Govt hikes DA by 10% for 80 lakh employees & pensioners

New Delhi : Government today raised dearness allowance to 100 per cent, from 90 per cent, benefiting its 50 lakh employees and 30 lakh pensioners. The decision to hike DA for its employees, and to provide dearness relief for pensioners, by 10 per cent to 100 per cent was taken by the Union Cabinet in its meeting held here.

'The Union Cabinet has approved the proposal to hike Dearness allowance for its employees and dearness relief for its pensioners to 100 per cent in its meeting held here,' a source said. This increase in the dearness allowance by the UPA-2 government comes ahead of the imposition of the model code of conduct by the Election Commission.

The code is likely to come into force with the announcement of the schedule for the forthcoming general
elections in a week or so. Also it would be the second double digit DA hike in a row. The government had announced a hike of 10 per cent to 90 per cent in September last year, effective from July 1, 2013.
The new hike in DA would be effective from the January 1 this year.

As per practice, the government uses Consumer Price Index- Industrial Workers data of the past 12 months to arrive at a quantum for the purpose of any DA hike. Thus, the retail inflation for industrial workers between January 1 to December 31, 2013 was used to take a final call on the matter.

According to the provisional data released by government on January 31, the retail inflation for factory workers in December was 9.13 per cent. The revised retail inflation data for December (rpt) December is scheduled to be released today.An official had said earlier that the preliminary assessment suggests that DA hike will not be less than 10 per cent and would be effective from January 1. PTI

Govt hikes DA by 10% for 80 lakh employees & pensioners

New Delhi : Government today raised dearness allowance to 100 per cent, from 90 per cent, benefiting its 50 lakh employees and 30 lakh pensioners. The decision to hike DA for its employees, and to provide dearness relief for pensioners, by 10 per cent to 100 per cent was taken by the Union Cabinet in its meeting held here.

'The Union Cabinet has approved the proposal to hike Dearness allowance for its employees and dearness relief for its pensioners to 100 per cent in its meeting held here,' a source said. This increase in the dearness allowance by the UPA-2 government comes ahead of the imposition of the model code of conduct by the Election Commission.

The code is likely to come into force with the announcement of the schedule for the forthcoming general
elections in a week or so. Also it would be the second double digit DA hike in a row. The government had announced a hike of 10 per cent to 90 per cent in September last year, effective from July 1, 2013.
The new hike in DA would be effective from the January 1 this year.

As per practice, the government uses Consumer Price Index- Industrial Workers data of the past 12 months to arrive at a quantum for the purpose of any DA hike. Thus, the retail inflation for industrial workers between January 1 to December 31, 2013 was used to take a final call on the matter.

According to the provisional data released by government on January 31, the retail inflation for factory workers in December was 9.13 per cent. The revised retail inflation data for December (rpt) December is scheduled to be released today.An official had said earlier that the preliminary assessment suggests that DA hike will not be less than 10 per cent and would be effective from January 1. PTI

Trooper shoots five colleagues, kills self in Kashmir

Srinagar: A trooper shot dead five of his colleagues and then turned the gun on himself in north's Kashmir Ganderbal district, sources said Thursday. Police sources told IANS that an angry trooper of the Rashtriya Rifles went berserk inside the Safapora (Manasbal) camp in the district, 35 kilometres from here, following a heated argument with his colleagues. 'He resorted to indiscriminate firing resulting in the death of five Rashtriya Rifles troopers. 'After the firing, the irate trooper shot and killed himself,' police said.

Trooper shoots five colleagues, kills self in Kashmir

Srinagar: A trooper shot dead five of his colleagues and then turned the gun on himself in north's Kashmir Ganderbal district, sources said Thursday. Police sources told IANS that an angry trooper of the Rashtriya Rifles went berserk inside the Safapora (Manasbal) camp in the district, 35 kilometres from here, following a heated argument with his colleagues. 'He resorted to indiscriminate firing resulting in the death of five Rashtriya Rifles troopers. 'After the firing, the irate trooper shot and killed himself,' police said.

FBI source had contact with Osama bin Laden in 1993: report

Washington: The FBI placed a source in direct contact with Osama bin Laden in 1993 and ascertained that the al-Qaeda leader was looking to finance terror attacks in the US, according to a media report.

The information the FBI gleaned back then was so specific that it helped thwart a terrorist plot against a Masonic lodge in Los Angeles, according to a court testimony in a little - noticed employment dispute case cited by The Washington Times.

'It was the only source I know in the bureau where we had a source right in al-Qaeda, directly involved,' Edward J Curran, a former top official in the FBI's Los Angeles office, told the court in support of a discrimination lawsuit filed against the bureau by his former agent Bassem Youssef.This information is missing from the official investigations of the September 11, 2001, the report in the Times said.

Curran gave the testimony in 2010 to an essentially empty courtroom, and thus it escaped notice from the media or terrorism specialists.The Times was recently alerted to the existence of the testimony while working on a broader report about al-Qaeda's origins.

Members of the September 11 commission, congressional intelligence committees and terrorism analysts told daily they are floored that the information is just now emerging publicly and that it raises questions about what else Americans might not have been told about the origins of al- Qaeda and its early interest in attacking the United States.

'I think it raises a lot of questions about why that information didn't become public and why the 9/11 Commission or the congressional intelligence committees weren't told about,' said former Representative Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican, who chaired the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 2004 to 2007 when lawmakers dealt with the fallout from the 9/11 Commission's official report.

Exactly how the information was omitted from the various congressional reviews and the 9/11 Commission report is a mystery, the report said.As the case played out in federal court in 2010, Curran testified in Youssef's favour, methodically telling the court about the agent's many successes during the early 1990s when the US government's unofficial war on terrorism was just beginning.

Those successes included thwarting specific terrorist attacks, including one on a British cruise liner and another that targeted the Los Angeles area, Curran testified.The former supervisor testified that Youssef developed a confidential source connected to the infamous 'Blind Sheik,' Omar Abdel-Rahman, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and that he managed to send that source overseas and meet personally with bin Laden.

The source was very close to the leadership of al-Qaeda, which was then known as the Islamic Group. The one source came back, had direct contact with bin Laden, Curran testified.Eventually, the plot to blow up the Los Angeles target was diffused based on information the source provided the FBI, according to the court testimony and other FBI documents.

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FBI source had contact with Osama bin Laden in 1993: report

Washington: The FBI placed a source in direct contact with Osama bin Laden in 1993 and ascertained that the al-Qaeda leader was looking to finance terror attacks in the US, according to a media report.

The information the FBI gleaned back then was so specific that it helped thwart a terrorist plot against a Masonic lodge in Los Angeles, according to a court testimony in a little - noticed employment dispute case cited by The Washington Times.

'It was the only source I know in the bureau where we had a source right in al-Qaeda, directly involved,' Edward J Curran, a former top official in the FBI's Los Angeles office, told the court in support of a discrimination lawsuit filed against the bureau by his former agent Bassem Youssef.This information is missing from the official investigations of the September 11, 2001, the report in the Times said.

Curran gave the testimony in 2010 to an essentially empty courtroom, and thus it escaped notice from the media or terrorism specialists.The Times was recently alerted to the existence of the testimony while working on a broader report about al-Qaeda's origins.

Members of the September 11 commission, congressional intelligence committees and terrorism analysts told daily they are floored that the information is just now emerging publicly and that it raises questions about what else Americans might not have been told about the origins of al- Qaeda and its early interest in attacking the United States.

'I think it raises a lot of questions about why that information didn't become public and why the 9/11 Commission or the congressional intelligence committees weren't told about,' said former Representative Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican, who chaired the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 2004 to 2007 when lawmakers dealt with the fallout from the 9/11 Commission's official report.

Exactly how the information was omitted from the various congressional reviews and the 9/11 Commission report is a mystery, the report said.As the case played out in federal court in 2010, Curran testified in Youssef's favour, methodically telling the court about the agent's many successes during the early 1990s when the US government's unofficial war on terrorism was just beginning.

Those successes included thwarting specific terrorist attacks, including one on a British cruise liner and another that targeted the Los Angeles area, Curran testified.The former supervisor testified that Youssef developed a confidential source connected to the infamous 'Blind Sheik,' Omar Abdel-Rahman, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and that he managed to send that source overseas and meet personally with bin Laden.

The source was very close to the leadership of al-Qaeda, which was then known as the Islamic Group. The one source came back, had direct contact with bin Laden, Curran testified.Eventually, the plot to blow up the Los Angeles target was diffused based on information the source provided the FBI, according to the court testimony and other FBI documents.

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Saudi crown prince arrives in India

New Delhi: Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud arrived here Wednesday on a three-day official visit during which the two countries are expected to sign an agreement on defence and enhance cooperation in hydrocarbons and security. Vice-president Hamid Ansari received Crown Prince Salman on his arrival. 

Crown Prince Salman's is the highest level political visit from the kingdom after the January 2006 landmark trip by King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud as the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations. The crown prince, 78, who is the next in line to the throne and is the deputy prime minister and defence minister, will call on President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and also hold talks with the vice president, who is a former Indian envoy to Saudi Arabia. 

The two countries were expected to sign a memorandum of understanding on defence for greater exchange of information and training. Also on the cards is enhancing cooperation in areas ranging from hydrocarbons to security. The two countries are also eager to work together in curbing money laundering and drug trafficking.

Saudi Arabia sees India as an attractive investment hub for its business interests in Asia and seeks Indian investments in areas such as consultancy, construction, telecom, information technology and pharmaceuticals. This will be Crown Prince Salman's second visit to India. He came in April 2010 when he was governor of Riyadh province.

An official visit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Riyadh in 2010 and the Riyadh Declaration signed Feb 28, 2010, elevated the bilateral engagement to 'strategic partnership' covering security, economic, defence and political areas. 'The visit is set to give a major boost to bilateral ties, as the two countries are expected to sign agreements and hold talks to boost cooperation in areas such as defence, trade, investment and energy,' said Mridul Kumar, joint secretary (Gulf) to the Ministry of External Affairs.

Saudi Arabia is India's fourth largest partner with bilateral trade of over $43 billion in 2012-13. Saudi Arabia is also India's largest crude oil supplier accounting for about one-fifth of total imports in 2012-13. Indians form the largest expatriate community in Saudi Arabia with about 2.88 million Indian nationals working there.

Saudi crown prince arrives in India

New Delhi: Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud arrived here Wednesday on a three-day official visit during which the two countries are expected to sign an agreement on defence and enhance cooperation in hydrocarbons and security. Vice-president Hamid Ansari received Crown Prince Salman on his arrival. 

Crown Prince Salman's is the highest level political visit from the kingdom after the January 2006 landmark trip by King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud as the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations. The crown prince, 78, who is the next in line to the throne and is the deputy prime minister and defence minister, will call on President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and also hold talks with the vice president, who is a former Indian envoy to Saudi Arabia. 

The two countries were expected to sign a memorandum of understanding on defence for greater exchange of information and training. Also on the cards is enhancing cooperation in areas ranging from hydrocarbons to security. The two countries are also eager to work together in curbing money laundering and drug trafficking.

Saudi Arabia sees India as an attractive investment hub for its business interests in Asia and seeks Indian investments in areas such as consultancy, construction, telecom, information technology and pharmaceuticals. This will be Crown Prince Salman's second visit to India. He came in April 2010 when he was governor of Riyadh province.

An official visit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Riyadh in 2010 and the Riyadh Declaration signed Feb 28, 2010, elevated the bilateral engagement to 'strategic partnership' covering security, economic, defence and political areas. 'The visit is set to give a major boost to bilateral ties, as the two countries are expected to sign agreements and hold talks to boost cooperation in areas such as defence, trade, investment and energy,' said Mridul Kumar, joint secretary (Gulf) to the Ministry of External Affairs.

Saudi Arabia is India's fourth largest partner with bilateral trade of over $43 billion in 2012-13. Saudi Arabia is also India's largest crude oil supplier accounting for about one-fifth of total imports in 2012-13. Indians form the largest expatriate community in Saudi Arabia with about 2.88 million Indian nationals working there.

Astronomers find a trove of hundreds of small planets

Nearly a year after a pointing system failure ended the main planet-hunting mission of NASA's Kepler spacecraft, planets continue to pour out of the sky. Kepler astronomers still combing their vast data archive announced Wednesday in a news conference and a pair of journal papers that they had verified the existence of 715 more planets orbiting other stars.

It was the largest single-day haul of exoplanets, as such objects are called, since the first such planet was discovered in 1995, bringing the overall total to about 1,700. 'Today we almost doubled the number of planets known to humanity,' said Jack J. Lissauer of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

He and Jason Rowe of the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, Calif., are each the lead author of a paper to be published in The Astrophysical Journal detailing the findings. They discussed their work in a telephone news conference hosted by NASA.

The new planets were culled from 3,601 candidates previously found by Kepler, using a new statistical technique known as verification by multiplicity. The method vastly reduces the need for outside telescopic observations to verify suspected planets in batches. It works only for multiple-planet systems, but as Lissauer and his colleagues pointed out, that includes about 40 percent of the Kepler candidates.

The result is a deluge of small planets that has tipped the cosmic balance from the giant Jupiter-size worlds that were the earliest discovered to smaller, friendlier worlds. 'Small planets from the size of Neptune to Earth make up the majority of the planets in the galaxy,' said Douglas Hudgins, exoplanet program scientist at NASA headquarters.

The planets in the new set are divided among 305 stars. About 95 percent, according to Rowe, are two to four times the size of Earth, a range conspicuously absent in our solar system. Because we have no local examples, astronomers do not know what planets of this size might be like - rocky like Earth or gassy like Neptune.

Four of the newfound planets orbit in the so-called habitable zones of small stars, where temperatures on a planet like our own would be moderate enough for water and thus the kind of life we know. Sara Seager, a planetary expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the new analysis, said the data reinforced Kepler's major finding: The Milky Way is brimming with small planets that could be friendly to life. 'This is a boon for any future habitable-zone planet-finding mission,' Seager said.

Kepler seeks planets by the blink method, looking for the dimming of stars' light caused by planets passing in front of them. While this method can tell the sizes and orbits of planets, it is prone to false positives because of confusion with background binary stars, among other things. It also cannot tell the masses and thus the densities and compositions of the worlds it detects, requiring outside observations with other telescopes to confirm their planethood.

The idea behind verification by multiplicity, which has been long in development, as Lissauer explained it, is that the false positives should be randomly distributed around the 160,000 stars that Kepler observes, resulting in the appearance of only a few, if any, multiple systems. The fact that they are instead stuck on 400 or so particular stars suggests that those systems are real. He put the odds that one of these was a mistake at about one part in a thousand.

There is more to come, the astronomers said. The present results are based on a statistical analysis of only the first two years of Kepler data. There are two more years' worth to go, and several hundred more planets are likely to be verified. 'Kepler is the gift that keeps on giving,' Seager said.

The New York Times

Astronomers find a trove of hundreds of small planets

Nearly a year after a pointing system failure ended the main planet-hunting mission of NASA's Kepler spacecraft, planets continue to pour out of the sky. Kepler astronomers still combing their vast data archive announced Wednesday in a news conference and a pair of journal papers that they had verified the existence of 715 more planets orbiting other stars.

It was the largest single-day haul of exoplanets, as such objects are called, since the first such planet was discovered in 1995, bringing the overall total to about 1,700. 'Today we almost doubled the number of planets known to humanity,' said Jack J. Lissauer of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

He and Jason Rowe of the SETI Institute, in Mountain View, Calif., are each the lead author of a paper to be published in The Astrophysical Journal detailing the findings. They discussed their work in a telephone news conference hosted by NASA.

The new planets were culled from 3,601 candidates previously found by Kepler, using a new statistical technique known as verification by multiplicity. The method vastly reduces the need for outside telescopic observations to verify suspected planets in batches. It works only for multiple-planet systems, but as Lissauer and his colleagues pointed out, that includes about 40 percent of the Kepler candidates.

The result is a deluge of small planets that has tipped the cosmic balance from the giant Jupiter-size worlds that were the earliest discovered to smaller, friendlier worlds. 'Small planets from the size of Neptune to Earth make up the majority of the planets in the galaxy,' said Douglas Hudgins, exoplanet program scientist at NASA headquarters.

The planets in the new set are divided among 305 stars. About 95 percent, according to Rowe, are two to four times the size of Earth, a range conspicuously absent in our solar system. Because we have no local examples, astronomers do not know what planets of this size might be like - rocky like Earth or gassy like Neptune.

Four of the newfound planets orbit in the so-called habitable zones of small stars, where temperatures on a planet like our own would be moderate enough for water and thus the kind of life we know. Sara Seager, a planetary expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the new analysis, said the data reinforced Kepler's major finding: The Milky Way is brimming with small planets that could be friendly to life. 'This is a boon for any future habitable-zone planet-finding mission,' Seager said.

Kepler seeks planets by the blink method, looking for the dimming of stars' light caused by planets passing in front of them. While this method can tell the sizes and orbits of planets, it is prone to false positives because of confusion with background binary stars, among other things. It also cannot tell the masses and thus the densities and compositions of the worlds it detects, requiring outside observations with other telescopes to confirm their planethood.

The idea behind verification by multiplicity, which has been long in development, as Lissauer explained it, is that the false positives should be randomly distributed around the 160,000 stars that Kepler observes, resulting in the appearance of only a few, if any, multiple systems. The fact that they are instead stuck on 400 or so particular stars suggests that those systems are real. He put the odds that one of these was a mistake at about one part in a thousand.

There is more to come, the astronomers said. The present results are based on a statistical analysis of only the first two years of Kepler data. There are two more years' worth to go, and several hundred more planets are likely to be verified. 'Kepler is the gift that keeps on giving,' Seager said.

The New York Times