Dec/20/2011

Kim Jong-il passes away

Kim Jong-il, North Korea's reclusive “Dear Leader” who ruled the country for 17 years, leading it to nuclear power status but also presiding over a devastating famine, died on Saturday. He was 69.

Kim suffered “an acute myocardial infarction complicated with a serious heart shock” while on a train journey on Saturday morning, the North Korean state media announced on Monday.

The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said his death was the result of “a great mental and physical strain caused by his uninterrupted field guidance tour for the building of a thriving nation.”

Kim's youngest son, Kim Jong-un, who has been groomed as his successor, especially after the older Kim suffered a stroke in 2008, was expectedly named by the ruling Korean Workers' Party (KWP) as “the great successor.”

“Under the leadership of our comrade Kim Jong-un, we have to turn sadness into strength and courage and overcome today's difficulties,” the KWP said in a statement, calling on the country to rally behind him.

News of Kim's death immediately sparked concern in Seoul, Beijing and Washington, with long-persisting fears that an uncertain succession in the nuclear-armed state could cause regional instability.

Those concerns appeared well-founded on Monday, when South Korean officials said the North had test-fired a short-range missile into the sea off its eastern coast, just hours after announcing Kim's death, in a likely show of strength amid uncertainty.

South Korea responded to news of his death by placing its military on an emergency alert, with its Joint Chiefs of Staff increasing “monitoring activities” along the border, according to the Yonhap news agency.

Kim's death was announced to 23 million North Koreans on the state television on Monday morning. A woman newsreader read the news dressed in black, visibly emotional and in a trembling voice.

That the North Korean leader's death was unknown to the rest of the world for almost two days underscored how cut-off the “Hermit Kingdom” has remained under his iron-fisted rule, with the news even appearing to evade South Korean intelligence officials who closely monitor the reclusive country.

Kim's death is likely to stall any progress towards resumption of the suspended six-party talks aimed at getting the North to abandon its nuclear programme. The North quit the talks after conducting missile tests in 2009.

Lokpal Bill before Cabinet today

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government's drafting team finally cleared the text of the controversial Lokpal Bill on Monday, and postponed the Cabinet meeting, which will consider it, to 2 p.m. on Tuesday, official sources said.

A group of senior Ministers P. Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal and Salman Khursheed — all lawyers and members of the original joint drafting committee with Anna Hazare — and MoS in the Prime Minister's Office and Department of Personnel V. Narayanasamy met in the afternoon in the office of the Home Minister Chidambaram, who chaired the meeting. It went through the draft Bill, clause by clause, and “cleaned” it up.

“We have finished cleaning up the draft,” Law Minister Khursheed said, emerging from the meeting. Officials, who have been working through the last three nights drafting the Bill, will now give the finishing touches, he said. These Ministers, the sources said, were scheduled to meet Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee for him to take another look at it.

The Cabinet note and the “cleaned-up” draft Lokpal Bill will be sent to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, for final clearance, ahead of Tuesday's Cabinet meeting. The government's concern has been that the system of checks and balances inherent in the Constitution should not be disturbed by the creation of the Lokpal. A key Minister pointed out that the two issues which have engaged the government most through the drafting process are working out the equation between the Lokpal and the CBI, and between the Lokpal and Central Vigilance Commission (CVC).

Selecting CBI director

The government draft has recommended a special procedure to select the director of the CBI; the Lokpal will be entitled to hold preliminary enquiries, but the investigation will be done by the CBI.

It also looked as though the government will accede to the BJP's demand that the CBI's investigating and prosecution arms be separated, but this remains a contentious point. The government is racing against time to get the Bill passed this week itself, but if necessary it will hold sittings on December 27, 28 and 29.

ULFA political advisor Bhimkanta Burgohain dies

The political advisor of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) Bhimkanta Buragohain, popularly known as ‘Mama' among the ULFA leaders and cadres, passed away on Monday evening following cardiac arrest. He was 80.

Mr. Buragohain, who hailed from Ahom Gaon village under Dhola in upper Assam's Tinsukia district, was captured by the Royal Bhutan Army (RBA) during its crackdown against the ULFA and the National Democratic Front of Boroland (NDFB) in December 2003. Handed over to Indian authorities in January 2004, he remained in jail for nearly seven years. He was released on bail from Guwahati Central Jail on December 5, 2010 to a warm reception by his villagers.

Condoling Mama's death, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi said the ULFA leader would be remembered for his proactive involvement in the ongoing peace process.

ULFA chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa and other top leaders of the outfit described Mr. Buragohain's death as an “irreparable loss” for the entire State and remembered how he played a key role in convincing the top leaders of the insurgent outfit lodged in jail to open political dialogue with the Centre.

Are the days of incurable diseases really over?

Students, scientists and members of the public thronged Indian Institute of Science's (IISc) Tata Auditorium on Monday to hear Nobel laureates Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Richard J. Roberts deconstructing the fascinating workings of that invisible, yet ubiquitous life form: bacteria.

Are the days of incurable diseases really over? Not quite, when diseases such as tuberculosis are seeing a resurgence, said biologist Ramakrishnan, Joint Head of the Structural Studies Division at the Medical Research Council, Cambridge.

He was delivering a lecture on ‘How antibiotics illuminate Ribosome function and vice versa.'

“The world has 100 million active cases of tuberculosis, a disease that claims two million lives every year,” he said, attributing the complexities in treating the disease to drug resistance, among other reasons.

“When a new antibiotic is introduced, you can be guaranteed that it will at some point gain drug resistance.”

Bacteria counter antibiotics through several modus operandi: by degrading or altering enzymes and by actually ejecting them out of their cells, said Professor Ramakrishan, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2009 for “studies of the structure and function of the ribosome.”

It was significant that it took $1 billion to develop new drugs from scratch, he said.

“As public, we need to be aware that structural biologists and pharmaceutical companies cannot alone solve the problem of drug resistance. We need infection control, measures to improve sanitary conditions and promote the rational use of antimicrobials,” he said.

“Do not, for instance, insist on an antibiotic if you catch a cold and flu.”

In his lecture “Why I love Bacteria,” Professor Roberts, who is the Chief Scientific Officer at New England Biolabs, Massachusetts, offered a look at the unseen bugs — friendly and unfriendly — that share our body and planet.

“If we removed every bacterium from our body, we will cease to exist,” he said. “Our bodies have some 10 trillion human cells, but it has 10 times the number of bacterial cells: 100 trillion to be precise.”

Whether the “picturesque” and colourful bacteria that lived in the Yellowstone geothermal pools or the deadly Yersinia pestis (or plague bacterium) that decimated Europe in the Middle Ages, the microscopic organism just cannot be ignored, he said.

Professor Roberts received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1993.

He described as “illogical” the European fear of genetically modified products, which has stalled research in several areas, including probiotic food that could have had several benefits.

The M.J. Thirumalachar and M.J. Narasimhan Endowment Lectures were organised to honour the memory of biologist Thirumalachar, who established the Jeersannidhi-Anderson Institute at Walnut Creek, California, along with his son M.J. Narasimhan.

Rs.1,570-cr. credit flow potential estimated for Sivaganga district

: The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development has estimated a credit flow potential of Rs.1,570 crore for the district during 2012-13.

The Potential Linked Credit Plan (PLP), prepared by NABARD for Sivaganga district, was released by V. Rajaraman, Collector, here recently.

He said that the credit potential had been assessed at Rs.1,570.59 crore, an increase of 46.05 per cent over the PLP estimated for current year.

The major share of the credit potential was for agriculture at Rs.1,028.58 crore (65.5 per cent ), comprising crop loans at Rs 860.84 crore (54.81 per cent ) and agricultural term loans at Rs.167.74 crore. Credit potential to non-farm sector was estimated at Rs.142 crore, while Rs. 400 crore was assessed for Other Priority Sector which included education loans, loans to housing sector and direct credit linkage of women SHGs.

M.R Gopal, Assistant General Manager, NABARD, said the PLP would form the basis for preparation of Annual Credit Plan by the Lead Bank.

R. Perumal, Lead District Manager, said that bankers were committed to meeting the credit requirements of farmers and Small Medium Enterprise with the support of line departments and block level officials.

“Hope majority will accept new Bill”

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal on Monday told journalists that the government was hopeful of moving a Lokpal Bill which would be acceptable to a majority of the parties.

“The revised Bill may not be acceptable to all but we are hopeful that it would be by and large acceptable to a majority.”

Explaining the rationale behind introducing a new Bill rather than moving amendments to the existing one, Mr. Bansal said the number of amendments were too many and it would be ‘messy' to carry them in the current Bill. “The idea is to have a cleaner Bill.”

He cited the Companies Amendment Bill, which was introduced in 2009. The government decided to introduce a fresh one this year after it accepted most of the over 170 amendments made by the Parliamentary Standing Committee.

Introduction of a new Bill would involve some procedural issues. The government was required to circulate a new Bill to the MPs at least two days in advance and could be introduced only five days after it was circulated.

The Speaker could waive the required period for circulation by a day and give permission for introduction without waiting for five days.

Mr. Bansal said that if the Cabinet approved the Bill on Tuesday it could be circulated the same day and moved for consideration and passage either on Wednesday or Thursday.

While the current session is scheduled to end on Thursday, the government has already requested the members to be prepared for another day. In the event of its passage in the Lok Sabha after eight hours of debate, it could go to the Rajya Sabha the next day.

Earlier in the day, Law Minister Salman Khursheed said a group of senior Ministers was working on the draft of the proposed changes to the Bill and expressed the hope that it would be completed at the most by Tuesday night.