What is 2G spectrum scam?

New Delhi: From the time allegations of misappropriation during the bidding for allocation of 2G spectrum surfaced, till Telecom Minister A Raja's ouster, high drama charged both politics in Delhi and Tamil Nadu. So what exactly is the Spectrum Scam that led to all this?



WHAT IS SPECTRUM SCAM?
•2G licenses issued to private telecom players at throwaway prices in 2008
•CAG: Spectrum scam has cost the government Rs. 1.76 lakh crore
•CAG: Rules and procedures flouted while issuing licenses

WHAT ARE THE CHARGES ON FORMER TELECOM MINISTER A RAJA?
CHEAP TELECOM LICENSES
• Entry fee for spectrum licenses in 2008 pegged at 2001 prices
• Mobile subscriber base had shot up to 350 million in 2008 from 4 million in 2001
•Rules changed after the game had begun
•Cut-off date for applications advanced by a week
•Licenses issued on a first-come-first-served basis
•No proper auction process followed, no bids invited
•Raja ignored advice of TRAI, Law Ministry, Finance Ministry
•TRAI had recommended auctioning of spectrum at market rates

WorldCup 2011 Indian Squad

Ashish Nehra	Gautam Gambhir	Harbhajan Singh
Suresh Raina	MS Dhoni	Yusuf Pathan
Ravichandran Ashwin	Sreesanth	Munaf Patel
Piyush Chawla	Virat Kholi	Sachin Tendulkar
Virender Sehwag	Yuvraj Singh	Zaheer Khan

                                                                 Praveen Kumar

The Other Half: Making the invisible visible

The most striking photograph of the farmers' agitation against the Yamuna Expressway last month was that of a 45-year-old woman, Rajkumari Devi (Indian Express, August 29, 2010). Captioned “Protesting Farmer, Zikarpur Village, Aligarh”, the story that accompanied the photograph described how Rajkumari, holding a lathi in her hands, sat in protest for days on end with other men and women, demanding more compensation for their lands that had been acquired for the Yamuna Expressway.
 

Her life was her land. “My day would start at four in the morning, feeding the cattle and then tilling the land. I would take a brief lunch break and get back to the field. It was during the evening that I finished my household chores and spent some time with my family and neighbours.” She told the reporter that she knew no other life than working in her fields, something she had done even as a child as her father was a farmer. “A farmer has no holidays. One is supposed to work everyday and all the time”, she said.

Dogs ‘can tell if you’re getting bowel cancer’

Believe it or not, dogs can sniff out bowel cancer in breath and stool samples, with a very high degree of accuracy, even in the early stages of the disease, a new research has revealed.


According to researchers, the man’s best friend’s sense of smell is 1,000 times more sensitive than a human’s, and as a result it can apparently pick up chemical compounds specific to certain cancers.
In the research, published in the ‘Gut’ journal, a labrador detected traces of cancer with more than 90 per cent accuracy from samples provided by volunteers.

Mobile phone health hazard: call for changes in radiation norms

Taking a stringent view of the health hazards posed by radiation from mobile phones, towers and base stations, a high-level inter-ministerial committee (IMC) has called for revision of radiation norms according to Indian needs.

According to the report submitted by the IMC, radiation from mobile phones and towers could lead to symptoms like fatigue, sleep disturbance, dizziness and lack of concentration.

It said it could also lead to slowing down of reaction time, loss of memory, headache, disturbance in digestive system and heart palpitation.