Mr. Sirisena and Prime Minister Narendra Modi witnessed the signing of three agreements on agricultural cooperation, a memorandum of understanding on Nalanda University and an agreement on cultural cooperation. On the conflict between
Tamil fishermen from India accused of trespassing into Sri Lankan waters, Mr. Modi said a solution must be found by the fishermen’s associations of both countries as it affected the livelihood of people in both countries.
“We agreed that there must be a constructive and humanitarian approach to the issue,” he added.
While there was no direct mention of talks between the two leaders over devolution of powers to the Northern and Eastern provinces or on the reconciliation process for Tamils after the 2009 anti-LTTE war, sources said “all aspects of bilateral importance were discussed.”
Pre-empting China, India inks nuclear pact with Sri LankaIn a sign of a closer strategic partnership between Sri Lanka’s new government and India, President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Narendra Modi concluded a civil nuclear cooperation agreement on Monday, which is Sri Lanka’s first nuclear partnership with any country.
Calling the bilateral agreement on civil nuclear cooperation “another demonstration of our mutual trust,” Mr. Modi said India and Sri Lanka had also agreed to expand defence and strategic cooperation, including a “trilateral format” with the Maldives.
Mr. Modi is expected to visit Colombo in mid-March, and sources told The Hindu that he was likely to include Male in his itinerary.
Officials on both sides said the agreement on nuclear cooperation was an initial one and would not lead to the construction of nuclear energy reactors immediately. According to an official release, the agreement “would facilitate cooperation in the transfer and exchange of knowledge and expertise, sharing of resources, capacity building and training of personnel in peaceful uses of nuclear energy, including use of radioisotopes, nuclear safety, radiation safety, nuclear security, radioactive waste management and nuclear and radiological disaster mitigation and environmental protection.”
SC grants bail to MasoodFormer Union Minister and Congress leader Rasheed Masood, who was disqualified as a Rajya Sabha member after his conviction in a corruption case, was granted bail by the Supreme Court on Monday. Mr. Masood, who was sentenced to four-year imprisonment, became the first member of Parliament to be disqualified in September last year following a SC ruling that lifted the veil of protection that allowed convicted law makers to continue in office.
A Bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C. Pant gave bail to Mr. Masood on the condition that he does not leave Delhi and U.P. and that he pays a personal bond of Rs.2 lakh.
Centre building consensus on women’s quota: VenkaiahThe Centre is trying to build consensus with State governments on implementing 50 per cent reservation for women in urban local bodies by amending the Constitution.
Encouraging women’s participation in urban policy-making will also boost development of ‘engendered cities,’ Union Urban Development and Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said on Monday.
The proposal to reserve 50 per cent of the elected seats for women in urban local bodies (currently only one-third is reserved), has been hanging fire for some time. Only some States such as Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Kerala, Karnataka, Orissa and Chhattisgarh have already reserved half the seats for women.
Reaffirming the government’s commitment to empower women, Mr. Naidu said the Centre was mulling over new schemes that allowed joint ownership of houses and participation of women in urban policy making to make cities safe for women.
Speaking at the inauguration of a two-day ‘International Conference on Gender and Urban Poverty’ here, jointly organised by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation and the UK’s Department For International Development, Mr. Naidu said there was a need to impart gender perspective while designing urban policies and programmes, as women were more “vulnerable to the harshness of urban inequities.”
He pointed out that women have to struggle more for job security, pay parity, access to credit, suitability of working conditions, access to safe water, education and healthcare and housing etc., and therefore, there was a need for urban policies to be guided by women’s perspectives.
Citing examples of how his Ministry was trying to foster gender-friendly initiatives, he said joint ownership of houses to be built would be promoted under the Housing for All scheme and overriding preference given to women-headed households and single women under different components like credit-linked subsidy and rental housing among others.
On women’s safety in urban areas, Mr. Naidu said the government was focussing on promoting quality and reliable public transport and would construct one crore toilets in urban households under the Swachh Bharat Mission, which would benefit over two crore women.
Centre to seek consensus on having tri-services chiefThree service chiefs have already agreed to the idea, says Minister
The decades-old issue of having a tri-Services chief — formally called the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) — is moving forward towards a political concurrence, Rao Inderjit Singh, Union Minister of State for Defence, said here on Monday.
“The three service chiefs having agreed to the idea, now the political parties have to be taken on board. We are going to write to them for views. Once they give an opinion, we will take a decision,” Mr. Singh told presspersons after inaugurating the Aero India seminar here. Currently, there is a proto-CDS post in the form of the CISC (Chief of Integrated Defence Staff), a three-star position headed by Air Marshal P.P. Reddy. The Services chiefs are four-star. Most countries have a CDS who has an overall perspective and takes decisions on the needs of the three Forces and liaises with the President.
The modalities of whether to have a permanent or rotation-based chief will be thrashed out. Current views included having someone in the post for a couple of years until the issue is worked out; or elevating an existing coordinating official to a four-star post until the matter is ironed out. Then that person or someone else could be designated the chief of the tri-services.
Earlier, launching the three-day Aero India seminar focussing on a military technology vision for 2050, the Minister said indigenous defence programmes such as the fighter LCA Tejas, the Agni and Nirbhay missiles; or the AEW&C early warning; or the unmanned air surveillance systems gave teeth to the forces.
Demystifying spinning black holesInterstellar team provides insights into the physics of such objects
For those who marvelled at the awe-inspiring, if perplexing, visuals of the spinning black hole in the movie Interstellar , there is another exciting piece of news. The team responsible for the visual effects has provided new insights into the physics of such objects.
In a paper published on February 13 in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity , the team describes how the innovative computer code they used to generate images of the wormhole, black hole and other celestial objects has actually yielded a better understanding of “gravitational lensing” by spinning black holes.
Using their code, the team comprising London-based visual effects company Double Negative and Caltech theoretical physicist Kip Thorne figured out that when a camera was close up to a rapidly spinning black hole, special surfaces in space, known as caustics, created more than a dozen images of individual stars and of the thin, bright plane of the galaxy in which the black hole lived. They found that the images were concentrated along one edge of the black hole’s shadow.
These multiple images are caused by the black hole dragging space itself into a whirling motion and stretching the special surfaces (caustics) around itself many times.
This is the first time that the effects of caustics have been computed for a camera near a black hole, and the resulting images give some idea of what a person would see if they were orbiting around a black hole.
The computer code was used to create images of the movie’s wormhole and the black hole Gargantua and its glowing accretion disk, with unparalleled smoothness and clarity.
In the press release circulated by IOP Publishing, Mr. Thorne, co-author of the study, said: “This new approach to making images will be of great value to astrophysicists like me.”
Aero India 2015 to focus on ‘Make in India’‘Aero India 2015’ will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Bengaluru on February 18, with the theme squarely focused on ‘Make in India’ in aerospace, defence, civil aviation and airport infrastructure in line with the government’s mantra.
“We want to set ‘Make in India’ as the major theme of the exhibition and see it progress in the defence sector also,” Defence Production Secretary G. Mohan Kumar said.
A global CEOs conference will be chaired by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar. Around 300 CEOs from Indian and foreign companies are expected to attend the conference.
Wholesale price index slips into negative zoneRiding high on the fall in fuel prices, the wholesale price index dipped to – 0.39 per cent in January. It is for the eighth consecutive month that a fall in inflation has been recorded. Inflation was at 0.1 per cent in December.
The WPI plunged into the negative zone as the slide in fuel prices more than offset the increase in food prices that continued to be high.
Negative WPI inflation reflects falling cost of production in the economy. It could eventually be reflected in consumer prices. Consumer price inflation hit 5.11 per cent in January, according to official data released last week.
It captures inflation closest to producers and has a broader coverage of manufactured products. It does not capture price inflation in services. With a sharp pick-up in pulses, grains and vegetables, food inflation surged to 8 per cent in January as against 5.2 per cent in December.
China’s ‘Silk Road fund’ becomes operationalChina has taken a firm step to implement its vision of the Silk Road Economic Belt — an initiative to integrate the economies of Asia and Europe along the Eurasian corridor — by putting into operation its $40 billion infrastructure fund for this purpose.
The fund, flagged in November last by Chinese President Xi Jinping, has started functioning on the lines of Private Equity (PE) venture. With China as the fulcrum, it is meant to finance development of roads, rail tracks, fibre optic highways, and much more, that would connect South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Europe along an integrated land corridor.
Funds can also be allocated for the Maritime Silk Road (MSR), which envisions development of ports and facilities, mainly in the Indian Ocean. These ports will be connected to the hinterland by a string of land arteries, which will eventually hook up with the main Silk Road Economic Belt at specific junctions.
Xinhua quoted President Xi as saying during the November meeting with officials from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan and Tajikistan that the purpose of the fund is to “break the connectivity bottleneck” in Asia.
The Chinese President had offered investors from Asia and beyond to join the Silk Road fund for the development of specific projects.
The $40 billion fund was in addition to the decision to establish a $50 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which is also meant to help finance construction in the region.
On Monday, the semi-official China Business News quoted Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), as saying the $40 billion fund “has already started operations, with registration on December 29 and the first board meeting on January 6”.
China has poured part of its foreign exchange reserves in the fund, which include investors such as the China Investment Corp, the country's sovereign fund, and China Exim-Bank.
Analysts point out that as its economy slows down from its earlier blistering pace, China has developed large overcapacity in construction material, including cement and steel. China’s “One Road, One Belt” strategy, aimed at establishing new “growth engines” along the Eurasian corridor, could well absorb some of this surplus.
In an editorial in China Daily , Justin Yifu Lin, former chief economist of the World Bank, wrote: “The strategy is good for the stabilisation and development of the world economy and China, as it has a large overcapacity in construction materials.”
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