Current Affairs 2013- January International The Fourth Meeting of ASEAN and India Tourism Minister was held in Vientiane, Lao PDR on 21 January, in conjunction with the ASEAN Tourism Forum 2013. The Meeting was jointly co-chaired by Union Tourism Minister K.Chiranjeevi and Prof. Dr. Bosengkham Vongdara, Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism, Lao PDR. Both the Ministers signed the Protocol to amend the Memorandum of Understanding between ASEAN and India on Strengthening Tourism Cooperation, which would further strengthen the tourism collaboration between ASEAN and Indian national tourism organisations. The main objective of this Protocol is to amend the MoU to protect and safeguard the rights and interests of the parties with respect to national security, national and public interest or public order, protection of intellectual property rights, confidentiality and secrecy of documents, information and data. Both the Ministers welcomed the adoption of the Vision Statement of the ASEAN-India Commemorative Summit held on 20 December 2012 in New Delhi, India, particularly on enhancing the ASEAN Connectivity through supporting the implementation of the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity. The Ministers also supported the close collaboration of ASEAN and India to enhance air, sea and land connectivity within ASEAN and between ASEAN and India through ASEAN-India connectivity project. In further promoting tourism exchange between ASEAN and India, the Ministers agreed to launch the ASEAN-India tourism website (www.indiaasean.org) as a platform to jointly promote tourism destinations, sharing basic information about ASEAN Member States and India and a visitor guide. The Russian Navy on 20 January, has begun its biggest war games in the high seas in decades that will include manoeuvres off the shores of Syria. Officials say, more than two dozen ships drawn from all four fleets, as well as long-range warplanes, will conduct nine-day exercises in the Mediterranean and Black seas. It is the largest naval manoeuvres since the collapse of the Soviet Union.The purpose is to improve coordination among different naval groups during missions in “far-away sea zones”.Experts suggested the exercises would serve to project Russia’s naval power to a highly explosive region and render moral support for the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.Russia leases a naval base at the Syrian port of Tartous. The naval manoeuvres will involve training for landing operations on the Syrian shore, informed sources told Russia’s Interfax news agency. Moscow may also be preparing for possible evacuation of thousands of Russian nationals from war-torn Syria, experts said. About 9,000 Russians are registered with the Russian Embassy in Damascus, but their total number may well exceed 30,000. Barack Obama was sworn in as the President of the country for the second term on 20 January 2013. The oath-taking ceremony was held in the White House East Room by Justice John Roberts. Obama took oath as the President of the country on the family Bible. On 21 January 2013, Obama repeated oath-taking process on those Bibles which were used by Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln because 20 January 2013 was an official holiday in the US. Apart from Obama, in yet another ceremony, Vice-president Joseph Biden administered this oath-taking by associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Barack Obama became the first mixed-race president who was elected for second consecutive term. Also, Barack Obama is the third consecutive president to win two terms, after Bush and Clinton. This had happened two centuries ago earlier when Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe were elected for two terms each between the time periods of 1801 to 1825. China, the world's second largest economy, grew 7.8% in 2012, a 13-year low, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced on 19 January. In 2010, economy grew 10.4%.NBS does not see any significant improvement this year when China's new leader, Xi Jinping, will take over as president as part of a once a decade political change. The earlier low point was in 1999 when GDP grew 7.6%. The numbers released by NBS is bound to cause pessimism among economists, who were expecting China to give a fillip to the world economy, which is facing a slowdown. But, China has fared much better than leading economies with its GDP reaching $8.28 trillion and cementing its position as the second biggest economy. The war crimes tribunal trying those accused of committing atrocities during the Bangladesh liberation war in 1971 pronounced its first verdict on 21 January, awarding death sentence to a former Jamaat-e-Islami leader, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Maulana Azad, best known as ‘Bachchu Razakar’, was the leader of Islami Chhatra Sangha, the then student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami. He went into hiding a few hours before the war crimes tribunal issued an arrest warrant against him on April 3 last year. On November 4, Azad was indicted on eight charges based on eight incidents that left at least 12 people, mostly minority Hindus, dead and in which several Hindu women were raped, during the 1971 war. He was convicted on seven of the charges and sentenced to death by hanging. The much-awaited verdict by the International Crimes Tribunal-2 was passed by chairman of the three-member panel Justice Obaidul Hassan. The summary of the 112-page verdict was pronounced in a packed court amid tight security. Liberation War veterans have expressed satisfaction over the verdict and National Human Rights Commission Chairman Mizanur Rahman called for early execution of the order. Two American Senators on 25 January, have introduced a legislation in the name of Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani peace activist who was shot by the Taliban, to provide scholarship to girls from Pakistan. Introduced by Senators Barbara Boxer and Mary Landrieu,the Malala Yousafzai Scholarship Act is designed to expand scholarship opportunities for disadvantaged young women in Pakistan. The bill would require a 30 per cent increase in the number of scholarships awarded under the programme for the next four years, and that these awarded solely to women. It would also expand the range of academic disciplines that recipients could pursue to improve graduates’ chances of obtaining meaningful employment. Russia will ban smoking in public places, hike tobacco taxes and restrict the sale of cigarettes from mid-2014 to cut the alarmingly high rate of deaths from smoking-related diseases. A law approved by the State Duma, Lower House, on 25 January, in the second of three readings calls for an immediate ban on all tobacco advertising and kiosk sales and the phasing out of smoking in all bars and restaurants, in medical, sports, educations and cultural institutions by January 1, 2015. It will be against the law to smoke at children’s playgrounds, in the halls and stairways of apartment houses. Pakistani-American David Coleman Headley was on 24 January, sentenced to 35 years in prison by a U.S. court for masterminding the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. The sentence will be followed by five years supervised release. While the U.S. government admitted the “deplorable” nature of his role in the 26/11 attacks, the prosecution had pressed for a sentence of 30-35 years under a plea bargain with Headley in return for his cooperation. The death penalty and extradition options were dropped. Pronouncing the sentence in Chicago , U.S. federal district court judge Harry Leinenweber said he had to consider that Headley had committed numerous crimes in the past, confessed to them and received lenient sentences. A British human rights lawyer is to lead a U.N. inquiry into the legality of American drone attacks and their impact on civilians in Pakistan, Afghanistan and several other countries. Ben Emmerson, QC, who will head a team of international expertsin his capacity as a U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism, said in London on 22 January that the “exponential’’ rise in the use of drone technology represented “a real challenge to the framework of international law”. The inquiry, which will examine 25 attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, the Palestinian territories and Somalia, follows anger over the loss of innocent civilian lives. Critics have called them “extra-judicial’’ killings. According to the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, American drone attacks in Pakistan since 2004 had killed up to 3,461 people, including nearly 900 civilians. Mr. Emmerson said the U.N. had decided to investigate the complaints as a “final resort’’ because America and its allies who should have done so had not done it. Swiss to accept group requests for banking information Switzerland will be able to provide banking and other details sought by other countries, including India, from next month about a 'group of persons' even without their individual identification, provided the information has not been requested as part of some 'fishing expedition'. A new Tax Administrative Assistance Act will come into force on February 1 and the Switzerland’s Federal Council has passed a resolution to this effect. US to lift ban on women in front-line combat jobs The US military will formally end its ban on women serving in front-line combat roles, officials said on 23 January, in a move that could open thousands of fighting jobs to female service members. The move knocks down another societal barrier, after the Pentagon scrapped its "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban in 2011 on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military. The decision by outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is expected to be formally announced on 24 January and comes after 11 years of non-stop war that has seen dozens of women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.