29th SEPTEMBER 2014

O. Panneerselvam will be the next Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. He is assuming the office for the second time under similar circumstances. In September 2001, AIADMK general secretary Jayalalithaa had to step down as her appointment as Chief Minister was quashed by the Supreme Court. Thirteen years later, the conviction of Ms. Jayalalithaa by a special court in Bangalore has elevated him again as Chief Minister.

Information Technology behemoth Microsoft’s chief executive officer Satya Nadella and five senior members of his team called on Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao at his camp office here on Sunday as part of his India tour.

Shiv Sena supporters have gone online to lambast the BJP for ‘breaking off’ the 25-year-old alliance. Over the past week, images and messages targeting the BJP have been doing the rounds on WhatsApp and Facebook. The BJP has been accused of striking a deal with the NCP.

In a bid to make technology affordable and accessible to visually-impaired persons, Sandeep Konam, a B. Tech. final-year ECE student at IIIT, Idupulapaya, and a group of IITians are engaged in not only developing a low-cost portable Braille printer that could cost as much as an average Android mobile but also in integrating graphics, tables and images in Indian languages.

Since 1984, 65 people had been killed and over 150 disabled in Budgam district in Jammu and Kashmir by an avoidable cause. The Tosamaidan firing range — a meadow nestled in the picturesque Pir Panjal mountain range — had become a death trap for cattle-grazing communities because of the unexploded shells and their residual material spread over the area. After nearly five decades, the people can heave a sigh of relief. They are set to get back the Tosamaidan for public use, after the State government decided not to extend the lease given to the Army after it expired on April 18.

U.S.-led warplanes kept up strikes on oil sites funding the Islamic State (IS) group on Sunday, as al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate threatened reprisals after a key operative was reported killed. The United States, along with coalition partners Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, hit four modular refineries as well as an IS command and control post, all north of Raqqa in Syria, U.S. Central Command said.

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China has slammed as “futile” the effort by the United States to counter the Islamic State (IS) outside the mandate of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), amid calls that India should join the “broad coalition” led by Washington and its western allies.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a global call for cooperation on terrorism at the UN General Assembly on Saturday, calling for the world body to speedily adopt a comprehensive international convention of terror, so that no country could differentiate between “good terrorism and bad terrorism.” He also spoke of India’s ‘push for peace’ in the region, saying he wanted “serious dialogue” with Pakistan in an “atmosphere free of violence.”

The Indian Banks’ Association has rejected a proposal of the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBUs) for introduction of five-day banking and working week and regulated working hours for officers. A decision to this effect was conveyed by its officials at the last round of a bipartite meeting on Friday. The IBA was represented by Central Bank of India Chairman and Managing Director Rajeev Rishi and the UFBU by its constituent unions.

In a one-of-its-kind gathering of architects, engineers, artists, planner and academics on Saturday, the idea of setting up India's first National Museum of Architecture in the Capital was egged on. A brainchild of Greha, a Delhi-based non-profit knowledge-based society working in the field of environment development, habitat design and architecture, the idea immediately found three prominent hands of support. It was backed by the Council of Architecture (COA), a statutory body under the Architects Act 1972 which regulates the architectural professional and education; the Indian Institute of Architects (IIA), a 97-year-old Mumbai-based national body of architects in the country; and Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH).

The Indian squash players wrapped up a historic performance in the Asian Games, clinching an unprecedented men’s team gold after the women’s side settled for its first ever silver here on Saturday.

Chain Singh gave India its ninth medal from the shooting range as he finished third in the 50m rifle 3-position event here on Saturday. 

27th SEPTEMBER 2014

The GMR group which constructed the international airport at Shamshabad here and currently operating it proposed to build a world class Hyderabad airport city at a cost of Rs. 

750 crore which would create 15,000 to 20,000 jobs and sought the support of Telangana government on this count.

The State Investment Promotion Board (SIPB), which met under the chairmanship of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu here on Friday approved proposals worth Rs.9,200 crore to set up two green field cement plants at Dachepalli in Guntur district and Petnikota in Kurnool district.

Widely acknowledged as the person behind transforming Tata Steel into the world’s eleventh largest steel-maker, B. Muthuraman on Friday had his last day in office after 48-year long stint on attaining the age of 70.

It is not often that guides and taxi drivers take tourists to Bagore ki Haveli as its approach lanes are long and winding. The driver then has to negotiate narrow, congested paths to reach Gangaur Ghat where the historic Haveli is located.But once inside the building, any travel weariness melts away. Bagore ki Haveli serves as a treasure trove of art and history.

Tata International Ltd., the global trading and distribution arm of the Tata group, on Friday, appointed former Union Home Secretary G. K. Pillai as its Chairman. Mr. Pillai succeeds B. Muthuraman. Mr. Pillai’s appointment is with effect from September 26, Tata International Ltd. said in a statement.

Bankers on Friday discussed the ramifications of the Supreme Court’s order, cancelling allocation of coal blocks, and indicated that they might seek ‘regulatory forbearance’ if the ruling impacts asset performance. “We have discussed in detail about the implications of the order. We do have a concern if it results in the non-availability of coal for performing assets,” Indian Banks’ Association Chief Executive M. V. Tanksale said, after a meeting of the industry lobby’s management committee here. He said there was no need for ‘knee-jerk reaction’ and no immediate decision was taken by the committee

The Indian men ended their campaign in the pistol events with a silver in the 25m centre fire event while the women exited from the 50m rifle 3-position without success at the Asian Games here on Friday. The men pistol shooters, spearheaded by London Olympic Games silver medallist Vijay Kumar, clinched the second place with a total score of 1740, two behind gold medallist China.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected in New York, for a five-day visit which is likely to focus on boosting the Indian economy. Calling the U.S. “a vital partner for our national development” as he left for his tour, Mr. Modi said he hopes to “draw especially on the rich possibilities of partnership in education, skills, research, technology and innovation.” However, no big announcement is expected out of the visit and meeting with U.S. President Obama, as even the State Department’s point-person Nisha Biswal commented that the two sides are not looking for any “transformational initiative” during this visit

The Railway Ministry started e-catering service in select trains on the Delhi-Amritsar section on a trial basis on Thursday. Under the scheme, a passenger will be able to place an order to be served at his seat en route, through a phone call or an SMS.

For promoting apples and apple-made products by the locals the State Tourism Department on Thursday organised an apple festival for tourists coming to the hill State. The festival coincides with the start of Navratras and Durga Puja holidays.

The flush of the successful Indian Mars manoeuvre will take a while to wear off. Team ISRO has, meanwhile, got down to brass tacks and expects to get one of its biggest projects off the mark this calendar year — GSLV-Mark III. Success of this heavy-lift, four-tonne satellite launcher is imperative to make India capable of launching its future communication satellites from its soil. “We are preparing for the GSLV-MkIII experimental mission,” ISRO Chairman K. Radhakrishnan recently said.

Eric Holder, the first ever African-American Attorney General of the U.S., was on Thursday set to resign from his role after nearly six tumultuous years as the Obama administration’s top legal official, a tenure that won him both rare approbation from liberal quarters and severe criticism from opponents across the aisle.

Egyptian courts sentenced nearly 100 people to prison for up to 25 years on Thursday after finding them guilty of violence during protests in support of ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsy. Hundreds of Morsy supporters have been handed lengthy jail terms and death sentences after speedy trials amid a brutal crackdown by the authorities since the Islamist’s overthrow in July last year.

The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) has announced six new sub-licences with Aurobindo, Cipla, Emcure, Hetero Labs, Laurus Labs and Desano to allow generic manufacture of anti-AIDS drug tenofovir alafenamide (TAF). This follows MPP’s signing a licence with U.S. pharmaceutical major Gilead Sciences Inc. for the company’s TAF, which is a novel investigational medicine. A statement from MPP said the announcement comes a day after Gilead released positive results on two of its TAF Phase III studies which suggest that the medicine has the potential to play a large role in the international community’s efforts to scale up HIV treatment. The sub-licence is for the generic manufacturers to make the generic versions of TAF for 112 developing countries.

For the first time, the 100 richest tycoons in India are all billionaires with Mukesh Ambani topping the league for the eighth consecutive year, according to Forbes . With a net worth of $23.6 billion, up $2.6 billion from last year, RIL Chief Mukesh Ambani topped the list for the eighth consecutive year. Mr. Ambani was followed by Dilip Shanghvi, who got richer this year by $4.1 billion. Mr. Shanghvi is the new No. 2, after he displaced steel baron Lakshmi Mittal ($15.8 billion), who slipped to the fifth place. Wipro’s Azim Premji moved up one notch to the number three position as his net wealth increased to $16.4 billion from $13.8 billion previously. Pallonji Mistry of construction giant Shapoorji Pallonji Group, which is the biggest shareholder in Tata Sons, with a new worth of $15.9 billion, was placed in the fourth place.

Emami Biotech, the edible oil and bio-diesel arm of the Rs.8,000-crore Emami Group, has entered into an agreement with Kolkata-based Rasoi Limited, the edible oil arm of Rasoi Group, to acquire ‘RASOI’, a brand with a 50-year legacy. The agreement was signed on September 25.

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A consortium of several Texas-based entrepreneurs of Indian origin has shown keen interest in investing in Visakhapatnam by developing a world-class IT Park. CEO of Intellisoft Technologies Inc Satish Manduva came here from Dallas on Monday to have a look at Rushikonda IT Special Economic Zone. He was accompanied by officials from APIIC to various sites. Sources told The Hindu that the NRIs, most of them hailing from Andhra Pradesh, either wanted to take a government site on lease or buy a private property to set up the park with their funds. Among 150 companies floated in Texas by Americans of Indian origin and NRIs, 15 to 20 have agreed in principle to set up ventures in the proposed IT Park.

In an order with far-reaching implications, the Supreme Court on Wednesday cancelled all but four of the 218 coal block allocations declared arbitrary and illegal by it in an August 25 judgment. The decision comes as a windfall for the government as the court has ordered the owners of the cancelled coal blocks to cough up Rs. 295 as compensation for every tonne of coal they extracted illegally, to make up for the loss to the exchequer.

Showcasing the best of the traditional and modern, Dasara will unfold to a sea of humanity on Thursday (September 25 to October 4) in what is a continuation of a tradition started in A.D. 1610. This year’s event is also the first in recent history when the private Dasara of the Wadiyars, the erstwhile royal family, will be held without a male heir to perpetuate the family traditions inherited from the rulers of the Vijayanagar empire. It was Raja Wadiyar who decreed that Dasara be held on a grand scale after he ascended the throne at Srirangapatna in 1610 and the tradition has continued without a break since then.

The executive committee of the Kerala Road Fund Board (KRFB) has given its nod for the pre-qualification bids of four companies for the Kozhikode City Road Improvement Project (KCRIP). A meeting of the KRFB on Wednesday gave approval to the four companies for submitting the tenders for construction of six roads in the city. The companies are Mumbai-based Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Limited (IL&FS), a subsidiary of Transportation Networks Limited; Agra-based PNC Infratech Limited; Ahmednagar-based Rohan Rajdeep Tollways Limited, and Vadakara-based Uralungal Labour Contract Cooperative Society.

In a major initiative, the A.P. Civil Supplies Department has decided to install e-POS (point of sale) machines at fair price shops within two months to weed out bogus ration cardholders. Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu sanctioned Rs. 100 crore for installation of 27,176 e-POS machines all over the State.

Damien Chazelle, director of 2014 film Whiplash , is in talks to helm the Neil Armstrong biopic First Man . According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Universal project, that would tell the tale of the astronaut, the first man to set foot on the moon, is based on book First Man: A Life of Neil A. Armstrong by James Hansen, and would be penned by Josh Singer. 

Nigeria’s military on Wednesday claimed for the first time that Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau was dead, saying troops had shot a lookalike who had been posing as the militant commander.

24th SEPTEMBER 2014

Hindi road drama Liar’s Dice will be India’s nomination for the Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, which will be given away in Los Angeles in 2015.

Public sector giant Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) will construct two thermal power generating stations for the Telangana State Generation Corporation (TSGENCO) at Kothagudem and Manuguru in the next three years. The government will soon enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the state-owned company, for augmentation of capacities to the extent of 800 MW and 1080 MW respectively at both locations.

The India Cements Ltd. has decided to hive off Chennai Super Kings (CSK), the Indian Premier League team owned by it and run as a company division, into a wholly owned subsidiary.

The largest gathering of world leaders on climate change opened at the United Nations on Tuesday amid calls for action to put the planet on course toward reversing global warming. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is hosting the summit of 120 leaders, the first high-level gathering since the Copenhagen conference on climate change ended in disarray in 2009.

The U.S. and India are the two largest democracies in the world. In the early 1990s, India became an economic powerhouse by embracing the free enterprise system — the very system that made America so strong. India is now the world’s third largest economy and has quickly become one of America’s greatest trading partners. Notably, American exports to India have increased by 491 per cent since 2001. Bilateral trade between the countries has reached $100 billion and may rise to $500 billion by the end of the decade. These are not idle numbers. They tell the story of Americans who got jobs, earned promotions and started businesses because they embraced India as a trading partner.

Though the government is promoting the concept of public-private partnership (PPP) in all sectors, it has decided to keep crucial sectors of the broadband network to be rolled out over the next few years under its control. Bulk of this roll out will be for the Digital India plan of connecting all panchayats with broadband and for closed user group networks exclusively for government organisations.

Kishore Biyani-led Future group, as part of its focus on making it big in the food business, plans to set up an integrated food park each in West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh. Interacting with presspersons at Tumkur on Tuesday, where Future Consumer Enterprises Ltd has established its first such facility, Mr. Biyani, the Group CEO, said: “We will be one of the large food FMCG companies’’ within four years.

Former Nokia India head P. Balaji will be joining Vodafone India as its regulatory and external affairs director next month. “Our new Director — regulatory and external affairs — will be P. Balaji. He joins us from Nokia India, where he was the Managing Director till recently,” Vodafone said in a statement. Mr. Balaji is expected to join next month. Vodafone’s current regulatory head T. V. Ramachandran and external affairs director Rohit Adya will retire over the next few months.

For a brief while, after the tenth shot to be precise, Abhinav Bindra was in the lead. Two shots later, he was pushed to fourth. Shooting has rarely been a spectator sport but at the Ongnyeon International Range here on Tuesday, there were many who were biting their nails off during the 10m air rifle finals. Things only got hotter as the best eight shooters got on to the home stretch in the 20-shot finals.

Veteran comeback kid Lee Hyun-Il sealed victory as South Korea downed badminton giant China on Tuesday to take the gold in a thrilling five-match men’s team final. China’s world champion Chen Long fell to a storming performance by Son Wan-Ho in the opening match of an intense five-hour battle, which ended with South Korea winning 3-2.

23rd SEPTEMBER 2014

Pakistan on Monday named Rizwan Akhtar as the new head for its main intelligence agency, considered the second most powerful military official after the Army Chief.

The directors of IIT-Madras and IIT-Kanpur are preparing a framework for a new ranking system for universities in the country. The rough framework for the India-centric ranking system, which will have a set of parameters, will be ready by December, the Union HRD Secretary Ashok Thakur said.The IITs are currently working with Central universities.

While officials in India and Pakistan insist there is no proposal for a meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in New York this week, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will interact with her Pakistani counterpart Sartaj Aziz during a SAARC multilateral meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on Friday.

China has continued to remain upbeat about the future of India-China ties, pointing out that the “important consensus” that had recently been reached between President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will keep the borders calm, and drive the relationship forward. Brushing aside apprehensions that persisting tensions along the Sino-Indian frontier in Ladakh could undermine the gains of Mr. Xi’s visit, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, in response to a question, asserted that “this is [a] totally unnecessary suspicion.”

The test-firing of the propulsion system on India’s spacecraft to Mars for four seconds on Monday (September 22, 2014) turned out to be an unalloyed success. What buoyed up the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) engineers was that the propulsion system, called 440 Newton engine or the Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM), ignited after it had remained idle for the last 300 days during the voyage of India’s orbiter to Mars. The LAM was last fired on December 1, 2013 when the spacecraft was slung-shot from its earth-orbit into sun-centric orbit and its odyssey through space to Mars began.

The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) submitted a confusing affidavit to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Monday, saying State governments in the Western Ghats region may, after undertaking demarcation of Eco-sensitive Areas (ESA) by physical verification, propose the exclusion/inclusion of certain areas in the draft notification dated March 10, 2014.

Automobili Lamborghini, on Monday, launched all-new Huracan in the domestic market. Priced at a whopping Rs.3.43 crore (ex-showroom Delhi), Huracan LP 610-4 replaces the Italian sports car major’s earlier successful model Gallardo. Huracan LP made its global debut at the 2014 Geneva Motor Show in March. The car boasts a naturally aspirated V10 engine with 5.2 litre displacement. This allows it to accelerate from 0-100 kilometres per hour (kmph) in a jaw-dropping 3.2 seconds and touch a maximum speed of 325 kmph.

The Indian trio of Rahi Sarnobat, Anisa Sayyed and Heena Sidhu won the women’s 25m pistol team bronze in the 17th Asian Games at the Ongnyeon Shooting Range on Monday. The women finished behind South Korea and China and Sarnobat could manage only a seventh place in the individual event. Ayonika Paul, the Commonwealth Games silver medallist, also could finish only seventh in the 10m rifle event.

The Union Minister of State for Sports and Youth Affairs Sarbanand Sonowal inaugurated the National academy in athletics (sprints and jumps) — a new initiative of the Sports Authority of India — at the Lakshmibai National College of Physical Education, Kariyavattom on Monday. Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Sonowal said the academy was being established with the intention to create a long-term training programme in athletics and unearthing future champions.