1/4/2014

1. Japans whaling not for scientific research, rules ICJ

The UNs International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Monday asked Japan to stop its
whaling programme in the Antarctic.
Japan catches about 1,000 whales each year in the region for what it calls
scientific research, BBC reported.
Australia in May 2010 filed a case with the ICJ, arguing that Japans programme
under which it kills whales is actually commercial whaling in disguise.
The courts decision is considered legally binding, and Japan earlier did say it
would abide by the courts ruling, the report said.
Presiding Judge Peter Tomka on Monday ordered a temporary halt to the
Japanese programme.
2. Koreas trade fire on water
North and South Korea fired hundreds of artillery shells into each others waters
Monday in a flare-up of animosity that forced residents of five front-line South
Korean islands to evacuate to shelters for several hours, South Korean officials
said.
The exchange of fire into the Yellow Sea followed Pyongyangs sudden
announcement that it would conduct live-fire drills in seven areas north of the
Koreas disputed maritime boundary. North Korea routinely test-fires artillery and
missiles into the ocean but rarely discloses those plans in advance. The
announcement was seen as an expression of Pyongyangs frustration at making
little progress in its recent push to win outside aid.
North Korea fired 500 rounds of artillery shells over more than three hours, about
100 of which fell south of the sea boundary, South Korean Defence Ministry
spokesman Kim Min-seok said. South Korea responded by firing 300 shells into
North Korean waters, he said.
No shells from either side were fired at any land or military installations, but Kim
called the Norths artillery firing a provocation aimed at testing Seouls security
posture.
There was no immediate comment from North Korea.
Residents on front-line South Korean islands spent several hours in shelters
during firing.

3. Warming worsens hunger problems: U.N.

A warmer world will push food prices higher, trigger hotspots of hunger among
the worlds poorest people, and put the crunch on Western delights like fine wine
and robust coffee, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
concluded in a 32-volume report issued on Monday.

Were facing the spectre of reduced yields in some of the key crops that feed
humanity, panel chairman Rajendra Pachauri said in a press conference after
releasing the report.
Even though heat and carbon dioxide are often considered good for plants, the
overall effect of various aspects of man-made warming is that it will reduce food
production, the report said.
In the past several years the scientific literature has been overwhelming in
showing that climate change hurts food production, said Chris Field of the
Carnegie Institution of Science and lead author of the climate report.
Food prices are likely to go up somewhere in a wide range of three per cent to 84
percent by 2050 just because of climate change, the report said. AP
4. El Nino may have adverse bearing on inflation: RBI
RBI has said further softening of vegetable prices is unlikely and the impact of
the El Nino weather phenomenon on the monsoon could have an adverse
bearing on inflation.
The Reserve Bank of India said in its first bi-monthly monetary policy statement
for 2014-15 that excluding food and fuel retail inflation remained sticky at around
8 per cent. This suggests that some demand pressures are still at play.
El Nino refers to the warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the
central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. This condition occurs every four to 12
years and had
last hit India's monsoon in 2009, leading to the worst drought in almost four
decades.
3/4/2014

5. Voting while in the Army

exercising franchise:Developing online voting would enable the Armed forces to
vote whether they are in peace stations or not. PHOTO: Sandeep Saxena
Vote bank politics is a commonly bandied about expression in the election
season, which is no surprise. But a new vote bank of Armed Forces personnel is
now looking a step closer to reality with the Supreme Court directing the Election
Commission (EC) to allow defence personnel to vote as general voters in peace
stations. This is somewhat unusual. The Supreme Court merely reiterated the law
it laid down in an earlier judgment in 1971, though the circumstances of that
case were somewhat different. The Representation of the People Act, 1950
defines the term ordinarily resident in Section 20, a qualification required to get
registered as a voter. Armed forces personnel are among the few categories of
people defined as persons with service qualification in Section 20(8) and are
given a special dispensation in Section 20(3) and Section 20(5). This category
can declare while living at a place ordinarily resident status at another place
where they would have normally lived, if it were not for the exigencies of service.
Implicit faith was to be placed on their declaration and they would be registered
at the place they indicated as their place of ordinary residence, most likely their

native place, and as a corollary the place of their posting could not be their
ordinary place of residence.
Place of posting vs residence
In a matter arising from the Nagaland Assembly Election in 1969, the court did
not accept the argument that for service personnel, the place of posting cannot
ipso facto be the place of residence. Instead, the declaration of the Assam Rifles
personnel, who had spent 10 years in one location claiming it as a place of
ordinary residence under Section 20(5), wherein but for their service qualification
also they would have been ordinarily resident and not merely because of it,
found favour with the Court. The Court declared that the statutory fiction in
Section 20(3) gave the right to the personnel to claim registration at their home
town or village but the fiction cannot take away the right of persons possessing
service qualification to get themselves registered at a constituency in which they
are actually residing though such place happens to be their place of service.
The law gave a special dispensation to a service voter in that his declaration
designating a place as his place of ordinary residence and certified by his
organisation was not to be questioned by the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO)
but simply accepted. It was intended to avoid the delay in registration if an
enquiry were to be done independently by the ERO as in the case of ordinary
voters.
Interpreting that judgment as mandating the registration of a service voter at the
place of his posting and by cleverly using the provision u/s 20(5), a campaign
was mounted in the run-up to the Punjab Assembly election in 2007 by Brig. H.S.
Ghuman (retd.) and his All India Veterans Core Group (AIVCG) to have service
personnel posted in several cantonment towns in Punjab to register as ordinary
voters there. A total of 7,274 service personnel were registered as voters, of
whom 850 were from towns and villages of Punjab and 6,424 from other States.
All applications were in Gurumukhi script, but most of the signatures were not in
that language, therefore providing a clue to what really went on. The highest
registration was in Kahnuwan constituency in Gurdaspur district with an Army
cantonment, where 3,488 personnel registered. Of them, 70 were from Punjab
and the rest from other States. It was alleged by the Akali opposition candidate
that the Congress candidate P. S. Bajwas relative, a retired Brigadier, was the
prime mover for this large-scale registration. The formation commander was
accused of collusion. Mr. Bajwa won that contest with a margin of 5,288 votes.
Evidently Mr. Bajwa used the tactics more effectively in the 2009 Parliament
election. He seems to have won the Gurdaspur seat by a margin of 8,000 votes,
with 11,000 votes from the cantonment cast in his favour against the 13,345
votes polled by servicemen.
Since then, retired service officers and others including a Member of Parliament
have lent their support to this campaign culminating in the latest verdict of the
Supreme Court. But as a note of caution that was sounded in many border States
that the local voter population may be small and can be outnumbered by the
service personnel the Court restricted the applicability of the order only to
peace stations. In other words, only in peace stations can service persons claim
they are ordinary residents and vote locally. If their units move out to non-peace
stations, they cannot register themselves there. Imagine a serviceman who hails

from Odisha and is posted in Jalandhar and gets himself registered there. He can
vote in the Lok Sabha election but cannot vote for the Odisha Assembly election
being held simultaneously. If his unit moves to a non-peace station, he can
neither register himself there nor can he vote in the next Parliament or Assembly
election unless he is registered again at some other place.
If peace stations are defined in a location-specific manner, this can lead to
anomalies. If Itanagar or Leh are defined as peace stations but not Tawang or
Nubra, it may be kosher for vote bank politics but it will create disaffection
among the local population in both places, given the small-sized constituencies
and the thin margins of victory. Distinctions based on unit-specific roles in the
same station will entitle men of the non-operational unit to register as voters and
of the operational unit ineligible. So States have to be in either category to avoid
anomalies.
More problems
As a larger number of service personnel would be in the many cantonments in
Haryana and Punjab, competitive canvassing by politicians there can bring in its
wake other problems. A normal movement of a unit can be questioned by rival
politicians as favouring one or the other candidate or party. The formation
commanders can be accused of favouritism as happened in the Punjab Assembly
election in 2007. Will the Election Commissioner be petitioned to effect the
transfer of a formation commander because of his perceived partiality as is done
in the case of Collectors, Superintendents of Police, Deputy Inspector Generals of
Police, etc.? Only time can tell. But if a perfectly routine exercise by a
detachment of the Army can be hyped to raise fears of a coup, pre-election
movement of Army units and posting of formation commanders can become the
subjects of political mudslinging with obvious adverse consequences.
Since the new dispensation would not extend to all the defence personnel and
since many service personnel may still remain registered in their native towns
and villages by choice, the postal ballot system or its alternative the proxy
voting facility would still be relevant. A study done at the behest of the EC by
the Collector of Thanjavur district in 2007 showed that only 34.54 per cent of the
postal ballot papers issued to service personnel returned in time to be included
in counting. A significant 12.63 per cent of the ballot papers which were received
late missed the counting. Worse, 25.39 per cent of ballot papers were returned
undelivered, which meant that their addresses were not updated by the Record
Office.
Transmission time can be cut down if blank ballot papers are sent electronically,
providing more time for their return. Better still would be to develop online voting
and what better way than to provide it to the group that deserves it the most?
We certainly owe it to our Armed forces personnel to do all that is possible to
enable them to exercise their franchise.
(N. Gopalaswami is a former Chief Election Commissioner.)
Only in peace stations can service persons claim they are ordinary
residents and vote locally. If their units move to non-peace stations,
they cannot register themselves there
6/4/2014

6. Ukraine threatens arbitration over gas price

Russia and Ukraine appear to be heading towards another gas price war that
may further inflame the East-West standoff over the former Soviet state.
Ukraines Acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said his government did not
accept the price of $485 per 1,000 cubic metres of natural gas that Russia set
this week for Ukraine after scrapping earlier discounts.
Mr. Yatsenyuk told a cabinet meeting on Saturday that Ukraine was only prepared
to continue buying natural gas at the price from last year $268.
He said Ukraine would try to replace Russian supplies with gas purchases in
Europe. Acting Energy Minister Yuri Prodan said Ukraine would take Russia to the
Stockholm arbitration court if talks fail to bring about a cut in natural gas prices.
Russias state gas monopoly Gazprom, acting with full approval from the
government, has made it clear it will not back off. It said Ukraine had violated the
terms for getting a $100 discount because it had run up a debt of $2.2 billion for
gas deliveries.
Conduit for supply
The gas price dispute is fraught with a third gas war between Russia and
Ukraine. In 2006 and 2009 Europe was left freezing in winter when Kiev siphoned
off Europe-bound Russian gas after Russia cut deliveries to Ukraine. Russia
supplies 30 per cent of Europes gas and almost half of it, or more than 70 billion
cubic metres, is piped through Ukraine.
Gazprom chief Alexei Miller had warned EU energy commissioner that
uninterrupted supplies to Europe in winter could only be guaranteed if Ukraines
gas storage facilities in Ukraine, which can hold 32 billion cubic metres, are filled
up during spring and summer.

7. Terror rejected: India

India has termed Saturdays election to choose a successor to Afghanistan
President Hamid Karzai as a resounding rejection of the designs and ideology of
terrorists and their supporters.
Today the Afghan people, including its women and youth have spoken in loud
and clear terms.
This is an important message that everyone should listen to, said Syed
Akbaruddin, official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs.
Resolve lauded
Taking note of the large turnout, India appreciated the resolve to exercise their
franchise despite the threat of violence and intimidation from terrorists and those
who do not wish to see a strong democratic and sovereign Afghanistan.

8. Peaceful in Kandahar
In the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, peaceful streets and long voter lines on
Saturday stood in stark contrast to the violent 2009 election, when residents
cowered indoors fearful of Taliban attack.

The city where the Taliban first emerged in the early 1990s has been the scene
of much insurgent unrest since 2001, and was the nadir of the much-criticised
poll five years ago.
But voters turned out in droves on Saturday to elect a successor to President
Hamid Karzai, many taken aback by how peacefully the poll passed off.
There were still worries about the militants but everyone was keen to get out
and experience this day, said Abdullah (23), a university student.
Marked enthusiasm
It is good to see so many people wanting to vote compared with before. This
was an important personal decision for me.
Only a few men, and almost no women, went to the 2009 polls due to Taliban
threats to target polling stations and to cut off anyones finger dipped in ink to
show they had voted. AFP

9. RBI decides to compute and release Real Effective Exchange

Rate from this financial year
The RBI has decided to compute and release the Real Effective Exchange Rate
on the basis of the Consumer Price Index from this financial year. The Bank said
in a release that the step would give a higher degree of comparability to India's
international competitiveness in relation to its trading partner countries. Since
October last year, the RBI had started giving projections of inflation in terms of
the broader CPI-Combined. The RBI had so far been providing the Real Effective
Exchange Rate index using the Wholesale Price Index for India and CPI for
partner countries.

10.
Gazprom announces over 40% increase in price
of gas exports to Ukraine
Russian energy giant Gazprom has announced a more than 40 percent increase
in the price of gas exports to Ukraine, scrapping a previous discount amid
mounting strains between the two countries. Gazprom chief executive Alexei
Miller said in a statement today, the debt currently owed by Ukraine to
Gazprom, amounts to 1.7 billion dollars.
The gas price rise by Gazprom although widely expected, is a new blow to the
Ukrainian economy which needs an international rescue to stave off the risk of
default. Europe currently receives about a third of its gas needs from Russia.
While the current crisis has prompted new calls for a diversification of energy
sources, there is little chance of this happening fast.
10/6/2014

11. Teenager supercomputer passes Turing Test

A Russian supercomputer posing as a 13-year-old boy has convinced judges that it is human, becoming the first to pass the Turing Test
in a historic moment in artificial intelligence, British scientists said.
The computer became the first in the world to be mistaken for a real person more than 30 per cent of the time, during a series of fiveminute keyboard conversations with humans conducted at the Royal Society in London.
The test was established in 1950 by Alan Turing, a World War II British codebreaker and pioneer of computer science, in a journal
article about whether computers think.

At the competition on Saturday, five supercomputers machines that run massive numbers of processors to make high-speed
calculations were presented with a series of unrestricted questions.
Real people also answered the questions, and the judges had to decide who was human and who was not.
The Russian computer programme, which simulated a 13-year-old boy named Eugene Goostman, persuaded the judges 33 per cent of
the time that it was a human.
In the field of artificial intelligence there is no more iconic and controversial milestone than the Turing Test, when a computer
convinces a sufficient number of interrogators into believing that it is not a machine but rather is a human, said Professor Kevin
Warwick of the University of Reading, west of London, who organised the competition.
He said that while some experts claim that the Turing Test had already been passed, the Royal Society experiment went further than
others including in the random nature of the questions and was independently verified.