News Roundup - 18 November 2014

1. The Justice Mukul Mudgal panel found former BCCI president N. Srinivasan not guilty of match-fixing nor of having tried to prevent the investigation but stated that he and four other BCCI officials knew about a player violating the Indian Premier League (IPL) code of conduct, but took no action. However, the panel has held that Raj Kundra, co-owner of Rajasthan Royals, was guilty of betting and he violated the IPL anti-corruption code.
2. Pure honey, from the dense forests of Chamarajanagar district, has now hit the shelves in sachets. These honey sachets are being packaged and marketed by the Soliga tribal community, who are traditional experts in collecting honey from forests. University of Agricultural Sciences-Bangalore trained them on the techniques of processing, quality standards and packaging of honey under the National Agricultural Technology project. They were also given processing and packaging machinery at subsidised prices, besides being taught the basics of accounting.
3. Hasan Ali Khan and Vaishali Neotia (Hyderabad) won the ‘Aegis Graham Bell Award’, constituted by Aegis Graham Bell Business School and Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI). Their work has also been nominated in best innovation in IT category of The Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) Innovation Awards, London, scheduled to be held on November 19. They have developed a product in which by focusing on a electronic gadget while wearing google glass, one would see the manual instructions on how to use the gadget. This is done with the help of Augmented Reality (AR). The techies can be reached at www.merxius.in
4. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured Australia a visa-on-arrival facility for tourists, and announced a two–month deadline for the long–pending merger of OCI and PIO status to woo the Indian diaspora from whom he sought support for his Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
5. The Adani group’s proposed plan to build a $7 billion coal mine was cleared by Australia’s Queensland state, which also announced a major investment in rail infrastructure to support the Indian conglomerate’s mega project.
6. With the aim of getting acquainted with each other’s operating procedures in counter-terrorism, Indian and Chinese armies began their fourth joint training exercise, Hand-in-Hand, in Pune. The 12-day schedule is focused on training in crossing obstacles, special heliborne operations, firing of weapons, handling and neutralisation of improvised explosive devices and conducting cordon and search operations in the environment facing insurgency and terrorism. The exercise will end on November 25.
7. Government employees with autistic children have also been exempted from transfers. The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), reviewing the transfer policy for employees, who are also caregivers for disabled children, included autism in the list of disabilities meriting concession.
8. An Indian Air Force (IAF) team successfully flight-tested the surface-to-air missile, Akash, from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur near Balasore in Odisha. The missile flew at a supersonic speed over a distance of 14 km before destroying a target called “para flare” at a low altitude of 1.2 km. The para-flare was dropped by a MiG-27 aircraft of the IAF. It was an Air Force version of Akash that was launched and the mission met its objectives, said Mr. Chandramouli, who belongs to the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). It was the DRDO which developed the Akash and its system.
9. Happy New Year’s script has been included into the Oscars library.
10. The Church of England’s governing body on Monday rubber-stamped an historic measure allowing women to become bishops, paving the way for the first ordinations next year.
11. Japan’s economy unexpectedly slid into recession as housing and business investment declined following a sales tax hike, further clouding the outlook for the global economy. The world’s third-largest economy contracted at a 1.6 per cent pace in the July-September quarter, the government said on Monday, contrary to predictions it would grow after a big drop the previous quarter. An economy is generally considered to be in recession when it fails to grow for two consecutive quarters. This is not just bad news for Japan. It deepens global uncertainty as growth slows in China and remains nearly flat in the 18-country eurozone. Japan’s weakness could be a drag on growth elsewhere if its companies cut investment and buy fewer imports such as machinery, electronics, raw materials and food.
12. India’s exports shrunk first time this fiscal in October, declining minus - 5.04 per cent to $26.09 billion. September’s exports were $28.90 billion. A nearly four-fold surge to $4.17 billion in gold imports during the Diwali month of October against $1.09 billion in the same month last year widened the trade deficit to $13.36 billion. The trade deficit was $14.25 billion in September.
13. India has a larger proportion of youth population than the rest of the world, and while Africa is younger, northern Europe is substantially older — the United Kingdom’s youth population is 10 percentage point lower than that of India’s according to the United Nations Population Fund’s (UNFPA) State of the World’s Population Report. This unique position for India, however, will not last long. India is aging faster than the global average and by 2050, the world will have a larger proportion of youth population than India, the United Nations’ population projections show. By 2065, the absolute number of young people will begin to decline. 

Credits: The Hindu, Google.