News : 16 July 2013

1. Blue plaque for Krishna Menon’s London home.
2. U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden has applied for “temporary asylum” in Russia
3. US whistleblower Edward Snowden has very sensitive “blueprints” detailing how the National Security Agency (NSA) operates that would allow someone who read them to evade or even duplicate NSA surveillance,Glenn Greenwald, a journalist with The Guardian said.
4. India has overtaken the U.S. as the top buyer of Nigerian crude oil.

GK July 2013

1. India has ranked 66th out of 142 in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2013, an index that is published by Cornell University, INSEAD, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) as a knowledge partner.
2. India has overtaken the U.S. as the top buyer of Nigerian crude oil.

Sri Lanka

1. President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his three brothers — Defence Secretary Gotabhaya, Basil, who controls politics and economic policies, and the soft-spoken Speaker of the Parliament, Chamal — are the arbiters of their country’s destiny.
2. It is clear from the policies the Rajapaksa brothers have pursued since the defeat of the LTTE in May 2009 that their principal objective has been to prevent forever the emergence of a similar organisation. Now, the surest way to ensure that objective would be to take steps to erode, if not eliminate, separatist sentiment among the Tamil community.
3. And the first measure in this direction would be to implement the 13th Amendment and the recommendations of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) report, especially with regard to incidents of excessive or malicious use of force against civilians in the last few months of the anti-LTTE operations
4. However, President Rajapaksa and Gotabhaya in particular, have always been critical of the 13th Amendment devolution process which created the provincial councils and gave the provinces meaningful powers including over land and the police.

13th Amendment : 

1. The Thirteenth Amendment (13A) to the Constitution of Sri Lanka is amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka which created Provincial Councils in Sri Lanka. This also made Sinhala and Tamil as the official language of the country and English as link language
2. On 29 July 1987, Indo-Sri Lanka Accord was signed between Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan President J.R. Jayewardene which stated that devolution powers to the provinces. Hence on 14 November 1987 the Sri Lankan Parliament passed the 13th Amendment to the 1978 Constitution of Sri Lanka and the Provincial Councils Act No 42 of 1987 to establish provincial councils.
3. Although Sri Lanka has given an assurance to India during Rajapaksa-Manmohan talks in July 2010 and subsequently to UN Secretary General Ban-ki-Moon that the government would go beyond the 13th amendment to devolve substantial powers to Tamil majority areas, neither India nor the UNSG asked Colombo to specify the meaning of 13 plus
4. The 13th amendment was introduced to create provincial councils as a follow up action on Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement of 1987 to devolve powers to the Tamil majority north and east. However, the then President J R Jayewardene’s government, decided to set up 9 provincial councils for the entire Island-Nation in order to scuttle the mounting opposition to devolution of powers to Tamil areas

News : 7 July 2013

1. A solar-powered aircraft completed the final leg of a history-making cross-country flight gliding to a smooth stop at New York’s JFK airport.
2. Israel’s Cabinet has approved a plan that would gradually end a contentious system that has granted automatic draft exemptions to Jewish ultra-Orthodox seminary students.The new system, which needs Parliamentary approval, would reduce the number of exemptions and require ultra-Orthodox men to register for military service. It would go into effect in three years.
3. India in discussion with Afghanistan on equipment supplies.But rejected plea for supply of lethal weapons to Afghanistan.

Israel

1. Israel’s Cabinet has approved a plan that would gradually end a contentious system that has granted automatic draft exemptions to Jewish ultra-Orthodox seminary students.The new system, which needs Parliamentary approval, would reduce the number of exemptions and require ultra-Orthodox men to register for military service. It would go into effect in three years.

Afghanistan

President : Hamid Karzai 

1. Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced at a ceremony on Tuesday that his country’s armed forces are taking over the lead for security nationwide from the U.S.-led NATO coalition.The handover of responsibility is a significant milestone in the nearly 12-year war and marks a turning point for American and NATO military forces, which will now move entirely into a supporting role. It also opens the way for their full withdrawal in 18 months
2. India in discussion with Afghanistan on equipment supplies.But rejected plea for supply of lethal weapons to Afghanistan [July 2013]

IRNSS

Launching 

1. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch the first of seven satellites that will provide the country with an independent navigation satellite capability on July 1,2013.
2. A navigation satellite system uses a cluster of spacecraft that regularly transmit signals.Suitably equipped receivers can then use that data to work out their exact position.Vehicles, big and small, as well as aircraft and ships increasingly find their way using such navigation devices.

Other Navigational system

1. The best known and currently the most widely used navigation satellite system is the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS), which became operational two decades ago. Russia too offers global coverage with its Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS). Europe is establishing its own global system, Galileo. Although the full constellation will be ready only by 2019, it plans to begin some services with a reduced number of satellites by the end of next year.
2. Last December, China announced operational services from its BeiDou Navigation Satellite System over that country and surrounding areas. It intends to launch more satellites and expand the system for global coverage by 2020. Japan has already launched the first of three satellites for its regional system that will augment GPS services.

Usability and Defense 

1. With seven satellites, the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) will broadcast its signals primarily over India and to about 1,500 km beyond its borders.
2. Military operations rely heavily on satellite navigation, and India’s defence requirements appear to have played an important part in the decision to establish an independent system. The operator of a foreign system can choose to deliberately degrade the accuracy of its signals, as the U.S. reportedly did with the freely accessible GPS signals when invading Iraq.
3. Apart from signals that anyone can utilise free of cost, satellite navigation systems, including the Indian one, provide an encrypted service that is restricted to those authorised to receive it.
4. India’s IRNSS, along with GAGAN, “is set to serve a potentially huge market across the sub-continent,” the report noted. (GAGAN, an abbreviation for “GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation,” is a satellite-based system implemented jointly by ISRO and the Airports Authority of India to improve GPS accuracy over the country as an aid for aviation
5. The US does, however, allow for accessibility of the GPS facility mostly for civilian purposes but the quality of signal made available is always in a degraded profile. Such signal is of no use for military purposes. In the case of the IRNSS, the position accuracy is expected to be in range of 15 to 20 meters while the GPS provides a signal approximately with 36 meters accuracy.

Advantage 

1. One of the biggest advantages of the IRNSS, once the system gets fully operational, is to reduce the dependency on the GPS. This would make India largely self-sufficient in navigational arena. Currently, India also uses the Russian system called Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS). ISRO has also developed a GPS supported geo-augmented navigation system (GAGAN) to assist the navigation of civilian air traffic over Indian airspace. It is expected that after both these systems become fully operational a potential synergy between IRNSS and GAGAN would evolve.

History 

1. For many centuries the sun and stars position guided humans to navigate the sea and travel the land. Even today, migratory birds take help from the ‘sky’ in their long-distance flight. Subsequently, the magnetic compass and the sextant assisted travel. But the real revolution in navigational techniques happened during the sixties with the invention of the space navigational system by the US military, famously known as the Global Positioning System (GPS).
2. For any space navigational system to successfully undertake global operations it has to develop a constellation of a minimum of 24 to 26 satellites. However, India is developing a regional system with 7 to 11 satellites based on the region’s requirement. Normally, GPS satellites are positioned in the Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), around 20,000 km above the earth’s surface. The IRNSS, however, is unique as three satellites will be in the geostationary orbit (36,000 km above the earth’s surface) and four satellites in the inclined geosynchronous orbit.
3. The GPS is a Cold War creation. One of the basic purposes behind developing this system was to assist the US submarines to launch a missile attack on a target with minimum error. Now, the GPS is used in the civil aviation and shipping sector as well as in fields like geodesy, cartography, land and water resources management, etc.
4. The GPS is important not only for the operations of military platforms like ships, aircrafts and tanks but also for accurate targets.

Committees

1. Walmart lobbying activities in India : Justice Mukul Mudgal 

News : 3 July 2013

1. Ed Husic became Australia’s first ever Muslim Minister in Australia, he was flooded with online racial abuse for taking oath of office on the Koran.
2. The Egyptian army has invited opposition leader Mohammed ElBaradei, the top Sunni sheikh and the Coptic pope for “consultations” on a future roadmap to end the crisis
3.  Several Southeast Asian countries have begun scaling down the subsidies they are providing to key sectors of their economies.Last month, the Thai government confirmed that it will soon decrease the rice price subsidy it gives to farmers. In Indonesia, the parliament approved a revised budget that lowered the fuel subsidy. Meanwhile, in the Philippines’ Transportation and Communications chief advised Metro Manila train commuters to prepare for a fare hike since the government will reduce the subsidy for the mass transit service.
4. India has ranked 66th in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2013, an index that is published by Cornell University, INSEAD, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) as a knowledge partner.The study ranked 142 economies across the world on their innovation capacity and efficiency.India ranked 1st in the Central and South Asia region followed by Kazakhstan and Sri Lanka, and 11th overall in innovation efficiency ratio. (Innovation efficiency reflects the innovation output per unit of innovation input in the economy).India ranked poor in areas such as political stability (rank 123), ease of starting business (rank 128) knowledge absorption (rank 122) among others.
5. India’s ONGC has lost the giant Kashagan oilfield to the Chinese after Kazakhstan blocked its USD 5 billion deal to buy US energy major ConocoPhillips’ stake in the Caspian Sea oilfield.ONGC Videsh, the overseas investment arm of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC), had in November last year struck a deal to buy ConocoPhillips’ 8.4 per cent stake in Kazakhstan’s biggest oilfield, Kashagan for USD 5 billion.“Based on the communication received through ConocoPhillips, the Government of Kazakhstan has announced that in accordance with the Republic of Kazakhstan Law (ROK) on Subsurface and Subsurface Use, ROK has exercised its priority right and pre-empted the bid by OVL to acquire the 8.4 per cent stake of ConocoPhillips,” OVL said in a statement.

News : 2 July 2013

1. India says ‘no’ to Snowden’s plea.
2. In case of issuance of cheque from joint accounts, only the person who signs the cheque can be prosecuted in a cheque bouncing case under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, the Supreme Court held.
3. Suresh kalmadi lost his bid for the fourth consecutive term as president of the Asian Atheletics Association to Dahlan Jumaan Al-Hamad of Qatar by 2 votes.