(Current Affairs) Dialogue India: Other Issues 25 Aug to 25 Sept 2010

CAG Weekly
(Current Affairs & GK)
By Om Prakash (Goldy sir)

Other (Major & Minor)Issues

GEAC to be rechristened as Environment Appraisal Panel

• The Centre has pruned the mandate of the proposed Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India. The body will now deal only with safety and efficacy issues, leaving decisions on commercialisation of biotech products to respective administrative ministries.
• The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) currently housed in the environment ministry would be rechristened as the Environment Appraisal Panel under the proposed Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India.
• The chairman of the environment appraisal panel will report directly to the BRAI chairman. In the event of a difference of opinion between the panel and the regulator, BRAI will pass a speaking order.

God did not create the universe

• British physicist Stephen Hawking has said the creation of the universe was a result of the inevitable laws of physics and it did not need God's help. In his latest book "The Grand Design", Hawking writes: "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist." He rejects Isaac Newton's theory that the universe did not spontaneously begin to form but was set in motion by God.

Bopanna is India's hero

• History was made at the SDAT Tennis Stadium as India won both its reverse singles matches, effecting a 3-2 turnaround in its Davis Cup World Group play-off against Brazil. The win marked the first occasion of India rallying from a 0-2 deficit to claim a tie since its competition debut in 1921.
• With the host required to win both the reverse singles to retain its World Group slot, Rohan Bopanna dismissed Ricardo Mello in straight sets for a decisive victory, after Somdev Devvarman conspired with the heat to win by default against Thomaz Bellucci, who retired from their match due to exhaustion.

WADA decision gives dope-accused hope

• In a major development, following the re-classification of the prohibited substance, methylhexaneamine, by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), a dozen Indian sportspersons, reported for an adverse analytical finding stand a chance to escape with a mere warning and come back into the Indian teams for the Commonwealth Games.
• Methylhexaneamine, at the centre of a raging controversy for more than two weeks, has been shifted to the ‘specified substance' list from the ‘non-specified stimulants' batch in the 2011 Prohibited List (effective from January 1 next year) by the WADA at its Executive Committee meeting held in Montreal on Saturday.

Russian drought, Pakistan floods will impact prices: WFP official

• The drought in Russia and the floods in Pakistan that have affected wheat production will impact food prices as in 2007-08, says a senior official of the World Food Programme.
• WFP Deputy Executive Director Ramiro Lopes da Silva says: “The world is not yet there,” because the outlook for global wheat production is still positive. “But if countries start reacting to the phenomenon by imposing export bans, import duty and that kind of restrictions that start distorting the market, … we have the risk of having an inflationary trend on food prices in 2011 and 2012.

Glaciers: weaknesses in IPCC review to the fore

• The review by the Inter-Academy Council (IAC) of the working of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which was released on, has brought out some interesting facts about the Himalayan glacier controversy.
• Significantly, besides revealing the weaknesses in the multi-layered process established by the IPCC to review draft chapters of its reports and correct errors, the IAC report highlights the shortcomings in the internal process of review within the government when the reports are received by it for comments.
• The observation on the Himalayan glaciers in the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the IPCC, issued in 2007, was one of the controversial statements in the report that led the Panel to request the IAC on March 10 to “conduct a thorough and independent review of the processes and procedures followed by the IPCC in preparing its Assessment Reports.”
• The controversial statement on the Himalayan glaciers appeared in Section 10.6.2 of the report of the Working Group II on Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation. Citing a 2005 report of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), a non-peer-reviewed (grey) literature, it said: “Glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world…and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by… 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 km2 to 100,000 km2 by … 2035.”
• The WWF report had, in turn, cited a 1999 report of the Working Group on Himalayan Glaciology (WGHG) of the International Commission for Snow and Ice (ICSI) whose chairman at that time was the well-known Indian glaciologist, Syed Iqbal Hasnain, formerly of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and now with The Energy Research Institute (TERI), New Delhi. The ICSI report had also resulted in a New Scientist article in June 1999 that quoted Professor Hasnain as saying that the Himalayan glaciers would vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming.

Afghans go to polls unfazed by rocket attacks, Taliban threats

• Afghanistan held crucial parliamentary elections on Saturday despite a string of rocket attacks and threats of reprisals by the Taliban.
• Voters turned out in modest numbers to elect 249 representatives to the Wolesi Jirga, the Afghan lower house of parliament.
• More than 2,500 candidates including over 400 women contested, the second after 2001, when the Taliban were evicted from power in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
• At daybreak, it became evident that those hostile to the elections were making serious attempts to disrupt polling.
• Around 4 a.m., a rocket exploded in Central Kabul, close to the American embassy and the headquarters of the NATO-led forces.
• Reuters reported that an explosion close to a polling station in eastern Khost province, near the Pakistan border, wounded two Afghan election observers. As polling came to a close, reports emerged that 11 people had been killed, including six policemen in the north.
• Ahead of the voting, the Taliban urged Afghans to boycott the polls, and counselled them to stick to “jihad,” (holy war).

India set for building prototype gravitational wave detector

• Indian gravitational astronomy research got a major boost on September 14 with the approval of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) to fund a Rs.2-crore proposal for building a prototype gravitational wave (GW) detector.
• This three-metre-long optical interferometer-based detector is the first step in the four-phase strategy recommended by a consortium of Indian gravitational astronomy researchers towards building a four-km class Indian Interferometric Gravitational Wave Observatory (IndIGO) by the year 2020.
• The building of the prototype, led by C.S. Unnikrishnan and G. Rajalakshmi of the TIFR, is expected to be completed in three years.

Egypt discovers ancient burial chamber in Luxor

• The Egyptian Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni announced on September 15 the discovery of a 2,800-year-old burial chamber which belongs to the priest Karakhamun from 25th Dynasty (755 BC).
• The Ministry of Culture said the chamber was uncovered during conservation and restoration work on the west bank of Luxor by an Egyptian-American expedition. “The restoration work of this tomb is part of a much larger project known as the South Asasif Conservation Project (ACP), which contains nobles' tombs from the New Kingdom, as well as the 25th-26th Dynasties,” Hosni said.
• The burial chamber was found at the bottom of an eight-metre deep burial shaft, Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) said. Hawass said that the chamber is in very good condition and contains beautifully painted scenes, adding that its entrance is decorated with an image of Karakhamun and the ceiling is decorated with several astrological scenes, including a depiction of the sky goddess Nut. The leader of the expedition, Dr. Elena Pischikova, said that the tomb of Priest Karakhamun was discovered in the 19th Century in a dilapidated condition. It continued to deteriorate, and only parts of it were accessible to visitors in the early 1970s. Later it collapsed and was buried under the sand.

Sushil Kumar on top of the world

• Sushil Kumar made history by becoming the first Indian to win a World wrestling championship gold medal when he overpowered home favourite Alan Gogaev to win the 66kg freestyle title in Moscow.
• The exciting 3-1 victory in the title-bout also made Sushil the first Indian grappler to bag Olympic and World championship medals.
• The 27-year-old already holds the Asian and Commonwealth titles.
• On his way to the final, Sushil convincingly defeated Anastasios Akritidis of Greece (6-0), Martin Sebastian Daum of Germany (4-1) and Batzorig Buyanjar of Mongolia (9-1) before rallying to beat reigning European champion Jabrayil Hasanov of Azerbaijan (4-3).
• In the final, Sushil got the better of Gogaev in two straight rounds, winning 2-1 and 1-0 and sealing a historic triumph.
• The Delhi wrestler had won the bronze in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, becoming the second Indian wrestler, the first being K.D. Jadhav, to achieve the distinction.

World's oldest stock certificate found

• A Dutch history student has unearthed the world's oldest share, dating back to 1606 and issued by the sea trading firm, the Dutch East India Company. As the Netherlands' largest trading company in the 17th and 18th Centuries, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was also the world's first company to issue stock.
• The Westfries Museum, in Hoorn, the Netherlands, has identified it as being the oldest share in the world. It is said to have been issued three weeks before what had been the oldest known share in the company.

Treat the malignancy

• Cricket might be facing the worst emergency in its history — the challenge of ridding itself of the stench of cheating and corruption.
• The International Cricket Council (ICC), headed by Sharad Pawar, has done the right thing in finding that Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif, and Mohammad Amir have “a really arguable case to answer,” charging them with “various offences” under Article 2 of its anti-corruption code, and suspending them pending a decision on those charges.
• As far as we know, match-fixing, including its no-less crooked variant, spot-fixing, is of fairly recent origin. The world of cricket woke up to it a decade ago following the disgrace and downfall of Hansie Cronje and the banning of South African, Indian, and Pakistani players for varying periods. The response of the ICC was to constitute an Anti-Corruption and Security Unit to investigate and act against player-corruption.
• The ICC's anti-corruption unit functions under serious limitations when it comes to policing and uncovering evidence. To be fair, it has raised the level of awareness among players, managers, and administrators of the game.

Ideology ruins science

• Human embryonic stem cell (hESC) research in the United States has hit a major roadblock once again.
• A temporary injunction by the Federal Court for the District of Columbia has turned the clock back and brought to a halt all federally funded research on hESC.
• The court's order comes a year and a half after President Barack Obama, through an executive order, broke the shackles on embryonic stem cell research, and provided the much-needed federal funding.
• However, this came with a rider. Money would be provided only after stem cells were harvested from the embryos, and could not be used for extracting embryonic stem cells, which would lead to the destruction of the embryos.
• This manoeuvre allowed the administration to sidestep the tricky Dickey-Wicker Amendment, a 1996 law that bars federal funding of any research that results in injury to or destruction of human embryos.
• Funding was also subject to certain conditions: that the embryos were no longer required for reproductive purposes, the donors provided informed consent, and no payments were offered for the embryos. But the judgment was based on a totally different reading of the Dickey-Wicker Amendment that federal support for the entire project should be denied even “if one step or ‘piece of research'…results in the destruction of an embryo.”
• The consequences of the Federal Court judgment are dramatic: it can derail the entire field of hESC research. It is unclear if the court order would make ineligible even the 21 embryonic stem cell lines approved for federal funding by President George W. Bush in August 2001.