Daily News (In Short)-12-May-2015

#* Prosecutor without voice: The strange case of Jaya
India will rarely ever see a case stranger than the disproportionate wealth case which former chief minister of Tamil Nadu J Jayalalithaa had been battling for about 19 years.Worst things first: This is the first case - and hopefully the last - which got a prosecutor after the court concerned completed the proceedings and reserved the matter for judgment. Justice C R Kumaraswamy of Karnataka high court reserved orders in the wealth case appeals on March 11, 2015, but the appeals got a legal special prosecutor only after the Supreme Court order on April 27, 2015. In the end, a corruption case with immense socio-political consequence has been decided without a prosecutor's arguments in court. All that Justice Kumaraswamy had before him were special judge John Michael Cunha's 1,067-page judgment, and written arguments of new special prosecutor B V Acharya, Subramanian Swamy and K Anbazhagan.

#* Low intensity bomb blast on Kolkata local train, 17 injured
Kolkata: Seventeen people were injured early Tuesday when a low intensity blast exploded in a coach of Sealdah-Krishnanagar local train near Titagarh station in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district.The unfortunate incident happened at around 4:00 am.Reports say that two groups travelling in the local train clashed and hurled bombs at each other.The blast took place in the fifth compartment from the engine of the local train under Eastern Railway's Sealdah Main section.The injured have been admitted to RG Kar Medical College and Hospital.

#* Mere speeches won't cut it: PM Modi must follow up on China's $20 bn investment pledge to India
Prime Minister Narendra Modi would be exactly ten days away from his first anniversary in office when he would be exiting China after his maiden three-day official visit to the Middle Kingdom (14-16 May). His China visit is his biggest foreign policy challenge yet.The big question glaring in his face would be the tall promises that Chinese President Xi Jinping made during his maiden India visit in September 2014 which he symbolically began from Modi’s home state Gujarat.
Xi is cleverly returning the favour as he is facilitating Modi’s China visit to begin from his own home province Xian. But these are mere optics.When Xi came calling to India, Modi  had been in office for less than four months. In many ways, Xi’s India visit and the optics that followed – the ‘jhoola’ and the walk along the Sabarmati river front in Ahmedabad and acres of media coverage of the summit-level talks in New Delhi – are now a distant past. That was almost eight months ago.

#* Seymour Hersh's explosive investigation reveals Osama bin Laden's death was a giant PR stunt for Obama
Did US President Barack Obama lie about how they secured information on assassinated Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden? Veteran US journalist Seymour M Hersh authored a piece The Killing of Osama bin Laden in the London Review of Books claiming that US could get information about Laden only after a retired Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officer chose to betray the Al Qaeda head.President Barack Obama along with his team after watching the US Navy Seals mission live in Abbottabad that killed then Al Qaeda cheif Osama bin Laden. AFP President Barack Obama along with his team after watching the US Navy Seals mission live in Abbottabad that killed then Al Qaeda cheif Osama bin Laden. AFP This, of course, when he was promised a reward of $25 million in return."In August 2010 a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer approached Jonathan Bank, then the CIA’s station chief at the US embassy in Islamabad. He offered to tell the CIA where to find bin Laden in return for the reward that Washington had offered in 2001." — Hersh wrote in his piece The Killing of Osama bin Laden.

#* Parliament live: Ruckus in Rajya Sabha over allegations against Nitin Gadkari
Gadkari on Monday insisted that there was no corruption or misappropriation charge against him. Breaking his silence, Gadkari had said the auditor's report was "deliberately being misinterpreted for political reasons."Gadkari, who is at the centre of a row after a CAG report alleged irregularities in loan extended to his family-linked Purti Group, had said that the auditor had nowhere named him as a wrong-doer.

#* IIT Kharagpur students developing underwater drone Kraken for surveillance, repair work
BENGALURU: A team of students at IIT Kharagpur have invested their time and energy for developing an ultra-modern autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that can defy the current standard of manually operated drones.The new AUV named Kraken 3.0 will be capable of conducting underwater surveillance, repair large underwater pipes and even help in finding and retrieving black box of a flight.The name of the robotic vehicle comes from the legendary sea monster, which is believed to delve deep under the oceans surrounding the areas of Norway and Greenland. The new under water surveillance vehicle Kraken 3.0 is the successor of Kraken 2.0 and it is getting ready in the robotics development centre.

#* Yuphoria: Micromax's Yu to launch its second Cyanogen-based smartphone in India today
New Delhi: Micromax's Yu, which entered the smartphone market with the launch of Yureka smartphone in December last year, is now all set to launch the second Cyanogen-based smartphone in India today.Named "Yuphoria", it will be the successor to the Yureka, the company's first Cyanogen-based phone.It was early this month when Yu confirmed the name of its yet-to-be-announced phone after running a contest that had asked people to suggest the name for its next phone.

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