Today's Hot Stories - March 12, 2014
10 Headlines for Today(1) SC asks law panel to consider guidelines to curb hate speeches
(2) Sheila Dikshit’s appointment questioned
(3) US House passes resolution calling for sanctions against Russia
(4) Subrata moves SC challenging his detention
(5) IndiGo, SpiceJet come out with low fare offers again
(6) Luxembourg blocks EU tax evasion law
(7) Kashyap, Anand enter second round, Srikanth out of Swiss Open
(8) Nadal, Sharapova out at Indian Wells
(9) T20: Easy win for Indian women
(10) Special edition Tendulkar silver coins to be launched
5 Stories for Today
(1) No specific intelligence input about the attack: Shinde
(2) Missing plane: Malaysian premier appeals for patience, prayers
(3) AC, refrigerator makers face another bleak season due to weather fluctuations, price increase
(4) Twitter crashes second time in 9 days, blames software glitch
(5) India economy to grow at 5.6% in 2014-15: India Ratings
(1) No specific intelligence input about the attack: Shinde
The Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Wednesday said “We will definitely take revenge for the Naxal attack in Chhattisgarh.”
Mr. Shinde added “There was no specific intelligence input about the attack.”
Earlier, a day after the Naxal attack in Chhatisgarh killed 15 security personnel, Mr. Shinde and Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh paid tribute to the martyrs at Jagdalpur in Bastar district.
Mr. Shinde arrived at the city airport and held a brief meeting with Mr. Raman Singh and State Home Minister Ramsevak Paikra over the incident and later went to Jagdalpur.
Tributes were paid to the martyrs at the police parade ground in Jagdalpur, the administrative headquarter of Bastar district this morning, senior police officers told Bhasha/PTI in Raipur on Wednesday.
Mr. Sushil Kumar Shinde, Mr. Raman Singh, Chhattisgarh Governor Shekhar Dutt members of the state cabinet paid their respect to the martyrs at the wreath-laying ceremony.
Immediately afterwards, Mr. Shinde and Mr. Singh left for his office, where the Union Home Minister would hold a meeting with the officials and review the situation.
Meanwhile, police officials in Sukma said a combing operation has been launched to trace the Naxals involved in Tuesday’s attack.
In a brazen daytime attack, as many as 16 people -- 11 CRPF personnel, four state police and one civilian -- were gunned down by Naxals on Tuesday in Jeerum Nallah area of Sukma district, 400 kilometres from the state capital Raipur.
Chhattisgarh government has ordered a high-level departmental inquiry into the Naxal attack.
Source: The Hindu
(2) Missing plane: Malaysian premier appeals for patience, prayers
Even as confusion continued over the aircraft and its flight path, Vietnam said it was scaling down search activities.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Wednesday appealed for patience in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet MH370 amid confusion over the aircraft’s last known location that prompted Vietnam to scale down its effort.
Mr. Najib urged Malaysians to support the government and pray for “some information that can finally lead us to the discovery of the aircraft soon.” “We must face this great challenge from Allah calmly,” he said in a television interview. “The government is doing everything to increase assets, aircraft and ships with sophisticated equipment. I am certain we will eventually find it. The question is when. Under the present situation, we must have patience and pray,” he added.
Vietnam said it was scaling down its search activities after the head of Malaysia’s air force denied media reports that military radar last detected the plane near Pulau Perak, an island in the Malacca Strait between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
More than four days after Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 went missing en route to Beijing, authorities acknowledged on Wednesday they didn’t know in which direction the plane and its 239 passengers was heading when it disappeared, vastly complicating efforts to find it.
Amid intensifying confusion and occasionally contradictory statements, the country’s civil aviation authorities and the military both said the plane may have turned back from its original route toward Vietnam, possibly as far as the Strait of Malacca on the eastern side of the country.
Authorities have not ruled out any possible cause, including mechanical failure, pilot error, sabotage or terrorism in the disappearance of the plane. The 777 is a modern aircraft that has an excellent safety record, as does Malaysia Airlines.
Authorities began their search for the missing aircraft at the position it was last reported to be at over the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam. But they have also said search operations were ongoing in the Malacca strait. Scores of planes and aircraft have been scouring both locations.
The country’s air force chief, Gen. Rodzali Daud, released a statement denying remarks attributed to him in a local media report saying that military radar had managed to track the aircraft turning back from its original course, crossing the country and making it to the Malacca strait to the west of Malaysia. The Associated Press contacted a high-level military official, who confirmed the remarks.
Gen Rodzali referred to a statement he said he made on March 9 in which he said the air force has “not ruled out the possibility of an air turn back” and said search and rescue efforts had been expanded to the waters around Penang Island, in the northern section of the strait.
It is possible that the radar readings are not definitive or subject to interpretation, especially if a plane is malfunctioning.
The country’s civilian aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said he could neither confirm nor deny military’s remarks. That suggests disagreement or confusion at the highest level over where the plane is most likely to have ended up.
“There is a possibility of an air turn back. We are still investigating and looking at the radar readings,” he said on Wednesday
The strait is a busy shipping lane that separates Malaysian from Indonesia’s Sumatra Island.
Adding to the confusion, Indonesia air force Col. Umar Fathur said the country had received official information from Malaysian authorities that the plane was above the South China Sea, about 10 nautical miles from Kota Bharu, Malaysia, when it turned back toward the strait and then disappeared. That would place its last confirmed position closer to Malaysia than has previously been publicly disclosed.
Col. Fathur said Malaysia authorities have determined four blocks to be searched in the strait, which Indonesia was assisting in.
Vietnamese military authorities said they were searching for the plane on land sea.
Lt. Gen. Vo Van Tuan, deputy chief of staff of Vietnamese People’s Army, said there were 22 aircraft and 31 ships from Vietnam and other countries involved in the hunt in its area of responsibility.
Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur at 12-41 a.m. on Saturday, bound for Beijing. Authorities initially said its last contact with ground controllers was less than an hour into the flight at a height of 35,000 feet, when the plane was somewhere between the east coast of Malaysia and southern Vietnam.
Malaysian police chief Khalid Abu Bakar, who has been ordered to look at possible criminal aspects in the disappearance of Flight MH370, said hijacking, sabotage and issues related to the pilots’ psychological health were being considered.
Searching the sea from space
Five days after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared off radar, and with the search area widening, attention is focussing on how satellites can help scan large areas of the sea.
China was the first to say this week that it had reconfigured 10 satellites to search for the missing plane.
Vietnam has used a satellite to survey the seas around Tho Chu Island, one of the possible crash areas.
The sensors on the Chinese satellites include high-resolution optical telescopes, infrared cameras, and microwave detectors, according to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.
One of the highest-resolution commercial satellites, the GeoEye-1, used by Google for its maps service, has a resolution of around half a metre.
However, ocean waves can make detection from space difficult.
“If the object is non-metallic, such as plastic, it would be very difficult to spot with radar,” Professor Xie Tao at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology told the newspaper.
Military satellites with more sophisticated equipment have also been involved in the search, the report said.
Analysing the satellite images is another challenge.
US satellite company DigitalGlobe has uploaded satellite images of over 3,200 square kilometres of the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand to its crowdsourcing website Tomnod.
It asks users to scan the images and tag anything that could be wreckage, a life raft, or oil.
Some have questioned however whether the satellite search effort has come too late.
Dr Chi Tianhe, a satellite imaging researcher who took part in the Chinese search, told the South China Morning Post that a lack of staff monitoring data around the clock, and poor coordination with international agencies had reduced the chances of success.
In the days since the plane went missing, any debris is likely to have floated far from the crash site, experts say, also meaning that the most likely period for finding something from MH370 may have passed.
Source: The Economic Times
(3) AC, refrigerator makers face another bleak season due to weather fluctuations, price increase
It's anybody's guess on how hot and dry this summer will be, but white goods makers are already staring at yet another bleak season for air conditioners (ACs) and refrigerators due to weather fluctuations, price increases and poor early sales.
Companies say that dealers have slowed down purchases of cooling appliances in the South and the West. The seasonal demand for cooling appliances in these regions usually starts in January. Both primary sales (sales to dealers) and secondary sales to end-consumers are down by 15% from January till now over the same period last year.
"The start of the season has been poor. So, we don't expect a full recovery for cooling appliances' sales this year even if it becomes a hot summer," said Kamal Nandi, vice-president for sales and marketing at Godrej Appliances.
Marketers say unseasonal rains in several parts of the country, a cold wave sweeping the North, and fresh price increases of 5-12% on these products due to upgradation of energy rating norms, have dampened the demand. Unless there is a dramatic pick up in the coming months, this will be the fourth consecutive year of poor sales for AC and refrigerator makers.
The industry is particularly worried about the likely delayed arrival of summer due to weather fluctuations. Soft drink makers, too, are keeping a close watch on issues related to climate change.
"Unusual weather conditions, as seen in parts of India this month, do tend to have a short-term effect on sectors and industries that have a direct correlation to weather," a Coca-Cola India spokesperson told ET. "However, we have observed that by and large the weather patterns still stick by forecasts and the current conditions appear as an aberration. Our long term outlook for our business is robust," the person added.
A PepsiCo India spokesman said that untimely rains in some parts of the country have delayed the onset of the season for beverage industry. "However, over the last few years, the category has been working at growing consumption in non-seasonal months," he said.
For white goods makers, meanwhile, price hike is as big an issue as weather fluctuation. A senior executive with a leading Korean appliances maker said that dealers had picked up inventory in January, but haven't purchased much since on poor consumer demand. "Due to successive price hike for last few years, both air-conditioners and refrigerators have lost their affordability," he said.
AC sales have been slowing in the last four years as their prices have gone up by an average of 10% in each successive year due to increase in input cost and a weakening rupee, which made components costlier. The refrigerator market was mostly flat during this period with a marginal growth of around 4% last year. The size of AC and refrigerator markets together is estimated to be around 20,000 crore.
To overcome poor demand, these companies plan to focus on premium products such as large capacity refrigerators, side-by-side refrigerators and inverter ACs, pushing their existing consumers to upgrade their appliances.
A Samsung India spokesperson said the company expects to consolidate its market position with products like smart refrigerator and an inverter AC.
CM Singh, COO at Videocon, said the company will give EMI (equated monthly instalment) payment options specifically for high-end products. "Some incentive will be required since energy efficient AC and refrigerators have gone out of the reach of middle-class consumers," he said. "For instance, a 240-250 litre refrigerator now costs around 25,000 as compared to less than 20,000 earlier."
Singh said that the company expects cheaper single-door refrigerator models to bounce back this year and eat into the frost-free segment due to the rise in prices.
Source: The Times of India
(4) Twitter crashes second time in 9 days, blames software glitch
Twitter Inc crashed on Tuesday for the second time in nine days when a software glitch stalled the popular messaging service for about one hour.
The company apologized to its 250 million users in a status blog, saying it had encountered "unexpected complications" during "a planned deploy in one of our core services."
The outage began around 11 a.m. Pacific time and service had "fully recovered" by 11:47 a.m., the San Francisco-based company said. The stock rose as much as 3.7 percent before Twitter confirmed the glitch, but gave up most of the gains to end 0.25 percent higher.
The outage occurred just as Twitter co-founder Biz Stone took the stage in Austin, Texas, to speak at the South by Southwest Interactive festival, the annual gathering of tech enthusiasts that helped propel Twitter to national fame in 2007.
Twitter crashed briefly on March 2 during the Academy Awards, when the company's infrastructure was overwhelmed by a flood of tweets and retweets about a "selfie" featuring Oscar show host Ellen DeGeneres, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and many other celebrities.
Twitter, which was plagued by frequent outages during its early years, invested heavily in improving its site reliability before it went public in November 2013.
Source: The Indian Express
(5) India economy to grow at 5.6% in 2014-15: India Ratings
India is likely to grow by 5.6 % in 2014-15 against a projected growth of less than 5 % in the current fiscal, a report by India Ratings and Research has said.
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"The global economy in 2014 appears to be in a better shape than what it was in 2012 and 2013. India Ratings forecasts India's GDP to grow at 5.6 % in 2014-15," the rating agency said.
"The economic growth in FY15 is likely to be contributed majorly by the industrial sector, which is estimated to grow by 4.1 %. This is good news for centre as well state government finances," it added.
The rating agency also expects merchandise exports to grow by 8-10 % in the next fiscal year.
It expects a minor slippage in consolidated state deficit from the budgeted FY14 estimate.
"Aggregate state's fiscal slippage in FY14 is estimated at 0.1 % of GDP. Consolidated state fiscal deficit in FY14 is likely to 2.3 % of GDP vis-a-vis 2.2(BE)," the report said.
It further said that state governments' debt in 2013-14 is estimated to increase marginally to 21.7 % of GDP from budget estimate of 21.5 %.
The agency, however, said that it maintains a stable outlook on state government finances for the next fiscal.
"India Ratings maintains a stable outlook on state government finances for FY15 as it expects consolidated state finances to remain resilient to the on-going economic slowdown," the rating agency said.
Source: Hindustan Times
Disclaimer: All news stories and content sourced from freely available material on the internet. All sources are acknowledged.
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