Today's Hot Stories - December 14, 2012 - PT education

Today's Hot Stories - December 14, 2012

10 Headlines for Today

(1) Alagiri’s son surrenders in granite scam case
(2) 27 Maoists surrender in Bihar
(3) McAfee deported from Guatemala
(4) Cabinet okays 30% cut in spectrum reserve price for 4 circles
(5) SEBI initiative to reduce risk on stock exchanges
(6) EU Ministers strike deal on eurozone bank supervisor
(7) Nagpur Test: England 277/7 at lunch on Day 2
(8) Cricket for visually impaired: Spirited India clinches World Cup
(9) Football: Corinthians into World Club Cup final
(10) Automatic laundry facility for five more major Indian railway stations

5 Stories for Today

(1) Amendments to judicial standards Bill approved
(2) European court condemns CIA in landmark ruling
(3) Cabinet Committee clears new urea investment policy
(4) Hitachi unveils Rs. 4700 cr expansion plan in India
(5) Chidambaram promises more steps to revive economy

(1) Amendments to judicial standards Bill approved

The Union government on Thursday decided to retain a clause in a Bill on judicial standards which debars judges from making verbal comments against any constitutional authority in open courts.

A meeting of the Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, approved amendments to the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill which had already been passed in the Lok Sabha and was pending in the Rajya Sabha.

While deciding to retain the controversial clause, it made some changes to ensure it “stands the test of Article 14 which deals with equality before law,” informed sources said.

The earlier clause prohibited judges from making “unwarranted comments against the conduct of a constitutional or statutory authority or statutory bodies or statutory institutions or a chairperson or member or officer thereof, or on the matters which are pending or likely to arise for judicial determination.”

The amended clause debars judges from making unwarranted comments against conduct of any “constitutional body and other persons.” The clause is part of restatement of values for judges.

“In a bid to bring more clarity on the subject, the restatement of values for judges has been put in a separate Schedule of the Bill-Schedule II,” the sources said.

(2) European court condemns CIA in landmark ruling

A European court issued a landmark ruling on Thursday that condemned the CIA’s “extraordinary renditions” programmes and bolstered those who say they were illegally kidnapped and tortured as part of an overzealous war on terrorism.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled that a German car salesman was an innocent victim of torture and abuse, in a long-awaited victory for a man who had failed for years to get courts in the U.S. and Europe to acknowledge what happened to him.

Khaled El-Masri says he was kidnapped from Macedonia in 2003, mistaken for a terrorism suspect, then held for four months and brutally interrogated at an Afghan prison known as the “Salt Pit” run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. He says that once U.S. authorities realised he was not a threat, they illegally sent him to Albania and left him on a mountainside.

The European court, based in Strasbourg, France, ruled that Mr. El-Masri’s account was “established beyond reasonable doubt” and that Macedonia “had been responsible for his torture and ill-treatment both in the country itself and after his transfer to the U.S. authorities in the context of an extra-judicial rendition.”

It said the government of Macedonia violated Mr. El-Masri’s rights repeatedly and ordered it to pay €60,000 ($78,500) in damages. Macedonia’s Justice Ministry said it would enforce the court ruling and pay Mr. El-Masri the damages.

U.S. officials closed internal investigations into the El-Masri case two years ago, and the administration of President Barack Obama has distanced itself from some counterterrorism activities conducted under former President George W. Bush.

But several other legal cases are pending from Britain to Hong Kong involving people who say they were illegally detained in the CIA programme. Its critics hope that Thursday’s ruling will lead to court victories for other rendition victims and prevent future abuses.

The case focused on Macedonia’s role in a single instance of wrongful capture. But it drew broader attention because of how sensitive the CIA extraordinary renditions were for Europe, at a time when the continent lived in fear of terrorist attacks but was divided over the Bush administration’s methods of rooting out terrorism.

Those methods involved abducting and interrogating suspects without court sanction in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. A 2007 Council of Europe probe accused 14 European governments of permitting the CIA to run detention centres or carry out rendition flights between 2002 and 2005.

The CIA declined to comment on Thursday’s ruling.

Mr. El-Masri’s lawyer, Manfred Gnjidic, said he hoped the ruling would inspire Mr. El-Masri to resume contact with his lawyers and family, which he broke off after he was sentenced to prison in 2010 for assaulting the mayor of the German town of Neu-Ulm. The Lebanese-born Mr. El-Masri, who is scheduled for release from a Bavarian prison next year, is a “broken” man after unsuccessfully seeking justice in U.S., German and Macedonian courts, Mr. Gnjidic told The Associated Press.

“He lost his confidence in the system of rights that the democratic world celebrates,” Mr. Gnjidic said. “I hope this will give him a little bit more confidence again that even a little person who has come into a crime of great nations has the chance to have his rights.”

Macedonian authorities had argued that Mr. El-Masri was detained on suspicion of travelling with false documents, then travelled on his own to neighbouring Kosovo an argument the court called “utterly untenable.”

The court based its 92-page ruling not only on Mr. El-Masri’s version of events but also on testimony from former Macedonian officials, results of a German investigation, and U.S. diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks.

The court said Mr. El-Masri was severely beaten, sodomised, shackled and hooded “at the hands of the CIA rendition team” in the presence of Macedonian authorities. It described the measures as “invasive and potentially debasing ... used with premeditation, the aim being to cause Mr. El-Masri severe pain or suffering in order to obtain information.” And that was only the first stage in Mr. El-Masri’s months-long ordeal.

Jim Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Institute and a lawyer for Mr. El-Masri, said the ruling “serves as a wake-up call to the U.S. government and judiciary to re-examine how the CIA has treated rendition victims. ... and offers an opportunity to re-examine the (U.S.) position of looking forward instead of backward.”

Mr. Goldston said that even if the ruling has no impact in the United States, courts in other countries are likely to take it into account. He expressed hope that it will encourage “victims who have been denied redress or have simply not come forward.”

American lawyer Marc Zaid, who has defended national security whistleblowers, said the ruling could “impact how we do business with the world.” He said victims are pinning hopes on European courts “because there is no remedy available in the U.S. system.”

A U.N. special rapporteur on human rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, the International Committee of Jurists and Amnesty International were among others hailing the ruling as a long-awaited breakthrough.

The court’s rulings are binding on the 47 member-states of the Council of Europe, the continent’s human rights watchdog.

The decision is the second blow for the CIA programme in recent months. In September, Italy’s highest criminal court upheld the convictions of 23 Americans in the abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street, paving the way to possible extradition requests for CIA operatives by Italian authorities.

Also on Thursday, lawyers for a former Libyan dissident and his family said they have accepted £2.2 million ($3.5 million) from the British government to settle a claim that the U.K. approved their rendition to face imprisonment by Muammar Qadhafi’s regime. It is the latest in a series of costly payouts resulting from Britain’s involvement in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

Keywords: European Court of Human Rights ruling, Khaled El-Masri case, CIA kidnapping, 2003 Macedonia kidnap case, Afghan prison torture, Salt Pit Afghan prison, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA renditions, war on terror, George W. Bush regime

(3) Cabinet Committee clears new urea investment policy

Policy aims to incentivise fertilizer cos to set up new plants

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), on Thursday, approved a urea investment policy, which is likely to incentivise fertilizer companies to set up new plants and expand existing capacity.

India imports over 30 per cent of its urea requirement and the policy aims at reducing that. But it is unlikely to have any impact on existing prices.

“The new urea investment policy has been cleared,” sources said after the CCEA meeting here.

The policy, which aims to attract fresh investment of about Rs.35,000 crore to increase domestic production by eight million tonnes, has been cleared as the previous policy failed to attract the much needed funds.

Under the new policy, the government will give 12-20 per cent post-tax return on fresh capital infused by the manufacturers for setting up of new plants as well as for expansion and revamp of the existing ones.

To ensure this return, the government would cover the entire cost of natural gas, which is the main feedstock of urea, and accounts for 80 per cent of the cost. The government controls the urea sector and has fixed the maximum retail price (MRP) at Rs.5,360 a tonne.

The difference between the MRP and the cost of production is given as subsidy to manufacturers.

For determining the cost of production of new plants to be set up after the policy comes into effect, the government has set a floor and ceiling price of urea, based on the price of natural gas plus 12-20 per cent equity returns.

The new investment policy was approved, by the Group of Ministers (GoM) headed by the then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, on February 24.

However, sources said the Ministry made some changes in the draft policy after inter-ministerial consultation. It proposed covering entire cost of natural gas, while the GoM had favoured providing subsidy on gas price within the range of $6.5-14 mmBtu.

The country produces 22 million tonnes of urea, against the requirement of 32 million tonnes.

Meanwhile, the CCEA also cleared a proposal to extend additional subsidy to Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore (FACT) till June, 2013, to cover the cost of naptha-based complex fertilizer.

However, in the case of Madras Fertiliser (MFL) and Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizers and Chemicals, both have been asked to submit a report to the Committee of Secretaries,” sources said.

In the last two years, the government has been giving additional subsidy to naptha-based complex fertilizer makers such as FACT and MFL to cover higher cost of production with a condition that they will convert their units into gas-based.

FACT is expected to complete conversion of its units into gas-based by May next. Hence, the CCEA cleared the additional subsidy till June, the sources said.

(4) Hitachi unveils Rs. 4700 cr expansion plan in India

Japanese industrial solutions giant Hitachi, on Thursday, announced that it would invest Rs. 4,700 crore in India as part of its expansion plans, which include setting up five new manufacturing plants by March 2016.

Hitachi is also looking at increasing its human resource strength in the country and double it to 13,000 over the next four years.

It was for the first time that the company held its board meeting outside Japan. “Today Hitachi had its first board meeting outside Japan, and we held it in India. We also fixed an India strategy till 2015-16. We target to treble our revenue from India to 300 billion yen (about Rs. 20,000 crore). India's contribution will rise to three per cent by then from one per cent now,” Hitachi president Hiroaki Nakanishi told journalists here. The company had consolidated revenue of about 100 billion yen (Rs. 6,700 crore) during 2011-12, he added. Mr. Nakanishi said in order to meet the target they would invest 70 billion yen (about Rs. 4,700 crore) by 2015-16. Part of this investment would go for expansion of businesses by acquiring local entities. New type of business development is our target, he added.

On the acquisition front, he said the company would look for companies in the social infrastructure segment. When asked what made Hitachi so bullish about the Indian investment scenario, he said that the economic slowdown was a global issue, not an Indian one. “We have to manage business between this. We do not change the priority or investment decisions in the current scenario of the Indian economy,” he added.

He said the company had to adjust output of automotive components due to slowdown of vehicle sales in India.

Hitachi India Managing Director Ichiro Iino said that at present, the company has 12 plants in operation. “We would have five new facilities coming up by March 2016 across all our business verticals.

The five new plants would include two for auto components in Chennai and Neemrana in Rajasthan and also plants by joint ventures,” he said.

(5) Chidambaram promises more steps to revive economy

Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Friday said the government will take some more steps in the next few weeks to revive the economy and boost investment sentiments.

“I am confident that the steps we have taken, and some more steps that we will take in the next few weeks, will help turn the Indian economy around,” he said addressing the Delhi Economics Conclave in New Delhi.

In the recent past, government has taken a number of measures, including opening up of FDI in multi-brand retail and hiking foreign investment cap in the aviation sector, to boost economic growth and restore investor confidence.

Besides, the Union Cabinet has cleared setting up of a Cabinet Committee on Investment to fast-track large project entailing investment of over Rs. 1,000 crore.

“It is too early to say whether the measures have begun to bear fruit, although it is our expectation that they will do so,” Mr. Chidambaram said.

Concerned over sticky retail inflation, the Minister said: “There is no reason at all to become complacent.”

While headline inflation has moderated to 7.45 per cent in October, the retail inflation remains high at 9.90 per cent.

The economic growth in the first half of the fiscal fell to 5.4 per cent, against 7.3 per cent in the corresponding period a year ago. The growth in 2011-12 fell to a nine-year low of 6.5 per cent. In the current fiscal RBI expects it to be around 5.8 per cent.

Stressing that the present challenge is different from the one faced in 2008, Mr. Chidambaram said: “The present challenge calls for bold and innovative measures”.

While in 2008-09 imports had reduced considerably due to fall in international crude oil prices, the situation at present is different as, while exports are declining, imports continue to remain high mainly on account of crude and gold.

He said with rapid globalisation of economy, external sector is becoming more vulnerable.

The Finance Minister also asked Asian G20 member nations and Russia to increase resource base of Asian Development Bank for development of the region.