News Roundup - 25 October 2014

1. Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB): MoU signed among 21-nations i.e. Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, China, India, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, the Philippines, Qatar, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, as founding members of AIIB. It has an initial subscribed capital of $50 billion and is headquartered at Beijing.
2. New division in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) aiming to streamline “Centre-State” relations for foreign infrastructure investment. The new division will coordinate State delegations visiting abroad, passport issues and political clearances, as well as set up a database of State-level tie-ups and work on sister cities as also coordinate foreign dignitaries visit to Tier 2 cities. However, it will not deal with policy disagreements of the kind seen between the Centre and Tamil Nadu over Sri Lanka and with West Bengal over the Teesta accord with Bangladesh.
3. Indian Air Force personnel and their families have been asked to desist from using Chinese ‘Xiaomi Redmi 1S’ phones as these are believed to transfer data to their servers in China. 
4. Last week an Indian hacker, who uses the handle “Bl@ck Dr@gon,” reportedly defaced the website of the Pakistan People’s Party in protest against the controversial statements of its leader, Bilawal Bhutto, on Kashmir. The Pakistani hackers described him as a “script kiddie.” Now, an alliance going by the name of “Pak Cyber Pyrates” managed to deface a large number of websites of the Karnataka government and post anti-India statements. The hackers, however, did not deface the homepages, but introduced a page containing their message. The message talks of Pakistan taking over Kashmir and warns Indian hackers not to “touch Pakistani cyberspace”.
5. Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has offered help in polio eradication to the government of Pakistan. He pointed out that though India was polio-free now, there was always the danger of the virus resurfacing as Pakistan accounts for 85 per cent of the world’s polio cases.
6. Google on Friday chose to record the Indian Mars Orbiter Mission’s one month in orbit around Mars with one of its popular doodles. The doodle for October 24 shows the spacecraft with part of Mars in the background. Soon, on November 5, it will also be time to celebrate the mission’s anniversary since it was launched.
7. One of the students of Super 30, the Patna-based coaching institute for IIT-JEE, to get a scholarship for pursuing higher education in Japan. The coaching institute is run by Anand Kumar for underprivileged students to crack the engineering entrance examination for the Indian Institutes of Technology [IIT]. Since its inception in 2002, over 300 students from the institute have already cracked the IIT-JEE. Japan’s industrial group GGC has also sent gift packs and sweets for the poor students.
8. Ashwika Kapur of Kolkata on Friday won the prestigious Panda Award, as part of the annual Wildscreen Film Festival held at Bristol, U.K. She is the first Indian woman to win the coveted wildlife photography award for her film on a Kakapo parrot. Ms. Kapur’s film “Sirocco — how a dud became a stud” is based on Sirocco, a Kakapo parrot, which is perhaps the only bird to have bagged a government job. The male bird was appointed as the Official Spokesbird for Conservation in New Zealand and it helps in conservation advocacy on social media.
9. Indian-American Azita Raji nominated as the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden.
10. European Union leaders have reached a deal on a comprehensive package of climate targets, including a binding 40 per cent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from the level of 1990 by 2030. They also agreed at a summit in Brussels to increase the share of renewable energy consumed in the EU to at least 27 per cent and to boost energy efficiency by 27 per cent. However these targets are not binding. The breakthrough in the 28-nation bloc’s tough negotiations on its climate targets came after a compromise was reached with Poland, which strongly rejected attempts to set binding targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Poland and some other east European members of the EU are heavily dependent on coal for power generation.
11. A six-member think tank to draft the National Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) policy constituted. The panel, to be chaired by retired Justice Prabha Sridevan, will identifies areas in IPRs where study needs to be conducted and furnish recommendations in this regard to the Ministry. The expert group, set up by Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), will also advise the government on best practices to be followed in trademark offices, patent offices and other government offices dealing with IPRs to create an efficient and transparent system of functioning in the said offices. It would also provide views on the possible implications of demands placed by the negotiating partners and prepare periodic reports on best practice followed in foreign countries. It will keep the government regularly informed of the developments taking place in IPR cases, which have an impact upon India’s IPR policy. Further, it will examine the current issues raised by industry associations and those that may have appeared in media and to give suggestions to the Ministry on such issues. Other members of the expert panel are: Pratibha M. Singh, Senior advocate; Punita Bhargava, advocate; Unnat Pandit, Cadila Pharmaceuticals; Rajeev Srinivasan, director, Asian School of Business; and Narendra K Sabarwal, retired DDG, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The panel would also give suggestions on the steps that may be taken for improving infrastructure in intellectual property offices and tribunals, it said. It will also highlight anomalies in the present IPR legislations and to advice possible solutions to the Ministry.
12. The Aditya Birla group (ABG) has announced a joint venture with a South African insurance giant, MMI holdings Ltd, to enter India’s huge health insurance market.
13. The Finance Ministry has cleared 20 FDI proposals, including six in the pharma sector, envisaging a total inflow of Rs.988.30 crore. The proposals of Fresenius Kabi Oncology for Rs.119 crore and Amneal Pharmaceuticals Company’s for up to Rs.205 crore have been approved as also Indusind Bank’s proposal seeking increase in foreign investment in the bank to 74 per cent. Tamil Nadu-based Equitas Holdings Pvt. Ltd., with the largest proposed investment in the lot, would bring foreign capital of Rs.325 crore. It is followed by Mumbai-based Tara India Fund envisaging investment of Rs.305.63 crore. Under the defence sector, proposals of Bharti Shipyard and Solar Industries India will not lead to any fund flow. Telecom player Verizon Communications India’s proposal for increase in foreign equity participation by its foreign parent from 74 per cent to 100 per cent was approved, entailing investment of Rs.2.32 crore. Meanwhile, the FIPB rejected five proposals, including Sistema Shyam Teleservices Ltd. (SSTL). At the same time, eight proposals, including four from the pharma sector, was rejected.
14. Bangladeshi war criminal Ghulam Azam, who led the Jamaat-e-Islami during the country’s liberation war in 1971, died at the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, Dhaka. Azam is the second war-crime convict to die in the hospital’s prison cell after Abdul Alim, a Minister in Gen. Ziaur Rahman’s cabinet. Azam, the brain behind the conspiracy to thwart the birth of Bangladesh, had backed a united Pakistan and led both the political and the auxiliary forces manned by Bengalis that assisted the Pakistan military.
15. A U.S. prosecutor, who successfully investigated a precedent-setting work visa fraud case against Infosys, resulting in the Indian IT giant paying a whopping $34 million in settlement, has been recognised by Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Charles Johnson for his work. Shamoil T. Shipchandler, former Eastern District of Texas federal prosecutor, and his investigative was presented with the Meritorious Service Award (Silver Medal), on October 21 in Washington DC by Mr. Johnson. This is one of the highest awards for service granted by the Secretary of Homeland Security. The award was presented to Mr. Shipchandler for investigating and bringing to justice an illegal visa fraud operation that resulted in the largest immigration settlement to date.
16. U.K. engineering group Penspen has been awarded a contract to carry out a technical feasibility study for the proposed 1,820-km pipeline Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline. The Asian Development Bank, which is helping the four nations build 56-inch diameter pipeline from Turkmenistan’s giant Galkynysh gas field to serve energy markets in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, awarded the contract to Penspen last week. The technical feasibility study is expected to take six months to complete.

Credits: The Hindu, Google.