Today's Hot Stories - December 19, 2012 - PT education

Today's Hot Stories - December 19, 2012

10 Headlines for Today

(1) Former militants occupy top posts in J&K government
(2) Gujarat assembly elections 2012: Bookies feel Narendra Modi won't even score 100
(3) Iraq president Jalal Talabani hospitalized
(4) DLF inks pact to sell Amanresorts for over Rs 1600cr
(5) India high priority market for P&G: Report
(6) Samsung to drop lawsuits seeking ban on Apple goods
(7) SFL: Shyam wins welter weight title in style
(8) NBA: Heat use strong fourth to beat Wolves
(9) Hockey: HIL signs Nooijer as brand ambassador
(10) BSF protests shikar by Arab royals

5 Stories for Today

(1) Delhi gang rape case: Main accused went berserk after victim bit him
(2) Backed by John Kerry, US aid to Pakistan flows again
(3) India Inc asks RBI to cut interest rates
(4) Fiscal cliff: Obama softens tax stance
(5) Parliament passes Appropriation Bill

(1) Delhi gang rape case: Main accused went berserk after victim bit him

Ram Singh, 33, the prime accused in Sunday's gang rape, is a volatile man, known among friends as "Mental," a police source said on Tuesday. During investigation, he is learnt to have told police how he lost control and ended up brutalizing the woman and assaulting her friend.

"When she resisted and bit his hand, he says, he got very angry. Alcohol and the victims' defiance, made him go berserk. He picked up a rod and hit the two everywhere. His accomplices followed suit," a source said.

Ram Singh reportedly started picking up fights at the slightest pretext after the death of his wife two years ago. There's an accident case registered against him and he has admitted to being involved in several other brawls. He had also run away with a girl in his neighbourhood, sources said.

A police officer said the investigating team led by Inspector Anil Sharma had found Ram Singh a cold and remorseless man. "Initially, he denied everything. But when he began to open up, he chose to divulge each detail, with no repentance. Such brutality does not affect him. He tried to destroy evidence by washing the bus with confidence and told his accomplices to not worry, and lie low for some time. He stayed calm when he went and parked the bus in RK Puram, and then took it back to the owner in Noida. The confidence he shows is not of a novice definitely," the officer said.

It seems that even as the gang was brutalizing the woman by turns, Ram Singh had made a plan to cover their tracks. Sources say Ram Singh decided to strip the victims completely before throwing them out of the bus to leave no trace of incriminating semen or blood. He also kept their mobiles and switched them off. Three mobiles — one belonging to the woman and two to her friend — have now been recovered along with some of their clothes.

Although police were able to arrest him with his employer's help, Ram Singh showed his shrewd side again by refusing to undergo the test identification parade on Tuesday.

Police say Ram Singh dropped his accomplices near RK Puram after 10.30pm on Sunday and brought the bus back to Sector 3 in RK Puram. Although his brother Mukesh was initially driving the bus, Ram Singh asked the cleaner, Akshay, to drive it to the garage.

In the morning, all the accused returned to work on his direction. Akshay and Ram Singh plied the bus on its route. Around 9am, when they realized their crime was all over the news, they took the bus to Rohilla Khurd near Sector 62, Noida and washed it thoroughly to remove bloodstains.

But Ram Singh's plan went awry when the bus owner, Dinesh Yadav, called him to drive it back. "Police had asked Yadav to ensure Ram Singh came back with the bus. He was tricked into coming to RK Puram, where we arrested him,'' said an investigating officer.

According to police, the accused used to drive continuously through the day. He would pick up schoolchildren at 8am and drop them before picking office goers from the Malai Mandir area. He brought back students from the south Delhi school at 1pm.

Sources also pointed out that had the school noticed and reported that the bus they had hired had tinted glasses and was driven by an illiterate person involved in an accident, Ram Singh could have been taken off the roads earlier.

(2) Backed by John Kerry, US aid to Pakistan flows again

The United States has resumed bankrolling Pakistan with American tax dollars despite the unstable country ramping up nuclear weapons production and its political leadership paying little or no taxes.

The Obama administration has reportedly sent to the Congress on December 7, Pakistan's tab for a $688 million payment that constitutes Islamabad's bill for deploying its troops and providing infrastructural support to the US in its war in Afghanistan.

The payout, going through without any protest or discussion in Washington, is said to be the first since summer this year, after payment of the so-called Coalition Support Fund (CSF) was suspended amid worsening ties between the two countries due to the raid that killed Osama bin Laden last year and the Salala attack that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. The Obama administration has ostensibly felt the need to buy Pakistan's support for its upcoming draw-down from Afghanistan despite serious misgivings in Washington.

Non-proliferation circles have been replete in recent days with reports of Pakistan's "reckless" drive towards deploying (small) tactical nuclear weapons, which arms control advocates feel will be easy for jihadist groups to intercept or hijack during their transportation to battlefield stations.

More recently, there has been outrage among regional analysts at media reports from Pakistan that the country's political leadership and elite mooch off the US but themselves avoid paying taxes. A recent study produced by a Pakistani investigative think tank revealed that 60% of country's cabinet and two-thirds of federal lawmakers did not file tax returns last year, a scroll of shame that reportedly included the President, the finance minister, and the foreign minister.

"The problem starts at the top. Those who make revenue policies, run the government and collect taxes have not been able to set good examples for others," the study titled "Representation without Taxation" produced by the Centre for Investigative Reporting and widely cited in the US, was quoted as saying.

Regardless, Pakistan has powerful supporters in Washington who have pressed for ladling out US tax dollars in the belief thatAmerica needs to remain invested in the country, none more than Senator John Kerry, President Obama's putative secretary of state. Kerry was the co-author of the so-called Kerry-Lugar-Berman law which authorized a five-year $7.5 billion payout to Pakistan subject to a slew of conditions and caveats.

Few of those conditions, including rolling back the promotion of hatred and bigotry through official texts, tracts, and laws and access to nuclear proliferator AQ.Khan, have been met, but evidently Washington has had enough of leaning on Pakistan given the exigencies of withdrawing from Afghanistan. In fact, Islamabad has gone a step further in poking Washington in the eye by mainstreaming AQ Khan into politics and incarcerating a doctor who helped the CIA eliminate Osama bin Laden.

Kerry, who even the liberal New York Times, which first reported the resumption of CSF funding online, said "has frequently served as an envoy to Pakistan, including after the killing of Osama bin Laden," has been a key principal in the making of the Pakistan policy. "Kerry's nomination (as secretary of state) would be welcomed in Pakistan, where he is seen as perhaps the most sympathetic to Pakistani concerns. He has nurtured relationships with top civilian and military officials, as well as ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency," the NYT said.

(3) India Inc asks RBI to cut interest rates

Terming RBI's policy as "harsh and disappointing", India Inc today asked the central bank to cut interest rates before January 29 policy review to boost economic growth.

Industry body CII said with the government having announced a clear road map for fiscal consolidation and non-food inflation demonstrating a secular decline, conditions are conducive for RBI to have intervened with a repo and CRR reduction.

"We hope that the RBI would not wait for the next quarterly review, but would recognise the enormity of the problem and intervene sooner than that," CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee said

He added that the industry is looking at the central bank for some relief with interventions which would help availability of capital at lower rates.

Describing central bank decision as 'harsh and disappointing,' Assocham President Rajkumar Dhoot said, "Our hopes of seeking some relief are dashed as the apex bank has yet again given away the opportunity to help reverse the business sentiments and see investments taking place."

The Reserve Bank today kept the key interest rates unchanged but hinted easing of rates in January saying with decline in inflation, the focus of monetary policy would shift to removing impediments to growth.

The RBI left the short-term lending (repo) rate and the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) unchanged at 8 per cent and 4.25 per cent, respectively.

Ficci said inflation numbers should provide the central bank comfort to begin to consider a rate cut early in the next year.

"With the inflation numbers showing a decline and the global economy still in a difficult situation, industry is crying out for an impetus for investment and growth. Lower interest rates would be oxygen to the sentiment which is beginning to turn positive," Ficci President Naina Lal Kidwai said.

The WPI inflation in November moderated to 7.24 per cent, but retail inflation remain elevated at 9.90 per cent.

The Indian economy grew by 5.4 per cent in the first half (April-September) of the current fiscal, against 7.3 per cent in the corresponding period last year.

(4) Fiscal cliff: Obama softens tax stance

Both President Barack Obama and Congress' most powerful Republican are making significant concessions just two weeks before the economy-threatening "fiscal cliff" is due to kick in, backing off once-ironclad positions on how to avoid the huge austerity measures of automatic spending cuts and tax increases.

The moves signal a new stage in the negotiations, which picked up steam on Monday with Obama's offer to drop his long-held insistence that taxes rise on individuals earning more than $200,000 and families making more than $250,000. He is now offering a new threshold of $400,000 and lowering his 10-year tax revenue goals from the $1.6 trillion he had argued for a few weeks ago.

Obama's move follows concessions by House Speaker John Boehner on higher tax rates for the wealthy. The talks seek to avoid tax hikes for nearly all working Americans, as well as deep spending cuts at the Pentagon and in domestic programmes, that are set to kick in from January 1 if a deal isn't reached on addressing the country's stubborn deficit spending.

(5) Parliament passes Appropriation Bill

Parliament today approved the Appropriation Bill, 2012 amidst government's assertion that it intends to bring down fiscal deficit to three per cent of the GDP by 2016-17 from the projected 5.3 per cent in the current fiscal.

"Our government is committed to bringing fiscal deficit down to 5.3 per cent in the current year and progressively to three per cent by 2016-17," Minister of State for Finance Namo Narain Meena in Rajya Sabha.

The Appropriation Bill, 2012, was returned by Rajya Sabha allowing the government to raise expenditure to the tune of Rs 32,120 crore in 2012-13. The bill was earlier passed by Lok Sabha.

Replying to a debate on the Bill, he said the government plans to bring down the fiscal deficit to 4.8 per cent in the next fiscal, 4.2 per cent in 2014-15, 3.6 per cent in 2015-16 and to three per cent in 2016-17.

The Minister said that in order to achieve the targeted 5.3 per cent fiscal deficit in the current fiscal, government has initiated a slew of non-planned expenditure which includes restriction on foreign visits by the officials.

The government had earlier revised its fiscal deficit target at 5.3 per cent of GDP this financial year, higher than the previous target of 5.1 per cent but lower than last year's 5.8 per cent.

Meena said the fiscal deficit, which came down to 2.7 per cent in 2007-08, started picking up due to various reasons such as global economic condition and "sticky high inflation scenario".