News Roundup - 16 December 2014

1. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan honoured with a special award at the glittering Miss World 2014 ceremony in London for her charity work since being crowned Miss World in 1994. South African beauty Rolene Strauss crowned Miss World 2014. Miss Hungary, Edina Kulcsar, was the runner-up and Miss United States, Elizabeth Safrit, came in third.
2. The creator of the Rock Garden, Nek Chand, attended the function to celebrate his 90th birthday in Chandigarh.
3. Google is one of the major U.S. corporations researching the power of colour in the working world. 
4. Denmark will lay claim to energy-rich, but contested territory around the North Pole by submitting data to the U.N. which it says demonstrates the area is an extension of its continental shelf. The Danish government said it would tell the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf that data collected since 2002 supports its claim to ownership over an area of about 895,000 sq. km beyond the current nautical borders of Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory. Norway already lays claim to an area overlapping the one outlined in the Danish submission to the U.N., and there is “potential overlap with Canada, the Russian Federation and the U.S.
5. Vienna school officials have ordered the closure of a Saudi Arabian school accused of teaching anti-Semitism, after it refused to comply with a request to identify the institution’s director and teachers.
6. Declining for the fifth straight month, wholesale inflation dropped to a six-year low of 0 per cent in November. The data, however, shows a larger drop than the actual decline in prices owing to favourable statistical illusion of a high base: wholesale inflation growth was 7.5 per cent in November, 2013. Wholesale food inflation was down to 0.6 per cent against 19.7 per cent in November, 2013, with prices of cereals, rice, wheat, vegetables and onions falling. However, potatoes and milk continued to show high inflation. While potato prices grew at the rate of 34 per cent, the rate of rise in milk prices was 10 per cent. Rice and pulses too rose but at slower pace of 5.6 per cent and 4.4 per cent. With global crude prices down nearly 40 per cent since June, wholesale inflation in fuels came in at minus 4.9 per cent against 11.08 per cent in November, 2013. The dip in producer prices comes days after consumer price inflation abated to an 8-year low of 4.4 per cent.
7. Vistara received its air operator permit (AOP) from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Vistara is a 51:49 joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines Ltd. The company, which will be headquartered at New Delhi, will begin operations with its fleet of brand new Airbus A 320-200s. It will soon make an announcement on the start of sales, routes and schedules.
8. Mastek said its 100 per cent subsidiary Majesco, which is into core insurance systems and services, entered into a definitive merger agreement with the U.S.-based Cover-All Technologies Inc. in a 100 per cent stock-for-stock transaction. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter 2015 and both companies will continue to operate as separate entities until then.

 Credits: The Hindu, Google.