A goal is a dream with a deadline.

THE HINDU Imp. News Feb.20th 2012 FRONT PAGE Two Italian Marines arrested: After hectic negotiations, the Kerala police on Sunday arrested two Marines suspected to have fired the shots from an Italian oil tanker that killed two Indian fishermen off Kerala on February 15. The police boarded the ship to bring the two persons and also captain of the tanker Enrica Lexie Umberto Vitelli for questioning. Though Captain Vitelli has not been held culpable of murder at present, his role is being probed. He is absolved from the operational matters involving the Marines deputed for security of the vessel as per an agreement between the company that owns the ship and the Italian government. However, his civil liabilities as captain whether he strictly followed the procedures after a suspected pirate attack on the vessel would be investigated, police sources said. The suspects are expected to be transferred to Neendakara in Kollam as the case has been registered by the Neendakara coastal police. Cash-rich BCCI owes Rs. 371 crore as income tax: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), which is no longer considered a charitable organisation for assessing income, owes over Rs.371 crore as tax to the government. And this figure could be even higher as the Income Tax Department is yet to assess the income of one of world's richest sporting bodies for the last two fiscal. For assessment year 2009-10, the BCCI's income stood at over Rs.964 crore on which the IT Department demanded a tax of over Rs.413 crore. Notably, the BCCI used to get income tax exemption as a charitable organisation but now the government has withdrawn this exemption and the cricketing body's earnings now come under the head business income. The assessee (BCCI) used to claim exemption under Section 11 of the I-T Act 1961, available for charitable organisations. The department has withdrawn registration under Section 12 of the IT Act 1961 and rejected assessee's claim for exemption under Section 11 of the I-T Act 1961.

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EDITORIAL New game on West Asian chessboard: The international community is determined to topple Bashar Al Assad's regime, and there is heavy and undisguised involvement of external forces, with active encouragement and assistance including financing and arming of anti-regime elements. There are reports of Libyan fighters having been brought to join the dissidents in Syria. The Al Assad regime the father and the son has been a thorn in the side of some countries, especially Israel and hence America because of its alliance with Iran and resultant backing of the Hezbollah, its alleged role in the assassination of pro-West Prime Minister of Lebanon Rafiq Hariri in 2005. When the United States, major European countries and nearly all Arab states, the largest repositories of crude oil, combine against him, what chance does Bashar have? How long can he hold out? The Russians and Chinese can perhaps help in preventing sanctions being imposed on Syria in the Security Council, and Russia can give Assad more weapons because they have their own interests in the Middle East, not least being the Syrian port of Tartous on the Mediterranean. But once the dissidents in Syria manage to seize control over some territory anywhere in the country, the external involvement will become decisive in tilting the scales against Bashar, as happened in Libya. In addition to acquiring a foothold in some parts of Syria, the opposition would also need to put together a coalition of their own so that foreign aid can be channelled to them again on the lines of what happened in Libya. Support for Assad There are a few factors working for Bashar Al Assad also. He continues to enjoy popular support in the country. Forty per cent of Syria's population consists of minorities of different kinds, all of whom are united in not wanting a hard-line Sunni establishment taking over power in the country. The army, which is largely Sunni though the officer corps consists mainly of Alawites, is by and large, still loyal to the regime. The number of defectors is most likely exaggerated in the western media. And then there is diplomatic and limited military support from Russia. He can also count on the strong support of Iran which itself has a huge stake in Bashar's survival, but it is not clear how helpful Iran's support means in practical terms. He can also perhaps enlist the Hezbollah on his side to make life a bit difficult for Israel, but the same may not be true of Hamas whose leadership is making its own calculations on the advisability of continuing to put all its eggs in the Assad basket. Bashar also presumably continues to have enough leverage to destabilise Lebanon, and not only through the Hezbollah. On the whole, however, the odds are stacked against Bashar. His capacity to fight the combined onslaught is not unlimited; his finances are dwindling just as those of his opponents are increasing and will increase even more, and his diplomatic supporters might not stand by his side for too long depending on what other pieces come into play on the international chess board. Russia's last ditch effort to bring all Syrians parties together around a negotiating table reminds one of the desperate attempt to stall the first Gulf War in 1991 when Primakov, a former Prime Minister and the best Soviet expert on Arab affairs and a friend of Saddam, tried,
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unsuccessfully, to persuade Saddam Hussein to make some compromise gesture. The present effort also is not likely to succeed, first because the opposition is divided and second because the opposition has much more to gain by not cooperating with Russia and remaining on the side of the U.S. and the rich Gulf states. What can Russia offer to the dissidents? The other side can offer a great deal. Further, Bashar has made it difficult for those who might wish to help him for their own reasons by failing to carry out reforms which he has had ample time to implement since succeeding his father a decade ago. Since the principal though indirect target of the anti-Assad movement is Iran, there is almost no chance of the Russian effort succeeding. The Arab Spring The brief history of the phenomenon which goes by the dubious name of Arab Spring has established a clear trend. Every successive country involved in this development has witnessed increasing levels of violence. Tunisia's was the least violent revolution. Egypt has suffered many more casualties than Tunisia. In Libya, hundreds and possibly thousands have died, in Yemen even more. The Syrian revolution, if it can be called that, has cost thousands of lives on both sides it is essential to emphasise this point, the number of dead on the government side is not much smaller than on the opposition side and will surely claim thousands more. Muslim Brotherhood is the only party, besides the official Ba'ath party, with a reasonable base in Syria and will almost certainly be the largest beneficiary should the Assad government fall at some time. It is reported to be receiving large-scale help from some affluent Sunni governments. This ought to be a cause for concern for Israel, Jordan, Iraq and the West in general. India might have to practise a new form of non-alignment or dual alignment between Saudi Arabia and Iran. The time for this has come. Continued instability in Syria might make the region unstable, affecting the production and export of oil, and, most importantly, the situation of the six-million Indian diaspora working in the region. India's vote in favour of the resolution which was vetoed by Russia and China on February 4 should not be seen as no longer sitting on the fence ; rather, it was, one likes to think, a demonstration of our readiness to adapt our positions to changed circumstances. Consistency is not a virtue in international relations. It is quite possible that future challenges might produce yet different responses. Spies shouldn't police us: In September, 1970, J. Edgar Hoover wrote a secret memo which pithily explained the difference between criminal investigators and spies: the purpose of counter-intelligence action, it stated, is to disrupt, and it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge. Four decades on, as Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram prepares to give teeth to India's new National Counter-Terrorism Centre, the words of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's legendary and paranoiac founding director should help Indians understand why the idea is profoundly misguided. For years now, India's intelligence services have complained sometimes with justification that State governments have been reluctant to
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act on credible intelligence of counter-terrorism value. Political motives, they point out, have led governments as disparate as Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar not to arrest figures involved with Hindutva, Islamist or Maoist groups. India's Constitution, Mr. Chidambaram has pointed out, makes it incumbent on the Central government to maintain internal security. The Ministry of Home Affairs' proposal to arm the NCTC with the power to conduct searches and make arrests derives, he argues, from this obligation. Mr. Chidambaram may be right about the Constitution but there are three sound reasons why the mounting concerns over the NCTC must be taken seriously. First, the Intelligence Bureau is not an organisation that is, or ought to be, concerned with criminal justice. Like other intelligence services across the world, its task is to gather information that the police can use to guide and inform the course of a criminal investigation, not to make judgments on whether that intelligence has value as evidence. Blurring the distinction between intelligence-gathering and policing will open up the possibility of abuses abuses for which Hoover's FBI became notorious. The Union government already has an investigative service with a nationwide mandate, the National Investigation Agency. This makes it even less clear why the NCTC needs the same powers. In India, secondly, the concerns are amplified because the IB has historically taken an expansive view of national security notably, by devoting extensive resources to political surveillance. Handing it the power to arrest will expand the possibility of political misuse. Thirdly, as experts have pointed out, India's counter-terrorism efforts have floundered because State police forces lack the training, resources and manpower needed to conduct effective investigations. Arming the NCTC with the power to arrest will not solve this core problem. Like other intelligence-related reforms, the NCTC's powers ought to have been subject to an informed and vigorous debate in Parliament. It still isn't too late to conduct one. Make the pact workable: For Mamata Banerjee to lay at the doors of the Central government the whole blame for the delay in implementation of the July 2011 agreement for the formation of an autonomous administrative set-up for the Darjeeling hills is less than charitable. Having gone ahead and claimed a breakthrough on the long-simmering issue rather prematurely, she doubtless needs to save face as the prospect of fresh trouble looms. But the fact remains that the manner in which the tripartite agreement was signed without figuring out ways to address all the substantive questions, involved essentially a tactic of political one-upmanship vis--vis the preceding Left Front government that really had not spared any effort to solve the issue in a sensible manner. The Shyamal Sen Committee, tasked with looking into the question of identification of additional areas in Siliguri, Terai and Dooars that may be transferred to the new Body, is still at work. The territorial issue is a crucial component of the formula set out, and if presidential assent for the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration Bill that was passed by the State Assembly in September is not yet forthcoming, it is not a mystery why. The liberal financial package that the Central government offered for the development of the region as an incentive for peace, and the Chief Minister's emphasis on the development of the north Bengal region, are both commendable. But for the restive region, this is not enough. It
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seems fair to say that as things stand, unless the GJM adopts a more pragmatic approach on its territorial claims, if necessary by agreeing to renegotiate the terms of the pact while managing the feelings of its constituency, a real and workable solution would remain elusive. Meanwhile, the Chief Minister should give up the politically expedient blame game and stop running with the hares and hunting with the hounds. Going green, with a large side order of mercury: Steady release of mercury into the air, soil and water poses a significant health risk. But, it appears, not for policymakers in India. Annually, a large amount of this toxic, complex metal is simply dumped into municipal landfills or released into the air from a green source the millions of fluorescent lamps that are at the forefront of efforts to reduce power demand and carbon emissions. Yearly, India's domestic production of fluorescent tube lights (FTL) and compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) involves the use of about eight tonnes of mercury, and imported CFLs, another three tonnes. The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) agrees that despite the growing popularity of these lamps, little has been done to safely dispose of the toxic waste. The Ministry decided to look into the issue and appointed a Task Force on Environmentally Sound Management of Mercury in the Fluorescent Lamp sector five years ago. The report of this panel is clear. The lamp disposal problem is confirmed by the Ministry's Task Force when it says a part of the mercury from discarded units is released into the air, and the rest goes into the soil, contaminating surface and sub-soil water. The problem is acute in large cities, which absorb a large portion of about 400 million CFLs and 250 million FTLs that come to market. the lamps made in India have a higher mercury content than those in the developed world, a point made by independent researchers and the Ministry's Task Force. INTERNATIONAL Waheed defends Gayoom's daughter's induction: Even as the former President, Mohamed Nasheed, and most of his party, the Maldivian Democratic Party, continued to press for elections, President Waheed Hassan Manik appointed Maumoon Abdul Gayoom's daughter Dhunya Maumoon to Cabinet on Sunday. Mr. Gayoom, who ruled for about three decades, was ousted from power by Mr. Nasheed in the first democratic multi-party elections. Ms. Maumoon had earlier served in the Gayoom Ministry. While that in itself is not a disqualification, the fact that someone from the family that ruled Maldives with an iron fist is in the Ministry has caused a lot of heartburn. Critics, especially those from the MDP, claimed that the plan had been laid bare: that Dr. Waheed was nothing but a puppet propped by Mr. Gayoom.

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Myanmar monk faces legal action: A dissident monk who helped lead an anti-government uprising is facing new legal action, in part for breaking into monasteries sealed by the former military junta after the mass street protests five years ago, state media reported on Sunday. The 33-year-old monk was one of the leaders of the Saffron Revolution, a 2007 uprising led by Buddhist monks against the then-ruling military junta that saw the streets of the main city, Yangon, swell with some 100,000 demonstrators. Somali deal for government structure: Somalia's disparate leaders have agreed on the basic structure of a new Parliament and government to replace the fragile transitional body that has failed to bring peace to the wartorn country. Constant infighting, rampant corruption and bloody attacks by Islamist al-Shebaab insurgents undermined the unelected Transitional Federal Government (TFG), whose Westernbacked mandate ends in August. A 225-member Lower House at least 30 per cent women will be nominated by traditional elders assisted by prominent civil society members, reads the agreement, released late on Saturday after a three-day meeting. An Upper House of 54 members will also be nominated, drawn from the different regions and clans of the fragmented country. The agreement is the latest among more than a dozen attempts to resolve Somalia's more than two decade-old civil war, with the country split between rival factions and pirate gangs who hijack ships far across the Indian Ocean. Al-Qaeda allied Shebaab fighters, who control large parts of central and southern Somalia where they are battling African Union-backed government forces as well as Kenyan and Ethiopian troops, condemned the deal. Iran spreading terror: U.K.British Foreign Secretary William Hague on Sunday seized on last week's attacks on Israeli diplomats in New Delhi, Bangkok and Georgia to accuse Iran of spreading terrorism. The British Foreign Secretarywarned that if Iran developed nuclear weapons it could provoke an attack on it possibly leading to a war alluding to Israeli threats to attack Iran. However, he said Britain had not been shown any plans by Israel for an attack on Iran and had not been asked to be involved in any such attack. Latvians script their own future: Latvia's voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to make Russian the second official language widening the rift with the Russian-speaking minority in the former Soviet Baltic state. Almost 75 per cent of voters in a national referendum held in Latvia on Saturday said they were against giving Russian equal status with Latvian. Despite their defeat, campaigners for the Russian
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language were encouraged by the fact that 25 per cent, or more than 260,000, supported the proposal. The Russian Foreign Ministry said the referendum results failed to adequately reflect the situation in Latvia because 319,000 Russian non-citizens were denied the right to vote. Russian is native language for 44 per cent of Latvia's population of 2.1 million, but it has no official status and is treated as any other foreign language. The main pro-Russian party Harmony Centre won the most votes during parliamentary elections last September, but a coalition of right-wing parties locked it out of power. At the end of last year Latvian nationalists, who want to drive Russian occupiers out, launched a campaign to close Russian schools, but failed to gather enough signatures to put the issue to a referendum. Latvia, like neighbouring Estonia, has a language inspectorate, called language inquisition for its draconian powers to fine companies and sack employees who are found to lack insufficient Latvian language skills. Russian politicians said Latvia was shooting itself in the foot by discriminating against the Russian language. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russian was not only part of Latvia's culture and history, but offered additional job opportunities for Latvian citizens. In contrast to Latvia and Estonia, Finland is debating a proposal to give its schoolchildren a choice of studying Russian instead of Swedish to make them more competitive on the job market. BUSINESS Too early for comfort: The Wholesale Price Index (WPI)-based inflation dropped to 6.55 per cent last month from 7.47 per cent in December last year. The decline in the headline inflation rate to its lowest level in 26 months in January has evoked a wide range of reactions. Rating agency Crisil in a recent incisive report points out that core inflation (non-food manufacturing) has now declined for the second consecutive month. This means that the impact of past rate hikes on demand slowdown has begun to reflect in overall inflation. Forecasting WPI inflation for 2012-13 at 5.8 per cent, Crisil says that the lower inflation vis-a-vis 2011-12 is mainly due to a high base and low pricing power of corporates (due to sluggish domestic demand). Indeed, a favourable base effect' is behind the recent fall in inflation. It will reverse from February onwards. A recent RBI survey points out a majority of households expect inflation towards the end of 2012 to be higher than a year ago. The fact that inflation expectations remain high despite the decline in January shows that most of those surveyed think that its fall is temporary, a one-off affair. Expectations will come down only when inflation stabilises at lower levels. Taking trade route to prosperity: Be the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry or the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry or our very own Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) or Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) all are on the common platform that trade between the
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two countries should get priority over politics and that political tensions should not be allowed to create obstacles in the economic development. The fruits of prosperity should be shared between the two neighbours rather than letting any third economy take advantage of it. The issue of mobile connectivity is something that the two countries seriously need to work on as majority of the Pakistan's population resent about mobile phones of both countries not working in each other's territories. We both have the technology but we require political will to make a new beginning at least in trade. The people of Pakistan are just waiting for the border to open up and you will find that a huge population is waiting to cross over and meet their Indian counterparts. They want to explore India and I am sure the same sentiment must be prevailing in India, ' Mian Nasser Hyatt Maggo, Chief Executive of Al-Riaz Agencies, said in Karachi. SPORT Kruger cruises to maiden European Tour title: Excitement was at a premium in the final round of the 1.8-million Avantha Masters golf as overnight leader Jbe Kruger got it right when it mattered for a two-stroke victory at the DLF Golf and Country Club here on Sunday. Kruger never trailed through his card of three-under 69 and posted a winning tally of 14-under 274. In fact, Kruger and the 2010 champion Australia's Andrew Dodt posted similar winning scores for their maiden titles on the European Tour. Playing his 38th European Tour event, the 25-year-old South African collected the glittering winner's trophy and 300,000 the biggest of his five-season old professional career. Two-time winner on the Tour Jose Manuel Lara and Marcus Fraser were fourth at 11-under. Lara, who shared the lead after taking the turn at 32, bogeyed the final hole after finding water to slip for one last time. Shamim Khan turned out to be the best Indian on view after taking the 22nd spot, following a 71 for a tally of five-under 283. Page 9 DRDO to develop advanced seekers for tactical missiles: Imagine a war scenario in which miniaturised missiles equipped with Precision-Guided Munitions (PGMs) are unleashed from a mother missile to take out select enemy targets like an ammunition depot while avoiding collateral damage. A mother missile acts as a force multiplier and to achieve the desired result, each miniaturised missile will have a seeker to ensure its independent motion, irrespective of the mother missile's motion. In a bid to conduct trials without using the mother missile, a Remotely Piloted Vehicle (RPV) has been imported to be used as a Technology Demonstrator for the project. A flight trial was conducted at the Integrated Test Range using the RPV along with a recoverable tow body by providing the vehicle the same velocity of a mother missile.
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EPFO may fix minimum pension at Rs.1,000 per month: Retirement fund body EPFO (Employees' Provident Fund of India) may take a final decision on fixing the minimum pension for its subscribers at Rs.1,000 per month, at a meeting of the Central Board of Trustees (CBT) scheduled on February 22. The EPFO's apex decision-making body the CBT could fix minimum pension at Rs.1,000 per month for its subscribers, at a meeting this month, All India Trade India Congress Secretary D.L. Sachdev told PTI.

Additional Info What is Pulitzer Prizes? Pulitzer Prizes, the highest awards in American journalism. In the latter years of the 19th century, Joseph Pulitzer stood out as the very embodiment of American journalism. Hungarian-born, an intense indomitable figure, Pulitzer was the most skillful of newspaper publishers, a passionate crusader against dishonest government, a fierce, hawk-like competitor who did not shrink from sensationalism in circulation struggles, and a visionary who richly endowed his profession. His innovative New York World and St. Louis Post-Dispatch reshaped newspaper journalism. Pulitzer was the first to call for the training of journalists at the university level in a school of journalism. And certainly, the lasting influence of the Pulitzer Prizes on journalism, literature, music, and drama is to be attributed to his visionary acumen.

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