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Anganwadi workers will be equipped to report cases of atrocities against children within homes and outside to the District Child Protection Unit (DCPU) or on the number 1098 at the earliest, District Collector S. Venkatesapathy has said. He was speaking at a District Child Welfare Committee (CWC) meeting on Friday. This was decided by the DCPU after it came to light that a child in Vellarada hid in a hole to escape the father’s beatings, and another in Neyyattinkara was being abused by the father for days.

Rejecting the Centre’s stand that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction to hear the Cauvery river dispute, the Supreme Court on Friday upheld its constitutional power to hear the appeals filed by Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala against the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal final award in 2007. A three-judge Bench Justice Dipak Misra said the court would resume hearing the case on December 15 at 3 p.m. Reading the operative part of the verdict, Justice Misra said the interim order to Karnataka to release 2000 cusecs of Cauvery water to Tamil Nadu would continue till further orders. The Centre had argued that the parliamentary law of Inter-State Water Disputes Act of 1956 coupled with Article 262 (2) of the Indian Constitution excluded the Supreme Court from hearing or deciding any appeals against the Cauvery Tribunal's decision. It had claimed the tribunal award was final. “A person aggrieved can always have his remedy invoking the jurisdiction under Article 136 (appeal to the Supre...

VVIP copter deal was scrapped in Jan. 2014 due to bribery charges Air Chief Marshal S.P. Tyagi (retd.) was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation on Friday, along with his cousin Sanjeev Tyagi and lawyer Gautam Khaitan, for alleged involvement in the Rs. 3,700-crore AgustaWestland VVIP helicopter deal case. Accused of routing the kickbacks, the lawyer was earlier arrested by the Enforcement Directorate. The CBI has determined that about Rs. 450 crore, or 12 per cent of the Rs. 3,767-crore deal for procurement of 12 helicopters was paid as bribes. The government rescinded the contract in January 2014 in view of the bribery allegations. A CBI spokesperson said, “Mr. Tyagi and the other two accused were summoned on Friday. They were arrested after about four hours of questioning at the agency headquarters.” According to the official, “Mr. Tyagi allegedly entered into a conspiracy with other accused persons in 2005 and conceded to change the Air Force’s consistent stand that the ...

Biodiversity integration into developmental plans is crucial for sustainable development In a ‘Mann Ki Baat’ broadcast recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made his environmental concerns clear when he asked people to use Ganesha and Durga idols made of clay instead of plaster of Paris. His appeal is bound to stimulate our environmental consciousness and encourage the preservation of precious natural resources. We need to build on this appeal and follow an eco-friendly approach in every socio-economic activity of ours. Biodiversity is a unique and a critical asset which is under pressure due to anthropogenic reasons, and there is a need for its mainstreaming. Biodiversity once lost is lost forever. Biodiversity means the variability among living organisms from all sources including terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems. The diversity includes variability within species (genetic diversity) as well as between species (species diversity) and ecosystems (ecosystem diversity)....

The decision to demonetise will cause grievous injury to the honest Indian who earns wages in cash. The dishonest black money hoarder will get away with a mere rap on the knuckles It is said that “money is an idea that inspires confidence”. At the stroke of the midnight hour, on November 9, 2016, the confidence of more than a billion Indians was destroyed. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had declared that more than 85 per cent of the value of money held in notes of Rs.500 and Rs.1,000 was worthless overnight. In one impetuous decision, the Prime Minister has shattered the faith and confidence that hundreds of millions of Indians had reposed in the Government of India to protect them and their money. The Prime Minister in his address to the nation said, “there comes a time in the history of a country's development when a need is felt for a strong and decisive step,” and propounded two primary reasons for this decision. One was to check “enemies from across the border… using fake curre...

en Park Geun-hye assumed office as South Korea’s first woman President in early 2013 on a wave of popularity, not many could have foreseen her impeachment on corruption charges less than four years later. Such has been the impact of the scandal that several lawmakers from her own Saenuri Party voted in favour of the impeachment resolution brought in by the opposition in Parliament. The crisis was sparked by revelations two months ago that Ms. Park had abused her powers to help a confidante, Choi Soon-sil, extort money from companies for her foundations. Since then, the Korean media have carried stories of Ms. Choi’s access to the President’s office and her influence in decision-making. The crisis was handled ineptly by Ms. Park and her aides. She never bothered to explain her position directly to the public, and did not take her party into confidence. She stayed away from the press and the opposition, perhaps hoping the crisis would blow over. But with a 4 per cent approval rating, sh...

The government has declared an incentive package to encourage non-cash payments for fuel, new insurance policies from public sector firms, train tickets and highway toll, among other things. For credit and debit card transactions up to Rs.2,000, the Reserve Bank of India has relaxed its stringent two-factor authentication requirement, and service tax stands waived. Taken together, these moves to encourage cashless payments are significant not just because they can alleviate the cash crunch following the demonetisation of high-value notes. They could spur a change in spending habits in an economy where cash has served as the basis of around 95 per cent of all transactions. From those between traders and farmers to settling a restaurant bill, the use of cash creates a window to escape the tax net. Shopkeepers routinely ask buyers if they would like a bill or not, and those who opt for the latter to save some rupees are often left with little recourse if the goods prove to be substandard...

In a rapidly changing world, the Modi government’s foreign policy will require much more imagination than the shock-and-awe tactics of the past two and a half yearsA In June this year, just after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington, a senior American official spoke of the “Modi Doctrine”, giving formal recognition to the foreign policy choices adopted by India since May 2014. In his speech at the U.S. Congress, Mr. Modi outlined India’s commitment to the partnership with the U.S. as being a “new symphony in play” in order to build an international maritime partnership in Asia, to play a leading role in the South Asian neighbourhood, strategically as well as for humanitarian purposes, and to take a strong position on terrorism or cross-border terrorism emanating from Pakistan. A few months later, Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, speaking at the launch of a book, The Modi Doctrine: New Paradigms in India’s Foreign Policy, went on to define it thus: Ind...

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh misquoted the late astronomer Carl Sagan to claim that ancient Indians accurately dated the age of Earth “to 1.97 billion years”. “Carl Sagan was a well-known cosmologist,” Mr. Singh said in his Hindi address at the India International Science Fair (IISF). “He has said that the cosmological calculations of ancient Indians alone matched with modern scientific theory…It was written in ancient, religious Indian texts that Earth came into existence 1.97 Arab (100 crore) billion years ago. Sagan accepted this. These are the contributions of our country.” The age of Earth is 4.54 billion years and that of the Universe is 13 billion years. Sagan, in his iconic 1980 television series Cosmos , and book by the same name, did not say the Earth was 1.97 billion years old, or that ancient Indian astronomers had calculated the age of the Earth. He only said that Hinduism was the only one among the world’s religions in which time scales [of the age of the Universe]...

India’s food regulator has issued an advisory stating that the use of newspapers for wrapping and packing of food items, a common practice by street vendors, poses a health hazard. The regulator on Wednesday expressed concern over “Indians being slowly poisoned” by cancer-causing agents in newspaper ink. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) restricted the use of newspapers and packaging material saying that consumption of food wrapped in newspapers was “injurious to health, even if the food had been cooked hygienically. Indians are being slowly poisoned due to newspapers being widely used as food packaging material by small hotels, vendors and also in homes in lieu of absorbent paper.” The food regulator said the chemicals in newspaper ink contain harmful colours, pigments, additives and preservatives. “Besides chemical contaminants, presence of pathogenic micro-organisms in used newspaper poses potential risk to human health. Older people, children and people with...

A petition was filed on Thursday in the Supreme Court seeking a direction to the Centre, the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to prevent Aircel- Maxis company from selling its stake/equity or spectrum and to attach its assets. The application filed by NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), represented by advocates Prashant Bhushan and Pranav Sachdeva, said the CBI has filed a detailed charge sheet against Aircel/Maxis, its Malaysian owner Ananda Krishnan, the former Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran, etc, in connection with the 2G Spectrum scam. The ED has also filed cases against them and has attached properties of Mr. Maran, it said. The CPIL, which was a petitioner in the legal battle concerning the 2G Spectrum scam before the Supreme Court, submitted that “when action has been taken against the former Minister Dayanidhi Maran, another accused in the case, there was no reason why no action has been taken against Ananda Krishnan and Maxis.” The application alleged ...

“For demonstration you can choose any other place. But for god’s sake, do your job. You are meant to transact business,” President Pranab Mukherjee has exhorted parliamentarians. He was delivering the fourth Defence Estates Day lecture on the topic of “Electoral reforms for a stronger democracy” here on Thursday. The President said he was not referring to one party or two parties as he had no intention of accusing a few individuals of stalling Parliament. Urging the members not to misuse their freedom, Mr. Mukherjee said disruptions were about minorities gagging the majority by coming into the well, shouting slogans and stopping proceedings, leaving the chair no option but to adjourn the House. He, however, made a specific reference to the Lok Sabha, which has a decisive role in key issues of finance. “You are meant to devote your time to exercising the authority of members, particularly of Lok Sabha members, over money and finance,” the President said. In the Lok Sabha, little busine...

This status puts India on par with the closest allies and partners India and the U.S. on Thursday finalised the specifications for designating India a ‘Major Defence Partner’ of the U.S. This status puts India on a par with the closest allies and partners of the U.S.. The agreement was reached between Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and U.S. Secretary of Defence Ashton Carter in Delhi. India was accorded this status during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington in June. “The designation as a ‘Major Defence Partner’ is a status unique to India and institutionalises the progress made to facilitate defence trade and technology sharing with India to a level at par with that of the United States’ closest allies and partners, and ensures enduring cooperation into the future,” a joint statement issued after the talks said. The finalisation reached pertains to U.S. licensing rules and stipulations on which non-papers were exchanged by both sides. This status is bestowed upon the...

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday expressed shock and wondered if there was some misappropriation of funds when it learnt that Prasar Bharati had no record of how it used Rs. 190 crore allocated by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for telecast of awareness programmes on family planning and population control. Court surprised The court was even more surprised when Prasar Bharati said it has received Rs.190 crore and not Rs.160 crore, as stated in an RTI reply by the Union Health Ministry. Prasar Bharati submitted that it did not keep any record of how the money was spent as 122 programmes were telecast from 30 different kendras and it was not possible to collate all the data of expenditure because there were many “hidden costs”. Details sought A Bench of Justice B.D. Ahmed and Ashutosh Kumar was hearing a petition by Satyanarain, who had sought details of how the money granted by the Health Ministry in 2012-13 for family planning awareness programmes on Doordarshan was u...

Ninety years after his death, the secrets of the world’s greatest escape artist, Harry Houdini, have been unlocked in a recently opened Hungarian museum devoted to the Budapest-born illusionist. Set high in the capital’s lofty Castle district, the House of Houdini lifts the veil on the box of tricks used by the famous magician, who lived most of his life in the United States. Amid gleaming chandeliers and old Chesterfield seats, the red-painted rooms showcase handcuffs and padlocks used by Houdini in performances. Visitors can also see props from a recent television production on him such as a box from an illusion where a woman appears to be cut in half. There’s even a stage where budding magicians charm visitors with card tricks. “I had an urge to pay tribute to Houdini,” said museum owner and fellow escapologist David Merlini who has dedicated his life to collecting the items on display. “We are all Houdinis. Everyone has a secret desire sometimes to get out of a certain situation, ...