13/10/2011

US eyes more sanctions on Iran central bank

• A senior Treasury Department official said Thursday the United States is considering further sanctions against Iran's central bank in response to an alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador on US soil.
• In prepared testimony, sanctions czar David Cohen said that additional measures against the Central Bank of Iran were on the table and that the country is now facing unprecedented levels of trade isolation.

Law Minister's statement was "spontaneous", Government to Supreme Court

• The Supreme Court was  told by the Government that Law Minister Salman Khurshid's controversial statement that locking up businessmen will hamper investments was "spontaneous" and not to influence anyone.
• The apex court had also made known its disapproval of reports that CBI would not oppose the bail pleas of the 2G spectrum scam accused including DMK MP Kanimozhi which prompted the investigating agency to refute such speculation.

Delhi, Ambala police foil major terror plot

• The Delhi and Ambala police  averted a major terror plot after finding a car full of explosives at the Ambala cantonment.
• Investigations show that the plot could have been a possible tie up between the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Babbar Khalsa International to strike in Delhi.

Burmese President Visits India as Ties Between Neighbors Deepen

• The Burmese president is in India for a bilateral visit aimed at deepening a relationship that has been growing steadily in recent years.
• New Delhi wants to nurture ties with its neighbor, whose new, nominally civilian leadership has made tentative moves toward political reforms.
• Burmese President Thein Sein visited Buddhist pilgrimage sites in India before arriving in New Delhi to hold talks with senior Indian leaders, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Quake shakes Indonesia's Bali, tourists run from hotels

Indonesia's resort island of Bali was struck by a 6.2 magnitude earthquake on Thursday, injuring dozens and sending tourists running out of hotels.
The Red Cross said 44 people in the south of the island suffered injuries, some with head injuries and broken bones from falling ceilings, with one person in a critical condition. It said one school and house collapsed .

PSLV-C18 puts four satellites in orbit

 

Black Death Is 'Grandmother' of All Modern Plagues

• The bacterium blamed for the Black Death that wiped out more than a third of Europe's population within about five years of the 14th century looks an awful lot like the modern versions of the plague-causing bug, new genetic research indicates.
• By taking the now-powdery black pulp out of the teeth of plague victims buried in London's East Smithfield Cemetery — a cemetery established solely to handle the onslaught of the Black Death once it arrived in the city in 1348 — researchers have managed to reconstruct the entire genetic blueprint, or genome, of the bacterium blamed for the devastation.

• Since science already has the same information for modern strains of plague bacteria, this gave the researchers the chance to explore perplexing questions about plague.
  
• When they compared the different genomes — from the Black Death, modern plague, and that of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis from which all plague evolved long ago — they found no unique mutations in the medieval genome. All the differences matched up either to those of modern strains or to the soil bacterium that is the ancestor of all plague bacteria.