UK to back India for seat in Security Council
London: Ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's address to the UN General Assembly, the United Kingdom on Sunday has strongly endorsed India's claim for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.

In a joint declaration to be issued today after talks between Prime Minister Singh and his British counterpart Tony Blair, the two countries have also decided to establish an Indo-British Economic and Financial Dialogue on bilateral and global issues, financial systems and to enhance economic and finacial cooperation.

UK has assured India that it would support its inclusion in the Financial Action Joint Task Force.
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US eases export controls for India
Washington D.C., USA: On the eve of the meeting between the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, and the US President, George W. Bush, India and the US made a significant progress in bilateral relationships by marking a successful conclusion of the first phase in the `Next Steps in the Strategic Partnership (NSSP) initiative'.

The US will ease export controls on the Indian civilian nuclear and space facilities. Since January, both Washington and New Delhi have been closely working to conclude phase one. This included the implementation of measures to address proliferation concerns and compliance with American export controls.

If the first phase of the NSSP deals with extended interaction in space, phase two is expected to focus on co-operation in nuclear fields.

The NSSP as a process will go on for years and may not necessarily be confined to the currently identified fields.
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EDUSAT to be launched today
Bangalore: "EduSat", the first Indian satellite built exclusively for serving the education sector, will be launched on Monday. The satellite will be launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on the Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV).

The 1950-kg EDUCAT is mainly intended to meet the demand for an interactive satellite based distance education system for the country.

The GSLV will launch the satellite into a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) and from GTO, the EDUSAT will reach the 36,000 km high Geostationary Orbit (GSO). In GSO, the satellite will be co-located with Kalpana-1 and INSAT-3C satellites.

Built with a mission life of seven years, the EDUSAT will be launched by the third flight of ISRO's GSLV.

Designated as GSLV-F0-1, this will be the first operational (FO-1) flight of the vehicle.

The satellite has been built at a cost of Rs80 crore over the last two and a half years. The vehicle that will launch the satellite, India's GSLV, has cost Rs160 crore to design and develop. A launch outside the country will cost anywhere between Rs250 to 300 crore.

In the two developmental test flights conducted in April 2001 and May 2003, the GSLV successfully placed GSAT-1 and GSAT-2 into the GTO. The 49-metre tall three-stage GSLV, will consist of a core motor with 138 tonnes of solid propellant and four strap-on motors in the first stage.

It will also contain 39 tonnes of hypergolic liquid propellants in the second stage and 12.5 tonnes of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen in the third cryogenic stage.
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Maharashtra: Congress and NCP finalise agreement
New Delhi: The Congress and its alliance partner in Maharashtra, the Nationalist Congress Party, have finalised their seat-sharing arrangement for the Assembly elections in the State. Of the 288 seats, the Congress has been allotted 161, while the NCP has been given 127.

The seat-sharing arrangement was finalised on Saturday evening after an hour-long meeting between the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, and her NCP counterpart, Sharad Pawar. The final list of candidates will be released on Monday.

Both the parties have agreed to broadbase the alliance and involve like-minded parties such as the CPI(M), CPI, RJD, LJP and factions of the Republican Party of India.

The Congress will leave some seats from its share for the Left parties, and those led by Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan, while the NCP will accommodate, the Ramdas Athawale faction of the Republican Party of India (RPI).

The Congress has also conceded the NCP's request to leave seats for it in Congress strongholds such as Vidarbha and Mumbai. The Congress has decided to leave 15 seats for the NCP in the Vidarbha region and eight in Mumbai.

Similarly, the NCP is likely to concede some seats to the Congress in its strongholds of western Maharashtra, Pune and Satara districts.
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ILO lauds Indian economic policy framework
Mumbai: The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has complimented the soundness of the Indian economic policy, saying that it was almost an exception in the world of declining per capita incomes and the high variability of growth rates.

''If the cases of India and China, the two mega countries, are set aside, economic growth rates in per capita terms of the developing countries have declined while the variability of annual economic growth rates has increased, implying more national insecurity, contrary to predictions made by those pushing for rapid economic liberalisation,'' the ILO says in a new report.

The Report, entitled 'Economic Security for a better World,' was released and in Geneva.

The ILO analysis shows that conventional social security systems are inappropriate for responding to the new forms of systematic risks, and uncertainty that characterised the emerging global economic system.

The Report said more people in developing countries were being exposed to 'systematic risk', rather than contingency risks." The latter are due to individual life-cycle events, such as individual unemployment or illness, which are covered by standard social security systems. ''People are far less able to prepare for shocks that affect whole communities and regions.'' Accordingly, the governments and international agencies should promote universalistic, rights-based schemes that provide people with basic economic security rather than resort to selective means-tested schemes.

The Report suggests that the developing countries should adopt those policies only which offer the best prospects for providing greater level of economic security.

The Report shows that about 73 per cent of all workers live in circumstances of economic insecurity. Only eight per cent live in ''pacesetter'' countries, that is, in societies providing favourable economic security. It also found that the global distribution of economic security did not correspond to the global distribution of income, and that South and South- East Asia had greater shares of economic security than their share of the world's income.

Whereas South Asia had about seven per cent of the workers income, it had about 14 per cent of the world s economic security.
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Nabard eases agricultural loans
New Delhi: The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) has liberalised its scheme for Agri Entrepreneurs to establish Agri Clinics and Agri Business Centres.

It has reduced the interest rate on its refinance to 5.5 per cent per annum, irrespective of the size of the loan. The earlier rate of interest on loan exceeding Rs2 lakh was 6.75 per cent per annum.

Nabard has advised banks to reduce the rate of interest charged by them to the borrowers suitably. It has also asked the financing banks to provide entrepreneurs soft loan assistance for margin money in cases where loan amount exceeds Rs5 lakh. The decision to liberalise follows the announcement by the Union Finance Minister to set up at least 10 ACABCs in each district of the country, the release added.

Through the ACABCs, the agriculture graduates are being encouraged to accelerate the process of technology transfer to agriculture, provide supplementary source of input supply and services to farmers by Nabard. In the process, the agri entrepreneurs are getting gainful employment in the emerging areas of the agriculture sector.
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