News Roundup - 6 December 2015

1. Union Minister for Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari announced relaxation of cabotage law under the Merchant Shipping Act, 1958 for transhipment of export-import containers at the Vizhinjam International Deepwater Multipurpose seaport. Compared to the 150 million TEUs container transhipment business handled by China, the country handled only 10 million TEUs. Cabotage law protects domestic shipping lines by reserving coastal cargo for Indian ships.
2. President Barack Obama said the law forbidding people on government's no-fly list from being able to buy a gun. He said "If you’re too dangerous to board a plane, you’re too dangerous, by definition, to buy a gun".
3. India’s total installed capacity of solar power has crossed the 5-GW-mark. During last fiscal, a total capacity of 1,112 MW of grid connected solar power projects and 44.5 MW of rooftop projects were installed. For the current fiscal, 827 MW of solar capacity has been added so far. Central government has laid down the ambitious target of 100 GW by 2022.
4. The Council of Leather Exports (CLE) along with other agencies has devised a plan to more than double sales revenue in next five years to $27 billion. Last year, leather sector reported total sales of nearly $13 billion, of which exports accounted for $6.5 billion. By 2020, the export target is $15 billion. Plans to hold road shows, business-to-business meetings and conferences in different countries to attract foreign direct investment, introduce new technologies, designs and concepts and showcase India’s potential to the outside world.
5. Essar Oil Ltd., India’s second biggest non-state oil refiner, has issued a public notice to delist the company from local bourses by buying out the non-promoter shareholding of 28.54 per cent at Rs.146.05 per share.
6. Tata Sons, the promoter of major operating companies of the Tata group, will acquire an additional 0.22 per cent stake in Titan Company at an estimated price of over Rs.66 crore, taking its total holding to 19.80 per cent.
7. Sri Venkateswara Swamy Temple, popularly known as the Tirupati Temple may become the biggest contributor to the Gold Monetisation Scheme with more than 5.5 tonnes of gold. India is the world’s second-biggest consumer of gold after China & imports of the precious metal accounted for 28 percent of India’s trade deficit in the year ending March 2013.
8. The final draft of the Paris Climate agreement was released by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The overall goal of the Paris agreement, to keep global temperature rise to a specified quantum compared to pre-industrial levels, is pegged at either “below 1.5 degrees C”, or, as “well below 2 degrees C.”
9. HelpMeSee, a New York-based non-profit organisation leading the global campaign to end cataract blindness, presented its breakthrough eye care technologies at the first-ever World Conference on Manual Small Incision Cataract Surgery (MSICS). It includes a focus on simulation-based learning to train tens of thousands of specialists needed to carry out cataract surgery in the developing world. Earlier last month, the organisation launched a mobile health, or mHealth, smartphone application.
10. Antrix Corporation,  ISRO’s marketing arm, has signed deal with U.S.  commercial weather satellite company PlanetiQ for supply of two PSLV rockets. Antrix has bagged nine such U.S. launch orders for 2015-16. In September, US operator Spire Global became the PSLV’s first US customer by getting four 4-kg-each Lemur satellites from Sriharikota.
11. A map compiled by French explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1612 and believed to be among dozens stolen more than a decade ago from the Boston Public Library has been recovered.
12. The Indian government recently hiked foreign investment in insurance from 26 per cent to 49 per cent, and U.S. companies are unlikely to invest more in the sector till the Indian government removes the rider in the insurance law that mandates Indian ownership and control in the sector. U.S. firms are planning to invest $41-billion in infrastructure, defence, pharmaceutical, healthcare, e-commerce and renewable energy as per U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC).

Source: Google, The Hindu