India’s Foreign Trade: July, 2012

A. EXPORTS (including re-exports)

Exports during July, 2012 were valued at US $ 22442.96 million (Rs. 124546.75 crore) which was 14.80 per cent lower in Dollar terms (6.45 per cent higher in Rupee terms) than the level of US $ 26340.73 million (Rs. 116998.69 crore) during July, 2011.Cumulative value of exports for the period April-July 2012 -13 was US $ 97646.92 million (Rs 531602.74 crore) as against US $ 102848.24 million (Rs 459162.24 crore) registering a negative growth of 5.06 per cent in Dollar terms and growth of 15.78 per cent in Rupee terms over the same period last year.

Less radiation level from telecom towers starting today

The new guidelines for lowering the radiation levels emanating from telecom towers and handsets have come into effect from today. The guidelines seek to address public health concerns. The new guidelines stipulate reduction of radiation levels to 1/10^th of the present levels for the towers while the minimum distance of a tower from a residential building should be 35 meters. The mobile handsets would also require to reduce the Specific Absorption of the radiation 12.5 times.There are over seven lakh towers for mobile phones throughout the country of which 95 per cent of them are already compliant with the new emission norms.Non-compliance of these standards will result in a penalty of Rs 5 lakh per tower, Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said.Public health comes first. Technology must be embraced but it ultimately must be subject to public health," he said.

Transcript of PM’s on-board Press Interaction enroute to Delhi from Tehran

Opening Statement of Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh: Ladies and gentlemen, as you know, I came to Tehran to attend the NAM Summit. My speech at the Plenary Session of the Summit has already been circulated and you must have gone through it. In addition I had a meeting with the Supreme Leader, and also with President Ahmadinejad to review the state of our bilateral relations. I was particularly struck by what the Supreme Leader told me about his interest and involvement in Indian affairs. He recalled the influence that Mahatma Gandhi had on him, the role that Jawaharlal Nehru played in India’s freedom struggle, his visit to India in 1980-81, meetings with Mrs. Gandhi, visiting various other parts of our country including Hyderabad.

Ministry of Finance Notifies Advance Price Agreement (APA) Scheme

The Ministry of Finance has notified an “Advance Pricing Agreement Scheme” (Rules 10F to 10T of Income Tax Rules, 1962) vide notification No. 36/2012 dated 30-8-2012. The Finance Act, 2012 had inserted sections 92CC and 92CD in the Income Tax Act 1961 introducing the provisions of Advance Pricing Agreement (APA). The APA Scheme shall come into effect from the date of its publication in the Official Gazette, i.e. from 30.08.2012.

Policy for Induction of Women in Armed Forces

The policy regarding induction of women in Armed Forces is laid down in Government letter dated 11November 2011 which has been issued after considering the policy paper submitted by a High Level Tri-Service Committee with the approval of Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC), keeping in view role and responsibility of the Armed Forces in defending the nation and protecting the territorial integrity of the country. As per ibid Government letter, women are inducted as Short Service Commissioned Officers (SSCOs) in the following Branches of the three Services:

Fundamentals of IT industry are still strong, feels Som Mittal

With the world economy still “uncertain”, the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), on Tuesday, said that the fundamentals of the industry remained strong, although there was a need to monitor its performance over the next two quarters.“We will watch the next two quarters before revising any forecast as the global economic environment is uncertain. The fundamentals of our industry, however, are very strong,” said Som Mittal, President of Nasscom.

Facebook’s e-mail switch draws flak

Social networking website Facebook yet again succeeded in angering a large section of its 900 million privacy-conscious users over the weekend when it surreptitiously switched many of their profile e-mail addresses with a @facebook.com domain address.Many users who had e-mail addresses from Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail, would have discovered on Monday that their profile now showed a @facebook.com address instead. While the option to revert to the external e-mail address exists, it requires tweaking of their profile information display settings. Users also have the option to hide the @facebook.com address.