Monday 21 April 2014

Straw Donor

Indian-American hotelier Sant Singh Chatwal on 18 April 2014 pleaded guilty at a US court for violating federal election laws by using straw donors. A straw donor is someone who illegally uses someone else's money to make campaign contributions in his or her own name. He pleaded guilty in the Eastern District of New York to conspiring to violate the Federal Election Campaign Act (the 'Election Act') by making more than USD 180000 in federal campaign donations to three candidates through straw donors who were reimbursed and to witness tampering. For Instance, Chatwal had raised at least 100000 US dollars for former secretary of state Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign against Barack Obama. He was freed on a 750000 US dollars bond secured by property in Manhattan. He will be convicted on 31 July 2014. Chatwal could face a maximum of six years in prison. Sant Singh Chatwal is an Indian-American businessman. He heads the chain of the Hampshire Hotels and Bombay Palace chain of restaurants. Chatwal was awarded Padma Bhushan in 2006 for his role in the India-US civilian nuclear deal. This led to a public controversy based on allegations of malfeasance leveled against Chatwal. The Government of India has since upheld its award decision.

Russia and Ukraine

Russia, Ukraine and West (US and European Union) signed a surprise deal to ease Ukrainian Crisis. The deal was signed in Geneva on 17 April 2014. The deal among the four parties agreed to restore security for all citizens. Besides to disarm illegal armed groups who seized buildings in Ukraine and return the buildings to their rightful owners. The agreement also called on all sided to avoid from violence, intimidation and provocation and to reject extremism in all sides. Ukraine has faced months of turmoil. It all started with former President Viktor Yanukovych wanted to have closer ties with Russia instead of Europe. As a result there were protests against the president Viktor Yanukovych and in the month of March 2014 the turmoil ended with annexation of Crimea by Russia. Inspired from the referendum and annexation of Crimean peninsula, the other three ethnically Russian speaking population of Eastern Ukraine, viz., Donetsk, Kharkiv and Lugansk have also demanded referendum. According to the Demands of the insurgents the interim Prime Minister and President released a statement that Ukrainian government is ready to conduct a comprehensive constitutional reform that will secure powers of the regions giving them a greater say in local governance. The government also pledged a special status to the Russian language and vowed to protect the rights of all citizens whatever language they spoke.

Sunday 20 April 2014

SC strict on audit of telecom companies

Supreme Court (SC) of India on 17 April 2014 said that the national auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) is empowered to audit the revenues of private telecom companies. The judgement was given by the SC bench of Justice K S Radhakrishnan and Justice Vikramjit Sen. The bench upheld the January 2014 decision of the Delhi High Court which ruled that CAG within the meaning of the law is empowered to conduct revenue audits of private telecom firms. The court also issued a notice to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on the issue related to the important question of law and requires hearing. The judgement was given against the backdrop of a petition filed by the private telecom companies and Cellular Operators Association of India. In the petition they challenged the January 2014 ruling of the Delhi High Court. The judgment of Delhi High Court was quoted as erroneous by the senior advocate Harish Salve, who was appearing on behalf of telecom firms. He claimed that section 16 of the CAG Act, doesn't allow CAG to audit the files of private firms. Whereas the Union Government in its argument said that the revenue generated by the licenses in private-public partnership ventures is required to be shared with the Union government in line with the licensing agreements.

New Robot called Borewell

A new robot called Borewell Robot was developed by M.Manigandan to rescue kids who fall into borewells. M.Manigandan is a  Madurai-based social worker. The indigenously developed robot proved its mettle on 14 April 2014 when it successfully saved a life of a three year old boy. The boy fell into a borewell in a village in Tirunelveli (Southern Tamil Nadu). Features of Robot - Two feet high, 5 kg weight, Detachable arms, An iron framework, Ability to carry weight upto 50 Kgs, A high resolution camera to take pictures in pitch dark conditions, Pictures viewable on a computer, A hook on its top to enable its suspension through a rope into borewells. M. Manigandan, an ITI educated fitter is working as a faculty in a college which provides vocational training to rural people.

App for Farmers

A new software app Sandesh Pathak was developed to help the illiterate farmers. The app uses text-to-speech method to help the farmers. This application has been jointly developed by C-DAC Thiruvananthapuram , C-DAC Mumbai, IIT Kharagpur, IIT-Madras and  IIIT Hyderabad. Features of this app - It takes the received SMS message as input. It then produce content of the SMS message in form of a speech as output. It supports five Indian languages - Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Gujarathi and Telugu with options to select language. The TTS engines of all these languages have been tested on the agriculture domain-related texts and fine-tuned accordingly. It provides options to choose speed of the voice as normal, slow, slower, fast and faster. It can be downloaded from the Appstore of the Mobile Seva Project of government of India. Content of SMS - advice  about dealing with problems such as  fertilizer, insect, weed and disease management, updates on latest technology, weather forecast information. However, the app has its own limitations. It is not equipped to read out bilingual messages. In Phase two, following activities would be undertaken: To develop bilingual app. To include 13 languages such as Malayalam, Kannada, Rajasthani, Assamese etc. To include 13 flavours of English (with regional accents). More institutes will be roped in IIT Guwahati, IIT Mandi, SSN College Chennai, DA-IICT Ahmedabad, University of Guwahati and IISc, Bangalore. The app is part of the project launched by the Union Government to help farmers read messages. This new application will enable SMS messages to be read out loud thus facilitating their understanding. The app was developed because farmers are not able to read the received advice in the form of SMS and as a result they are unable to use the advice.

Sebi about Governance Norms

Capital market regulator of India, the Security and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on 17 April 2014 issued detailed corporate governance norms for listed companies. The norms have been launched for stricter disclosures and protection of investor rights, including equitable treatment for minority and foreign shareholders. SEBI has amended clauses 35f and 49 of the listing agreement and the new rules will be effective from 1 October 2014. The norms requires companies to set certain things, namely - The listed companies need to provide the option of facility of e-voting to shareholders on all resolutions proposed to be passed at general meetings, To get shareholders approvals for related party transactions, Establish whistle blower mechanism, Elaborate disclosures on pay packages, Have at least a woman director on their boards. The issued norms of SEBI are associated with the new Companies Act and are aimed to encourage companies to adopt best practices on corporate governance. The new set of norms was approved by the SEBI board during its meeting held in February 2014.

Earth size Planet Kepler 186

Astronomers on 17 April 2014 announced that they have discovered an Earth-size planet, named Kepler-186f. The planet is located in the habitable zone-a range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the planet's surface. It is a part of the Kepler-186 system, which is located about 500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. This Kepler-186f also called as the Earth cousin, orbits around a red dwarf (M dwarf), which is a type of star much smaller and dimmer than Earth's sun. Our galaxy has about 100 billion stars of which seven out of every ten of them are M dwarfs. The astronomers have claimed that discovery of Kepler-186f has confirmed that Earth-size planets actually exist in the habitable zones of other stars. This also signals a significant step closer to find a world similar to earth. The astronomers claimed that the exoplanet is known to be less than 10% larger than Earth but they doesn't know about its mass, composition and density. The previous study suggests that a planet size of discovered Kepler-186f is rocky. It orbits its star in 130 days and it receives one-third energy from its star as Earth receives from our sun. The Kepler-186 system's star is half in size and mass of the sun and is a home of four inner planets. Prior to the discovery of Kepler-186f, a similar Earth-like planet was Kepler-62f that was 40% larger than the size of Earth and it also orbited its star in habitable zone. Kepler-186f is a tip-of-the-iceberg discovery. Elisa Quintana is the Study leader and is a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field.

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