16 September 2014

National:

Holds historic eCabinet meet Tech-savvy Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu motivated his Cabinet colleagues to use iPads and become part of the historic first ever paper-less eCabinet meeting. From the elderly K. E. Krishnamurthy to young Peetala Sujatha, Ministers carried iPads with eCabinet app in their hands instead of bundles of files and papers they used to do earlier. The paper-less meeting marked the completion of 100 days by the Chandrababu Naidu government.

Arundhati Roy gets wrongly listed as co-author with Ambedkar A series of misleading author listings for B.R. Ambedkar’s seminal text The Annihilation of Caste on web portals has generated a lot of flak against writer and columnist Arundhati Roy and publisher S. Anand. The webpage of VersoBooks.com, a U.K.-based publisher of the book advertised it as Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition by B.R. Ambedkar and Arundhati Roy. The listing on Amazon.co.uk made no mention of the annotated version and simply announced the title as: The Annihilation of Caste (Hardcover – October 7, 2014) by Arundhati Roy (author), B.R. Ambedkar (author).

India, Vietnam for access to South China Sea India and Vietnam have called for freedom of navigation in the disputed South China Sea. In a joint communique issued after President Pranab Mukherjee, who is on a four-day State visit to Vietnam, held talks with his Vietnamese counterpart Truong Tan Sang, the two countries said the freedom of navigation in the East Sea/South China Sea should not be impeded. Without naming any country, they called on all parties concerned to exercise restraint, avoid threat or use of force and resolve disputes through peaceful means.

Subbarami Reddy to head RS panel Congress MP T. Subbarami Reddy, a former Union Minister, has been appointed Chairman of the Committee on Subordinate Legislation of the Rajya Sabha. As an important Parliamentary Committee which was first constituted in the 1960s, it reviews all rules, regulations, by-laws, schemes and other statutory instruments issued by various Ministries.

Green signal for National AYUSH Mission The Union Cabinet gave its nod for launching the National AYUSH Mission (NAM) with “core and flexible components.” It is aimed at addressing the gaps in health services by supporting AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy) care and education, particularly in vulnerable and far-flung areas. Under NAM, special focus will be given to specific needs of such areas and allocation of higher resources in their annual plans. The Mission will help in the improvement of AYUSH education through enhancement in the number of upgraded educational institutions; better access to AYUSH services through increase in number of AYUSH hospitals and dispensaries, availability of drugs and manpower; providing sustained availability of quality raw material for AYUSH systems of medicine; and improving availability of quality Ayurvedic, Siddha, Unani and Homoeopathy drugs through increase in the number of pharmacies, drug laboratories and improved enforcement mechanism.

International:

Alan Turing biopic `Imitation Game` wins People's Choice award at Toronto Film Fes Alan Turing’s biopic The Imitation Game has won the People’s Choice award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The drama centres on the British code breaker who helped decrypt the Enigma machine during World War Two. Turing was credited with bringing about the end of the war and saving hundreds of thousands of lives after decoding German Naval messages.

16 September 2014

500 people feared drowned in shipwreck As many as 500 migrants are feared to have drowned after traffickers rammed and sank their boat in what the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) described as “the worst shipwreck in years”. Horrific details of the shipwreck near Malta, told to IOM by survivors, came after dozens of African migrants were reported missing and feared dead after their boat sank off the coast of Libya.

Abbott takes his office deep Down Under Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott shifted his office to a tent in an isolated Aboriginal community keeping a promise made when he came to power. Mr. Abbott vowed to spend a week each year in a remote indigenous location when he was sworn in 12 months ago, seeking to be the “Prime Minister for Aboriginal affairs”.

Amy Winehouse statue unveiled A life-size bronze statue of Winehouse, complete with a red rose in her trademark beehive hairdo, was unveiled in to mark what would have been the British singer-songwriter’s 31st birthday.

Business and Economy:

7 Indian firms to make Hepatitis C drug In a move to make the treatment for Hepatitis C more affordable in developing markets, U.S. pharmaceutical major Gilead Sciences signed non-exclusive licensing agreements with seven Indian generic pharmaceutical companies to manufacture it. Gilead signed agreements to make sofosbuvir and the investigational single tablet regimen of ledipasvir / sofosbuvir for distribution in 91 developing countries. The company signed agreements with Cadila Healthcare, Cipla, Hetero Labs, Mylan Laboratories, Ranbaxy Laboratories, Sequent Scientific and Strides Arcolab. The countries within the agreement account for more than 100 million people living with Hepatitis C, representing 54 per cent of the total global infected population. According to World Health Organization, 130-150 million globally have Hepatitis C infection and in India alone, it is estimated that 10-20 million patients are infected with Hepatitis C which is several fold greater than those with HIV/AIDS. A large number of patients develop liver cirrhosis and liver cancer. Sofosbuvir is considered a breakthrough and in combination therapy has high cure rates.

Google launches Android One devices Hoping to lure feature phone users in India, who form 70 per cent of the mobile market in the country, to upgrade to smartphones, Google launched the first Android One devices in India with prices starting from Rs.6,399. The first three phones have been launched by domestic handset makers Karbonn, Micromax and Spice.

Capital goods sector scheme gets Cabinet nod The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved over Rs.930-crore scheme to enhance competitiveness in the capital goods sector with an aim to boost the economy. On implementation, this scheme will attempt to make the Indian capital goods sector globally competitive. The gross budgetary support from the government for the scheme would be Rs.581.22 crore and the balance Rs.349.74 crore by the stakeholder industries.

T. S. Raju to head HAL The Public Sector Enterprises Selection Board named T. Suvarna Raju as the next Chairman of Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. R. K. Tyagi, present Chairman, is due to superannuate at the end of January 2015. Mr. Raju is at present Director (Design & Development).

16 September 2014

Microsoft to buy Minecraft makerfor $2.5 billion Microsoft will acquire the maker of the popular game Minecraft for $2.5 billion. The technology company said it would buy Stockholm-based game maker Mojang. Minecraft which lets users build in and explore a virtual world has been downloaded 100 million times on PC alone since its launch in 2009. It is the most popular online game on Xbox, and the top paid app for Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating system in the U.S. The deal is expected to close in late 2014

Science and Tech:

ESA unveils spot for historic comet landing The European Space Agency (ESA) unveiled the spot on a comet in deep space where in November it will attempt mankind’s first-ever landing on one of these ancient wanderers of the solar system. The landing site is one of five that ESA shortlisted after its Rosetta spacecraft met up with rubber duck-shaped Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August, following a marathon chase.