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Govt to focus on sectors hit by global crisis: President Patil
New Delhi: President
Pratibha Patil on Thursday said the government would focus on sectors like small
and medium enterprises (SMEs), exports, textiles, commercial vehicles, infrastructure
and housing as they are adversely hit by the global financial meltdown. Presenting
the agenda of the second UPA Government at the joint session of Parliament, President
Patil said, "The new Government will focus on adversely-affected sectors like
infrastructure, exports, SMEs, and housing to restore the growth momentum." In
her address, she said the immediate priority of the Government must be to focus
on managing the economy to counter the effect of the global slowdown through a
combination of sectoral and macro-level policies. "Financing the investment will
be a critical constraint and my government is determined to ensure that innovative
steps are taken in this area, consistent with medium term strategy of prudent
fiscal management," she said. On the foreign investment flows, she said, foreign
direct investment needs to be encouraged through appropriate policy. "There is
also a need to augment resources in the banking and insurance sectors in order
to permit them to serve the needs of society better," she said. On disinvestment,
she said, " Every citizen has a right to own the shares of public sector undertakings."
"My Government will develop a roadmap for listing and people-ownership of public
sector undertakings while ensuring that the Government equity does not fall below
51 per cent," she added. On the social sectors, the President said, "The Government
will expand the scope of the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme, make
India slum-free in the next five years and set up higher targets in the second
phase of the Bharat Nirman programme." The President said internal security will
remain the thrust area of the government with "zero-tolerance" towards terrorism
and will tackle it in a "time-bound" manner. "The Government has already prepared
a detailed plan to address internal security challenges to be implemented in a
time-bound manner," she said. Other priority areas would be concerted action for
disadvantaged sections including women, SCs, STs and OBCs, governance reforms,
creation and modernisation of infrastructure and capacity addition in key sectors,
prudent fiscal management, energy security and environment protection, constructive
and creative management with world and promotion of a culture of enterprise and
innovations. Transparency
brands Indian political parties Top
and civil services as most corrupt New
Delhi: Politicians and civil servants are rated to be the most corrupt persons
according to the 2009 Global Corruption Barometer (GCB) released by Transparency
International, (TI) the global body monitoring corruption in governance. The Indian
chapter of the Transparency International, disclosed this here on Wednesday. The
Barometer, a global public opinion survey by the TI found that 58 percent of the
Indian respondents identified politicians to be the single most corrupt individuals.
Civil servants and allied public officials were rated by 13 percent of respondents
as the second most corrupt persons in the country. According to S K Agarwal, Vice
Chairman of the Indian chapter of TI, there many politicians and businessmen who
have illegally stashed funds in tax havens and nine ministers in the present in
the Cabinet have criminal cases pending against them. "This time the number of
MPs with criminal record has risen to 152. Among the ministers there are nine
persons having a criminal charges against them. During elections there was a demand
for the repartitioning of secret account funds to India and that is also reflected
and most of the funds belong to politicians and the business community. These
are the two important factors in the country," he added. Anupama Jha, Executive
Director of the Indian chapter of Transparency International noted that TI is
working towards making the citizens aware of the tools to check corruption and
the use of modern technology to achieve it. "Some tools are Right to Information,
Social Audits, Citizens Charter, e-governance and technologies which can reduce
corruptions," she said. The other institutions that were polled vis-à-vis corruption
and breeding ground for it included the parliament, state legislatures, the public
and private corporate sector and the mass media. At the global level, the TI's
Barometer, now in its sixth edition, surveyed 73, 132 people in 69 countries including
12 countries from Asia Pacific. In India, the survey was conducted in five metros-
Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore. In the national capital, TI operates
from the premises of Lajpat Bhavan, a non-governmental organisation engaged in
varied social services such as education and health care.
Chinese made ammunition recovered in Poonch
Top
Poonch (J-K): Security personnel recover at least 4,500
rounds of AK-47 ammunition from a militant hideout near Line of Control in Poonch
region of Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday. Acting on a tip-off, the personnel of
Special Operation Group (SOG) and 40 Rashtriya Rifles launched a search operation
in Mandi area of the district and busted a militant hideout recovering six boxes
of ammunitions buried underground. "We have recovered this near LoC . Six boxes
of AK-47 rounds were buried under ground. Approximately 4,500 rounds have been
recovered by security personnel," said Javed Iqbal Mir, Senior Superintendent
of Police, Poonch. Police said that the recovered ammunition bore the stamp of
'Made in China'. This is the third seizure within four-days as earlier on Tuesday
and Sunday, the Rashtriya Rifles had busted hideouts in the Poonch region. Air
France plane may have been bombed, says pilot Top Paris:
An Air France pilot has declared it "highly likely" that flight AF447 may have
been blown up by a terrorist bomb. The long-haul captain, speaking on condition
of anonymity, dismissed the theory the doomed jet suffered catastrophic electrical
failure. He also ruled out suggestions that the pilot of the Rio de Janeiro to
Paris flight had tried to land on the sea. The captain spoke as naval teams from
Brazil and France scoured three miles of debris in the Atlantic, 750 miles north
east of the Brazilian coast. It also emerged Air France received a telephone threat
against a flight from Argentina to Paris just four days before AF447 vanished
without sending a May Day message. Talking of Monday's tragedy, in which 228 died,
the Air France pilot said: "If there was an explosion on board, the wreckage would
have been spread over a very wide area, as it was. "So in my opinion there is
no other option than the highly likely theory that a bomb went off on the plane
- perhaps even a large bomb that destroyed it in mid-air leaving no chance to
send a message." Obama
makes a valiant attempt to bring Arab world close to US Top Cairo
(Egypt): The United States President Barack Obama on Thursday attempted to
bridge the gulf between America and the Islamic world by delivering a historical
speech aimed at generating confidence, hope and an environment of development
with peace among all. US President Barack Obama said that there is need to bring
an end to the "cycle of suspicion and discord" between the United States and the
Muslim world. Making a keynote speech in Cairo, Obama called for a "new beginning"
in ties while admitting that there had been "years of distrust" and said both
sides needed to make a "sustained effort... to respect one another and seek common
ground". Obama made a number of references to the Koran and called on all faiths
to live together in peace. Obama said: "I have come here to seek a new beginning
between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual
interest and mutual respect." Addressing a number of issues concerning the Arab
world and America, Obama touched issues comprising war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Al
Qaeda, Israel and Palestinians right to exist and many other issues that influence
development and peace for all. Expressing his gratefulness to the hospitality
of people of Egypt and appreciating the two institutes--Al-Azhar and Cairo University--
for being a source of Egypt's advancement for over a century, Obama said " I am
proud to carry with me the goodwill of the American people, and a greeting of
peace from Muslim communities in my country: Assalaam Alaykum." "I have come here
to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world;
one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth
that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead,
they overlap, and share common principles - principles of justice and progress;
tolerance and the dignity of all human beings," Obama said. Recognizing that change
could not occur overnight and no single speech could eradicate years of mistrust,
Obama said: "I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly
the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed
doors. There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from
each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground. As the Holy Koran
tells us, "Be conscious of God and speak always the truth." Obama stated that
human history had often been a record of nations and tribes subjugating one another
to serve their own interests. Yet in this new age, such attitudes were self-defeating.
"Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group
of people over another will inevitably fail. So whatever we think of the past,
we must not be prisoners of it. Our problems must be dealt with through partnership;
progress must be shared. That does not mean we should ignore sources of tension.
Indeed, it suggests the opposite: we must face these tensions squarely." According
to BBC, the White House officials had said the speech was intended to start a
process to "re-energise the dialogue with the Muslim world". Obama received a
standing ovation at the end of his speech at Cairo University.
Chicken secretly injected with beef, pork
waste being sold in Britain Top London:
Chicken secretly injected with beef and pork waste is being sold across Britain
. In a hi-tech fraud run by firms in three EU states, food manufacturers are making
bulking agents out of porcine and bovine gristle and bones that help inflate chicken
breasts, so that they fetch a higher price. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) using
new scientific techniques detected the swindle as the non-chicken material had
been so highly processed that it passed standard DNA tests. Thousands of restaurateurs
and cafe owners are likely to have been conned into buying chicken containing
the powder, which binds water into chicken breasts, while diners have been unwittingly
consuming traces of other animals when eating out, The Independent reports. Britain
's two million Muslims, Jews and Hindus are forbidden from eating either pork
or beef. Muslims would ordinarily eat halal chicken and Jews kosher chicken sold
through approved caterers and butchers. The Hindu Forum of Britain described news
of the adulteration, which will be confirmed publicly today, as "shocking and
potentially very distressing." The food regulator acknowledged the serious consequences
of its findings. "Use of these proteins does not make chicken products unsafe,
but it is important that people are given accurate information about their food,"
the FSA said. The fraud has been taking place for at least the past two years,
and still continues because of inaction by the authorities in three EU states,
believed to be Germany , Netherlands and Spain . The European Commission rebuffed
British demands to ban beef and pork proteins from being added to chicken when
first detected in the UK and Ireland in 2001 and 2003. |
