NEW DELHI, June 5:
Virtually assured of a second term at the recent national executive in Mumbai, BJP president Nitin Gadkari has started work on galvanising the party rank and file for the forthcoming Assembly elections and the Lok Sabha polls.
Sources close to Gadkari said he has taken serious note of the concerns voiced by senior leader L K Advani at the conclave and later on his blog that BJP does not appear to be in a position where it would be considered a viable alternative to those who want to vote out the UPA.
“Gadkari will begin implementing his plans – which now extend beyond the December 2012 deadline he had earlier set – with a series of meetings with chiefs of BJP Morchas (fronts) and Cells this week”, a party leader close to him told.The BJP Core Group, the second highest decision-making body of the party after the Parliamentary Board, will hold fortnightly meetings now under Gadkari’s leadership.“There is a growing feeling in the party that the Lok Sabha elections may be held before 2014 and the party should not be caught napping and be unprepared in such a scenario”, a BJP leader said.
The Assembly election results in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand are considered to have come as a wake-up call for the party. Gadkari has turned wiser after some of the wrong decisions taken in these polls and would also like to deal more firmly with infighting and other issues which have hampered its performance, he said.
A reshuffle in the organisation – which Gadkari plans to do gradually to avoid ruffling feathers – is part of the plans, the sources said. (PTI)

WASHINGTON, June 5:
Al-Qaeda’s second in command Abu Yahya al-Libi was the main target of the US drone strike that killed 15 militants in Pakistan’s lawless Northwest yesterday and US officials said they were “optimistic” the Libyan had not survived.
“People are looking very closely to see whether he is still alive,” the officials were quoted by New York Times as saying.
The Times said a senior Pakistani security source in Peshawar had said, “It looks like he has been killed.”
The paper said tribal sources in Mir Ali, where the drone attack occurred, said the Libyan ideologue was either killed or seriously wounded in the strike, which Pakistani officials said killed at least 15 people.
US officials said that Libi, on whose head Washington had put a bounty of USD 1 billion, had been the target of the missile attack in North Waziristan, the third drone strike in as many days and the deadliest this year.
“If his killing is confirmed, it could be a major blow to the core of al-Qaeda- removing the organisation’s number two leader twice in less than a year,” they said.
Al-Libi took the second in command spot when Egyptian cleric Ayman al-Zawahari took charge of al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden’s death.
Al-Libi oversaw the terror group’s day-to-day operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas and maintained links with its regional affiliates.
Top US intelligence officials said that degradation to core al-Qaeda during the past several years had depleted the ranks to such an extent that the organisation could have no replacement for him.
Libi, a Libyan citizen believed to be in his late 40’s, has been an influential al-Qaeda commander and made a dramatic escape from a prison at Bagram Air base in Afghanistan in 2005. He was captured in 2002 after NATO forces toppled Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers.
He became the international terror network’s deputy leader after Atiyah abd al-Rahman, another Libyan national was killed in a US missile strike in North Waziristan last August.
Earlier too, Libi had been reported killed after a December 2009 drone strike in South Waziristan.
In the strike in which Libi was reported killed, US drones fired two missiles into a compound in the village of Hesokhel, east of Miranshah, the capital of North Waziristan. After the raid, Pakistani officials had said that among the victims had been foreigners, a term often used for Arab terrorists. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, June 5:
Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal today called upon the states to join the new system of common engineering entrance for central institutions, including IITs, NITs and IIITs, with a modified version if they liked.
States can give out their choice within this month to make it possible for the Centre to move forward, Mr Sibal said.
Addressing State Education Ministers’ Conference here, Mr Sibal justified the Centre’s decision to go for the common entrance test, saying it was taken after taking all the stakeholders on board.
“We want the states to ponder, and then adopt it as this test to be conducted by the IITs would bring only merit into their institutions, and save their students from the trouble of appearing in a large number of examination,” Mr Sibal said.
Under the new system, there would be two components—Main and Advanced. There could be different degree of weightages for the student’s performance in the state Board examination and the Main examination, and it is for the states to choose the degree of weightage they want to give to the two, said Mr Sibal.
The decision to introduce the system was taken at a meeting of the Councils of the IITs, IIITs and NITs, and there not a single person who dissented, the Minister said in an obvious reference to opposition from the faculty of some IITs. (UNI)

NEW DELHI, June 5:
A horde of stars including Salman Khan, Hrithik Roshan and Rani Mukherjee are all set to add to the glitz and glamour at the IIFA Weekend this year.
The three-day event beginning Thursday in the Lion City of Singapore will see a bunch of stars gathering to attend the IIFA World premiere, music and fashion event IIFA Rocks and the main awards gala among other events.
Sources say actors Abhay Deol, Arshad Warsi, Boman Irani, Emraan Hashmi, Farhan Akhtar and Shahid Kapoor will be flying down to Singapore on June 7 for IIFA. So will actresses Bipasha Basu, Dia Mirza, Kalki Koechlin, Neha Dhupia, Parineeti Chopra, Preity Zinta and Vidya Balan.
Ranbir Kapoor, alongwith his father Rishi and mother Neetu, is expected to arrive on the second day.
The IIFA Weekend is being held between June 7 and 9. The awards night will be hosted by Shahid and Farhan while the Priyanka and Sonakshi are expected to perform. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, June 5:
Going on an overdrive to address the issue of slowdown in growth, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called a meeting of all Ministries connected with infrastructure development here tomorrow to review progress in the infrastructure sector and the status of delayed projects.
The meeting will review progress on meeting timelines of the targets and what needed to be done to arrest any delays, sources said adding that projects worth 1.46 lakh crore were pending because of absence of regulatory clearances in various sectors.
The meeting comes five days after the Prime Minister okayed setting up of an Investment Tracking System to address the issue of delay in major investment projects and ensure speedy implementation of such projects.
The issue had come up at a meeting of the Prime Minister’s Council on Trade and Industry held in December in which Dr Singh had stated that major projects would be specially tracked to take them forward on a fast track to provide a fresh impetus to the economy. (UNI)
This was in the context of delays faced by projects on multiple fronts—security, environmental and other clearances, land related matters etc.
Experts have said India could unleash its full potential if it improved the infrastructure facilities which are at present not sufficient to meet the growing demand of the economy.
The demand for infrastructure investment during the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-2011) has been estimated at 492.5 billion US Dollars (Planning Commission, 2007).
To meet this growing demand, the Government of India has planned to raise the investment in infrastructure from the present 4.7 per cent of GDP to around 7.5 to 8 per cent of the GDP in the 11th Five Year Plan.
“In general, efforts for infrastructure development continue to focus on the key areas of physical and social infrastructure,” the sources added.
(UNI)

WASHINGTON, June 5:
People prone to depression often respond more strongly than others to feeling guilty, according to a new neuroimaging research, which may help explain how the emotions are processed by the brain.
Dr Sigmund Freud, known as the father of psychoanalysis, was the first to claim that crushing guilt is a common symptom of depression. Now, the new research found a communication breakdown between two guilt-associated brain regions in people who have had depression.
This so-called “decoupling” of the regions may be why depressed people take small faux pas as evidence that they are complete failures, the researchers said.
“If brain areas don’t communicate well, that would explain why you have the tendency to blame yourself for everything and not be able to tie that into specifics,” study researcher Roland Zahn, a neruoscientist at the University of Manchester in the UK, said.
For their research, Zahn and his colleagues focused their research on the subgenual cingulated cortex and its adjacent septal region, a region deep in the brain that has been linked to feelings of guilt. Past studies have found abnormalities in this region, dubbed the SCSR, in people with depression.
The SCSR is known to communicate with another brain region, the anterior temporal lobe, which is situated under the side of the skull. The anterior temporal lobe is active during thoughts about morals, including guilt and indignation.
In the study, the researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of a group of people after remission from major depression for more than a year, and a control group who have never had depression.
Both groups were asked to imagine acting badly, for example being ‘stingy’ or ‘bossy’ towards their best friends. They then reported their feelings to the research team.
The resulting scans showed that while the SCSR and the anterior temporal lobe activate together in both guilt and indignation in healthy brains, the brains of once-depressed individuals functioned quite differently.
During feelings of indignation, the SCSR-anterior temporal lobe linkage worked fine. But during feelings of guilt, the regions failed to sync up so neatly, the researchers found.
The subjects who were most prone to self-blame showed the greatest communication gaps between these regions, the team reported in journal Archives of General Psychiatry.
Importantly, the team found, once-depressed participants didn’t notice feeling any differently when they read the guilt and indignation sentences, suggesting that this breakdown in communication is not felt consciously.
The researchers can’t yet say if pre-existing brain problems cause the communication breakdown or the depression itself causes this troubling pattern. Fortunately, Zahn said, the coupling of the SCSR and the anterior temporal lobe is known to be influenced by learning.
That means there is hope that people prone to depression could learn to overcome their guilty tendencies, Zahn said.
He also said they are now developing a program that will allow people to watch their brain activities in real time.
If it works, patients will see their brain activation change as they try to alter their emotions. That feedback is important, given that once-depressed participants don’t consciously realise that they’re turning social molehills into mountains of self-blame, Zahn added. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, June 5:
The Government’s move to review its fight against corruption by independent experts has received a cold response as not many of them have expressed interest to undertake a self evaluation study.
Official sources said the Government has extended the last date for submitting a detailed proposal by this month-end from concerned agencies.
The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) had invited Expression of Interest (EoI) last month from registered Indian law schools, law firms, academic or research organisations to undertake the study which is a mandatory obligation of the country under the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC).
UNCAC, which acts as a universal legal instrument to deal with the menace of corruption globally, was ratified by India on May 9 last year.
“There has not been a favourable response from the concerned people. We have decided to extend the due date by four weeks, which is by the end of this month”, a source said.
However, when contacted a senior official dealing with the matter, wishing anonymity said a few agencies have requested for extension of the date, which was May 31 earlier, citing complicity and the wide gamut of responsibilities mentioned in the EoI.
As per the proposal, a selected agency will get 36 weeks for the project.
The task of the selected firm will be to find out whether Indian domestic laws are fully or partly compliant or non-compliant with the Convention. It would be expected to study, analyse and assess the requirements for compliance under the Convention by looking at the relevant documents.
The agency will also be mandated to find gaps and interact with ministries of Home Affairs, External Affairs, Law & Justice, Corporate Affairs; Central Vigilance Commission and CBI to gather inputs or clarifications while meeting requirements laid down under the UNCAC.
However, two major areas – bribery of foreign public officials and bribery in the private sector – will not be part of the proposed study.
UNCAC is an international legal instrument to deal with corruption and imposes obligations on member states to provide legal and administrative measures for facilitating recovery of assets in trans border corruption and among others, promoting international co-operation in combating trans-border graft through measures like mutual legal assistance, extraditions and joint investigations.
India is among the 160 nations who have either ratified or acceded to the UNCAC provisions. (PTI)

NEW DELHI, June 5:
A ‘Bio-diversity Special’ train show-casing the biodiversity of the country through different lens was flagged off here today with Minister of Environment and Forests Jayanti Natarajan underlining that biodiversity could be protected for future use through informed and responsible decision making and by sustainable use by the communities.
“ This requires understanding the value of the ecosystems to the benefit of the communities. Being aware of the biodiversity is the key to protecting the fragile ecosystem and threatened species,” Ms Natarajan said at the function to mark the World Environment Day.
The train flagged off by Ms Natarajan along with Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit has exhibits on bio-culture heritage, biodiversity-livelihoods linkages, and the also domestic biodiversity.
The train also has four other coaches dedicated to climate change, biodiversity & water and energy conservation, supported by other agencies, like HSBC, PCRA and the Swiss Embassy & Nestle. One coach is dedicated to the Joy of Science Lab which throws open the door of scientific experimentation to students specially school children.(UNI)
The Ministry chose the Science Express train as a medium to reach out to the far flung areas through its extensive networks that would enable reaching out to the masses and create widespread awareness on the rich biodiversity of the country and the issues associated thereof.
The Science Express- Biodiversity Special will be traversing across the country over two years, halting at more than 100 plus stations. Between June 5 and December 22, the train will travel almost 18,000 km, halting for 3-4 days at each of the 52 locations.
“It is expected that the train will be visited by a wide range of people, especially school & college students, directly engaging more than 15 lakh visitors and engaging over 50 lakhs people indirectly. Platform and outreach activities are being planned at each halt and will actively engage Ministry’s National Environment Awareness Programme (NEAC) and National Green Corps (NGC).
(UNI)