unlike previous plan of running the service 24X7, it has been decided to run it in three shifts of six hours each. While the first shift will be from 8am to 2pm, the second shift will be from 2pm to 8am and the third from 8pm to 2am. By November 14, officials expect all mobile operators to route 1090 through their network which can enable users to call on the number from anywhere in UP and subsequently the call landing at the Lucknow call centre's office.
· The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) directed banks not to give loans for purchase of gold in any form, including primary gold, bullion and jewellery, to dissuade people from indulging in speculative activity, and such advances are likely to be utilised for purposes of financing gold purchase at auctions or speculative holding of stocks and bullion. However, it said banks could provide finance for genuine working capital requirements of jewellers. The decision was taken in view of significant rise in imports of gold in recent years putting pressure on current account deficit. In the 2011-12, India’s gold imports stood at $60 billion. Also, the Monetary Policy Statement of April 2012 announced the constitution of a Working Group. The Working Group suggested that other than working capital finance, banks are not permitted to finance purchase of gold in any form. [Click here for Infographic]
· The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) revised the definition of ‘infrastructure lending’, which would make sectors and sub-sectors eligible for infrastructure lending by banks and financial institutions with immediate effect. The sectors and sub-sectors come under revised infrastructure lending are: [1.] Transport: Roads and bridges, ports inland waterways, airport, railway track, tunnels, viaducts, bridges, including supporting terminal infrastructure such as loading/unloading terminals, stations and buildings, urban public transport (except rolling stock in case of urban road transport); [2.] Energy: Electricity generation, electricity transmission, electricity distribution, oil pipelines and oil/gas/liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage facility (including strategic storage of crude oil) and gas pipelines, including city gas distribution network; [3.] Water and sanitation: Solid waste management, water supply pipe lines, water treatment plants, sewage collection, treatment and disposal system and irrigation (dams, channels, embankments and the like) and storm water drainage system; [4.] Communication: Telecommunication (fixed network) including optic fibre/cable networks which provide broadband / internet and telecommunication towers; [5.] Social and commercial infrastructure: Educational institutions (capital stock), hospitals (capital stock), including medical colleges, para medical training institutes and diagnostics centres and three-star or higher category classified hotels located outside cities with population of more than one million.
· In its forward march towards making the justice delivery system paperless and hassle-free, the Delhi High Court has launched the e-court fee system at its premises to cut off the difficulty and delay in filing cases. This has been made possible by the Delhi Government and the Computer Committee of the High Court headed by Justice B. D. Ahmed. The Committee had in 2008 launched a project in cooperation with the State Government to make the High Court an electronic court to reduce the use of paper and thereby making filing and disposal of cases easy.
· Ajmal Kasab, the only Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist caught alive during the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai, was hanged to death at Pune's Yerwada Jail at 7.30 this morning. Confirming this Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said that Kasab’s mercy petition was rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee on the 5th of this month. Earlier, Maharashtra Home Minister RR Patil announced the hanging saying this is a tribute to all the innocent people and officers who lost their lives in the Mumbai attacks. New Delhi hopes that rule of law will prevail in Pakistan as well in the 26/11 attack trial like it did in the case of Ajmal Kasab in India. The External Affairs Minister said according to legal requirements, India informed the Pakistan Government and Kasab's family about his execution. On whether India received any request for handing over of Kasab's body either from the Pakistan Government or his family, he said no such request was received. Background: 166 people were killed in the 26/11 attacks in 2008, when 10 men from Pakistan including Kasab sailed into Mumbai and launched attack on several targets. Kasab was the only terrorist who was caught alive.
· India was among the 39 countries that voted against a non-binding UN General Assembly draft resolution which called for abolishing the death penalty, saying every nation had the "sovereign right" to determine its own legal system. Also, some other nations voting against the resolution were Bangladesh, China, Korea, Iran, Iraq, Japan, Kuwait, Libya, Pakistan and the US. However, the resolution was adopted at the General Assembly's Third Committee, which deals with social and humanitarian issues, after 110 nations voted in favour of the resolution while 36 abstained. Those who voted in favour included Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Israel, Russia, Nepal, South Africa and UK. The resolution is voted on every two years at the Assembly's third committee. The draft resolution calls on nations to progressively restrict the death penalty's use and not impose capital punishment for offences committed by persons under age 18 or pregnant women. States would also be called on to reduce the number of offences for which the death penalty might be imposed. An Indian delegate participating in the vote added that the practice of death penalty was exercised only on the "rarest of occasions" in India and the country's laws contained provisions for suspending the death penalty in the cases of pregnant women.
· MasterCard's India-born CEO Ajay Banga and ICICI Bank chief Chanda Kochhar have been named by Fortune magazine among the '2012 Businesspersons of the Year', an annual ranking of 50 global leaders who are "the best in business". Another Indian giving Banga and Kochhar company in the list of 50 global business leaders is Deepak Narula, founder and managing partner of hedge fund firm Metacapital Management. Banga ranks eighth in the list while Kochhar comes in at the 18th position, one notch ahead of billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffet. Narula ranks 36th. Also, the list has been topped by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos with Apple CEO Tim Cook coming in at the second place. Among the other business honchos on the list are Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page at rank 6, Exxon Mobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson (9), Oracle co-founder and CEO Larry Ellison (14), Wal-Mart CEO Michael Duke (17), IBM Chairman and CEO Ginni Rometty (22), Starbucks founder and CEO Howard Schultz (23) and Twitter co-founder and executive chairman Jack Dorsey (48).
· Japan has said it will soon announce funding for the multi-billion dollar Chennai-Bangalore Industrial Corridor (CBIC), the third mega project that will be quarter-backed by Tokyo. The other two projects that Japan is backing are the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) and the Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC). This project was first made public during the India-Japan annual summit in 2010. The project will initially focus on Phase-II of the Chennai Outer Ring Road, Chennai-Bangalore Expressway, modernisation of airports in Chennai, Bangalore and Sriperumbudur and ports in Chennai and Ennore, in addition to a high-speed rail link between Chennai, Bangalore and the Avadi rail link. The announcement of the CBIC project has led to considerable enthusiasm among most south Indian states with Andhra Pradesh wanting its extension to Krishnapatnam port and Karnataka asking for the inclusion of Chitradurga with the State government planning to set up a manufacturing hub between Chitradurga and Tumkur. Kerala is the only south Indian State which has so far not expressed a desire to be included in the project.
· Chinese officials said on Tuesday that next week’s Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED) in New Delhi would help both countries deepen cooperation on investment and infrastructure projects, with one of the largest-ever delegations of Chinese officials set to travel to India for the November 26 talks. At the first round of the SED in Beijing in September 2011, both sides discussed cooperation in railways, which might pave the way for Chinese involvement in India’s plans to set up high speed-rail corridors. Now, the top officials from CNR, one of China’s biggest railway companies that has played a key role in China’s high-speed rail expansion, will travel to New Delhi next week. Besides railways, separate working groups on infrastructure, energy, environment and high-tech sectors will meet during the November 26 dialogue in New Delhi. Officials said the idea behind the SED was to go beyond trade issues and look at the bigger picture and macro-level cooperation. Trade issues will not be the focus of the SED — a separate Joint Economic Group dialogue headed by Commerce Ministers of both countries discusses bilateral trade issues, officials said. As a new leadership in China takes over, officials here have stressed their desire to expand trade and commercial engagement with India — an issue that found prominence at Monday’s meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Cambodia.
· The FBI has concluded its probe into the August shoot out incident at a Gurdwara in Wisconsin at USA. It found no evidence that the attack was part of any ongoing threat to the Sikh community.
· India and Singapore have agreed to further enhance the bilateral defence relationship in the mutual interest of both countries as it would contribute to regional peace and stability. The Both countries also agreed that the on-going interactions between the defence establishments, including regular joint military training and exercises, had been useful. In the context of the security situation in the Asia Pacific region, Defense Ministers of both countries acknowledged the role of the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting (ADMM) Plus framework in promoting dialogue and consensus in the region. Defence Minister reiterated India’s commitment to remain constructively engaged in activities under the ADMM Plus framework.
· India has notified 22 additional items including agricultural tools, bicycles, coal and garments in the list of items for border trade with Myanmar. The other new items include edible oil, electrical appliances, steel products, medicines, tea, beverages, motor cycles and spare parts, semi-precious stone, sewing machines and three wheelers/cars below 100cc. Previously, there were 40 tradable items. According to a study conducted by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), bilateral trade between India and Myanmar is expected to double by 2015 from $1.3 billion, on the back of free trade agreement between New Delhi and ASEAN region. Myanmar is a key member of the 10-nation bloc Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
· Moving to encourage reform in Myanmar ahead of a landmark trip by President Barack Obama, the United States had scrapped a nearly decade-old ban on most imports from the long-isolated nation, which was imposed by Congress in 2003. The world’s largest economy will open up to products from the country with the exception of gems, a sector seen as a major driver of corruption and violence. Mr. Obama on Monday had become the first sitting U.S. President to visit Myanmar, making a trip that just years ago would have been considered unthinkable.
· The UN weather agency says concentrations of the main global warming pollutant in the world’s air reached a record high in 2011. The World Meteorological Organization says the planet averaged 390 parts per million of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, up 40 per cent from before the Industrial Age when levels were about 275 parts per million. Further, it said that there was a 30 per cent increase in the warming effect on the global climate between 1990 and 2011, mainly due to carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning. WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said the 350 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere since 1750 “will remain there for centuries, causing our planet to warm further and impacting on all aspects of life on earth.”
· The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has appealed in Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) against the decision of the Indian anti-doping disciplinary panels in the Nirupama Devi doping case. The Manipur judoka was given a mild punishment, the first of its kind in MHA cases in the country, on the argument that the judoka used VLCC beauty aid products that contained geranium, which in turn was the source of methylhexaneamine or MHA. The products, ranging from bathing soap to face pack, were not tested to find out whether they contained MHA. It was taken for granted that since the product labels mentioned geranium and since geranium was supposed to contain MHA, the athlete had established how the banned substance entered her body. Recent studies have questioned the assumption that geranium oil and geranium root extract etc. contained MHA. Several countries have banned supplements containing MHA on the argument that it was not a plant product. This is the second instance of an Indian doping case being taken to CAS since the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) became effective in January, 2009. This is the first time the WADA has appealed in the CAS in an Indian case. Last July, the CAS had handed down two-year suspensions to six Indian woman 400m runners after they were given one-year bans by the national panels.
· The Czech Republic won the Davis Cup of Tennis. Radek Stepanek, the World No. 37, beat 11th-ranked Spain’s Nicolas Almagro in the decisive rubber of the 100th final. The Czech Republic lifted its first Davis Cup since gaining independence following a 1993 split with Slovakia. The former Czechoslovakia won the trophy in 1980. The victory has also handed the Czechs a rare team double after its women lifted the Fed Cup here two weeks ago — a feat last achieved by the United States in 1990. Team Events in Tennis: [1.] The Hopman Cup is an invitational team-based tournament that consists of eight teams comprising one male and one female; [2.] The Fed Cup, previously known as the Federation Cup, describes itself as the world's largest annual international team competition in women's sport. 90 nations entered in 2012; [3.] The Davis Cup, which began in 1900 as a competition between USA and Great Britain, is the main team event for men. It's now the world's largest annual international team event, with 123 nations entering in 2012.