Today's Hot Stories - April 19, 2014
10 Headlines for Today(1) BJP, Jamaat deny Geelani's claim that Modi sent emissaries
(2) For AAP and country: NRIs are working to create a 'revolution' to root out graft
(3) Drone kills 15 'Qaida' militants in Yemen: Security
(4) Amul Girl in trouble for ‘Besahara Parivar’ pun
(5) One in 4 Wipro staff to get up to 20% hike
(6) Glenmark recalls ulcer drug in US
(7) India eves draw 2-2 with Ireland, pocket hockey series
(8) Tennis: Germany lead Australia in Fed Cup semis
(9) Golf: KJ Choi beats bad weather to take lead
(10) Marquez: Only the Bible sold more copies than his book
5 Stories for Today
(1) More NOTAs cast in reserved seats
(2) Bodies found trapped inside sunken S Korean ferry
(3) Is Padmanabhaswamy temple gold getting pilfered? Fears of fake replacements
(4) Can nutrition experts be independent if they get $25,000 per annum from Nestle?
(5) FIIs raise holding in cyclicals, lower stake in defensives
(1) More NOTAs cast in reserved seats
Is the ‘None of the above’ (NOTA) option in Indian elections being used to express dissatisfaction against the political class or against politicians of a specific class?
The Hindu’s analysis of data from the five states that first voted with NOTA option in the December 2013 Assembly elections — Delhi, Mizoram, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan — shows that constituencies reserved for Scheduled Tribes are over-represented in the list of seats with most NOTA votes: 23 of the 25 constituencies are ST reserved.
There is just one ‘general’ seat among the top 25 though 400 of the 630 constituencies across the five states were ‘general’ seats.
While Chhattisgarh had the most constituencies in the top 25, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan feature as well. In Delhi four out of the ten seats with the highest NOTA voting were SC reserved seats.
One explanation could be that upper castes in reserved constituencies are choosing to use the NOTA option rather vote for a tribal or Dalit . After the Assembly election, a BJP spokesperson in Chhattisgarh told The Hindu that OBCs in some tribal constituencies voted NOTA to reassert their importance as they felt the BJP was trying to woo tribals. In Rajasthan, the District Magistrate of a tribal-dominated constituency said members of an agrarian OBC community told him they had voted NOTA. “The leader told me that everyone was pampering tribals and so they had voted NOTA ,” the DM said.
Others disagree with this explanation. “I don’t think that people are consciously voting in this way. It might be that people in these constituencies, who are not very well educated, are simply pressing the wrong button,” Sanjay Kumar, director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, and an expert on voter behaviour said.
Source: The Hindu
(2) Bodies found trapped inside sunken S Korean ferry
Divers searching for survivors of a capsized South Korean ferry saw three bodies floating through a window of a passenger cabin on Saturday but were unable to retrieve them, the coastguard said, hours after the ship's captain was arrested.
The ferry, carrying 476 passengers, many of them schoolchildren, and crew, capsized on Wednesday on a journey from the port of Incheon to the southern holiday island of Jeju.
Some 174 people have been rescued and hopes were fading for those still missing.
The divers saw the bodies in a submerged cabin where many of the children were believed to be trapped, but were unable to break the glass to retrieve them.
No sounds have been detected from within the capsized hull, the coastguard told reporters.
The discovery comes amid stalled rescue efforts due to strong tides as hundreds of navy, coastguard and private divers scour the site, 25 km (15 miles) off the southwest coast of South Korea.
Investigations into the sinking, South Korea's worst maritime accident in 21 years based on possible casualties, have centred on crew negligence, problems with cargo stowage and structural defects of the vessel, although the ship appears to have passed all of its safety and insurance checks.
The ship's 69-year-old captain was arrested early on Saturday, Yonhap news agency said, after coming under scrutiny over witness reports that he was among the first to escape the sinking vessel during its 400-km (300-mile) voyage to Jeju.
According to investigators, Captain Lee Joon-seok was not on the bridge at the time the ferry, the Sewol, started to list sharply, with a junior officer at the wheel.
Yonhap said Lee faced five charges including negligence of duty and violation of maritime law. Arrest warrants were also issued for the junior officer and one other crew member for failing in their duty to aid passengers.
Handing over the helm is normal practice on the voyage from Incheon to Jeju, which usually takes 13.5 hours, according to local shipping crew.
The ferry went down in calm conditions and was following a frequently travelled route in familiar waters.
Although relatively close to shore, the area was free of rocks and reefs.
Lee has not commented on when he left the ship, although he has apologised for the loss of life.
He was described as an industry veteran by the officials from Chonghaejin Marine Co Ltd, the ship owner, and others who had met him described him as an "expert".
Some media reports have said the vessel turned sharply, causing cargo to shift and the ship to list before capsizing.
Marine investigators and the coastguard have said it was too early to pinpoint a cause for the accident and declined to comment on the possibility of the cargo shifting.
Source: Hindustan Times
(3) Is Padmanabhaswamy temple gold getting pilfered? Fears of fake replacements
The untold riches of Thiruvananthapuram's Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple, which was discovered three years ago and was estimated at Rs 1 lakh crore, may be getting pilfered, an explosive report on the state of affairs in the temple submitted to the Supreme Court said.
Amicus curiae Gopal Subramaniam, after a 35-day inspection of the temple, told the court in his report about recent discovery of a gold plating machine in the temple premises and expressed apprehension that some original temple gold and ornaments may have been pilfered and replaced with fakes.
Subramaniam, tasked to report on the state of affairs of the temple as well as the wealth, said there appeared to be a deep-rooted conspiracy in the apparent mismanagement of the temple wealth and suggested a detailed audit by former comptroller and auditor general Vinod Rai.
Importantly, he urged the court to open Kallara (vaults) 'B' and assess the wealth in it. Till now, Kallara A to F had been opened and valuables listed, except 'B'. There was opposition to the opening of vault 'B' on various counts, which ranged from religious to dogmatic.
Interestingly, Subramaniam found two more vaults and named them Kallara 'G' and 'H'. He urged the court to order authorities to open these two new vaults and inventorize the valuables.
He also found discrepancies in the general account kept by the temple management and suggested an audit of it. Subramaniam said for the last 30 years, the receipts from devotees had not been accounted for properly and said this was an additional reason for a detailed audit of temple accounts.
Rare jewels, stone-studded crowns, heaps of gold and silver coins, idols and gold, silver and brass platters and lamps, whose value is estimated at nearly Rs 1 lakh crore, were found in the temple in July 2011, catapulting it overnight to one of the richest in the country.
Mounds of precious gems, lakhs of gold coins, long gold chains, gold rings and bars, gold barrels etc were discovered when the metal doors of the secret cellar were opened.
Several bags of coins from the erstwhile Travancore royal family rule, coins from the Napoleonic era and the East India Company period were also discovered from the secret cellars.
The SC had ordered preparation of an inventory of the articles owned by the temple. It had stayed a Kerala high court order directing the state government to take over the temple from the trust controlled by the erstwhile rulers of Travancore.
The deity of the Padmanabhaswamy temple is the family deity of the Travancore royal family. Members of the erstwhile royal family had dedicated their kingdom to the Padmanabhaswamy deity and pledged that they will live as servants of Padmanabha.
Source: The Times of India
(4) Can nutrition experts be independent if they get $25,000 per annum from Nestle?
The question of conflict of interest among academics who serve on various boards or councils of private corporations is in focus yet again with Nestle admitting that it does offer to pay members of its Creating Shared Value (CSV) Council $25,000 per annum. This has also raised question about the effectiveness of the conflict of interest policy of the medical journal Lancet, given that two of the lead authors of its series on Maternal and Child Nutrition were members of Nestle's Creating Shared Value Advisory Committee. Neither of them declared any conflict of interest to the journal.
The two lead authors of the Lancet series who are also members of Nestle's CSV council are Dr Robert E Black of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Dr Venkatesh Mannar, former president of Micronutrient Initiative. Neither Prof Black nor Dr Mannar responded to emails asking if they accepted remuneration given by Nestle or opted not to take it.
Nestle's Public Affairs Manager, Marie Chantal Messier in response to a letter from Mike Brady of Baby Milk Action said that Nestle's CSV council charter stipulated that "if so desired, Council members may receive compensation for time spent devoted to the Council at a rate of CHF 25,000 per annum, assuming participation in a minimum of one meeting per year". However, Messier's letter added that some council members donated their fee to a deserving organization of their choice, and others opted to forgo the fee. Baby Milk Action is a non-profit which works within a global network to strengthen independent, transparent and effective controls on the marketing of the baby feeding industry.
Earlier, the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) had written to Janet Voute, Nestle's global head of public affairs, asking if members of the CSV council received a fee, honorarium or financial or other compensation of any kind from Nestle. Voute replied reiterating that CSV council members did not receive a salary from Nestle. But she did not respond to repeated requests to clarify if they received any fee, honorarium or any financial compensation, quite different from a salary.
IBFAN has expressed concern over the conflict of interest among lead authors of the Lancet child survival series as it has an important influence on health policies. "While the 2013 Lancet series still recognizes breast feeding's importance, there is now much more emphasis on micronutrient based foods and supplements," stated IBFAN adding that eight of the ten interventions recommended interventions in the series involved products of some kind. In the series, the authors also called on the private sector to generate evidence about the positive and negative effects of private sector and market-led approaches to nutrition.
It has been a matter of great concern among public health activists who work on child health and nutrition that the issue of malnutrition was being converted into a marketing opportunity to be addressed through products that big corporations could sell as the answer, instead of being seen as a basic lack of access to food caused by structural inequities in food distribution. When the editor of Lancet Richard Horton tweeted asking how to resist Big Food corporations, Anthony Costello professor of International Child Health and Director of the University College London Institute for Global Health has responded saying that "maybe one way to resist big food is not to have Nestle's advisory board directing the Lancet series.
Source: The Economic Times
(5) FIIs raise holding in cyclicals, lower stake in defensives
Showing their preference for cyclical stocks over defensives, foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have continued to accumulate stocks from the banking, capital goods, power and auto sectors over the last 3-6 months.
A screening of constituents of various sectoral indices shows that, in the last two quarters, FIIs have accumulated shares of cyclical stocks, most of which traded at lower valuations three months ago.
The banking and capital goods sectors, which have steered the market gains since mid-February, appear to be clear favourites given that some the leading bluechip stocks witnessed an increase of 1-3% in FII holdings in the last two quarters.
In the banking space, private sector players Axis Bank, ICICI Bank and IndusInd Bank witnessed the biggest increase in FII shareholding. At the end of the March quarter in which the government offloaded its 9% stake in Axis Bank held by Specified Undertakings of UTI (SUUTI), FII ownership went up by 556 basis points to an all-time high of 48.74%.
Similarly, due to an increase of 146 bps, FII stake in ICICI Bank touched 39.85%, the highest since December 2007.
FII interest in the public sector banks, which due to their decayed financials were the most beaten-down stocks two months ago, appears to be coming around as well.
Both State Bank of India and Bank of Baroda witnessed an increase in FII holding to 9.68% and 15.62% in the latest quarter.
FII holdings in capital good blue chips have witnessed an increase of 40 to 80 bps in the March quarter, although in the last two quarters FII ownership in Larsen & Toubro Ltd, Crompton Greaves and Thermax has increased by 322 bps (to 18.47%), 277 bps (19.23%) and 132 bps (16.62%), respectively.
Meanwhile, foreign investors are trimming their stakes in defensive sector companies like IT and consumer goods.
While FIIs scaled back their ownership of both Tech Mahindra and MphasisS by over 100 bps each, they reduced their holdings for a second consecutive quarter in FMCG companies Hindustan Unilever, United Spirits, and Dabur by nearly 70 bps.
FII stake in Asian Paints came down by 150 bps to 17.97% during the period.
Source: The Indian Expresss
Disclaimer: All news stories and content sourced from freely available material on the internet. All sources are acknowledged.
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