1. Award-Winning Poet Donald Hall Passes Away.
Donald Hall, a prolific, award-winning poet and man of letters widely admired for his sharp humor and painful candor about nature, mortality, baseball and the distant past, has died at age 89.
Hall’s daughter, Philippa Smith, confirmed Sunday that her father died Saturday at his home in Wilmot, New Hampshire, after being in hospice care for some time.
“He’s really quite amazingly versatile,” said Hall’s longtime friend Mike Pride, the editor emeritus of the Concord Monitor newspaper and a retired administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes. He said Hall would occasionally speak to reporters at the Monitor about the importance of words. Hall was the nation’s 2006-2007 poet laureate.
Starting in the 1950s, Hall published more than 50 books, from poetry and drama to biography and memoirs, and edited a pair of influential anthologies. He was an avid baseball fan who wrote odes to his beloved Boston Red Sox, completed a book on pitcher Dock Ellis and contributed to Sports Illustrated. He wrote a prize-winning children’s book, “Ox-Cart Man,” and even attempted a biography of Charles Laughton, only to have the actor’s widow, Elsa Lancaster, kill the project.
But the greatest acclaim came for his poetry, for which his honors included a National Book Critics Circle prize, membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a National Medal of Arts. Although his style varied from haikus to blank verse, he returned to a handful of themes: his childhood, the death of his parents and grandparents and the loss of his second wife and fellow poet, Jane Kenyon.
“Much of my poetry has been elegiac, even morbid, beginning with laments over New Hampshire farms and extending to the death of my wife,” he wrote in the memoir “Packing the Boxes,” published in 2008.
2. EAM Sushma Swaraj Introduces `Passport Seva App`.
Getting a valid passport will now be much easier for the applicants with the government launching a Passport Seva App on Tuesday. The app, which was launched by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, makes the process for obtaining a passport much easier.
Swaraj, while addressing the officials of several Passport Seva Kendras and members of the Ministry of External Affairs on the occasion of Passport Seva Diwas, stated that the two new schemes - Passport application from anywhere in India and filling passport application forms from mobile phones – would now make the procedure for obtaining passports simpler.
While terming it as a "passport revolution", the minister said that the simplified new passport application rues will make things much easier for hundreds of Indian citizens willing to undertake a Haj pilgrimage.
3. S Ramesh Appointed Chairman Of CBIC.
Senior bureaucrat S Ramesh has been appointed as chairman of the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), the apex policy-making body for indirect taxes, according to an official order.
He will succeed Vanaja N Sarna, who superannuates on June 30.
Ramesh, a 1981 batch officer of the Indian Revenue Service (Customs and Central Excise), is at present the member in the board, mandated with the responsibility of implementing the Goods and Services Tax (GST). He has been appointed as chairman of the CBIC with the status of special secretary to the central government, the order said.
Sarna was appointed as chief of the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), which has now been rechristened as the CBIC, in March last year. She was instrumental in the implementation of the GST from July 1 last year. Official sources said Sarna may be appointed as chairperson of the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN), the IT backbone of the GST, after her retirement.
Senior IRS (Customs and Central Excise) officer Raj Kumar Barthwal has been named as new member in the CBIC in place of Ramesh, the order said. The CBIC, which works under the Finance Ministry, is headed by a chairman and can have a maximum of six members. AKV
4. SBI MD Sriram Resigns Amid IDBI Stake Sale Buz.
SBI managing director B Sriram has resigned from the country’s largest lender after his appointment as chief executive of IDBI Bank, sources said. The development assumes significance amid reports that insurance behemoth LIC is mulling acquiring a majority stake in the debt ridden state-owned bank.
The government last week appointed Sriram as managing director and CEO of IDBI Bank for a temporary period of three months.
He has put in his papers and his resignation from the board of SBI has been forward to Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for acceptance, sources said, adding the competent authority will take a final call on the matter.
Sriram took charge of IDBI Bank on June 22 following M K Jain demitting office to take over as Deputy Governor of RBI. The ACC approved the appointment of Sriram as MD and CEO of IDBI Bank for three months with effect from M K Jain’s demitting office, said an order issued last week by the Department of Personnel and Training.