18 January 2012

• Ajit Singh : Union Civil Aviation Minister
• Pranab Mukherjee : Union Finance Minster
• Centre to allow foreign airlines acquire 49% stake in Indian carriers
• Francesco Schettino : Captain of Costa Concordia, the Italian luxury cruise liner that wrecked off coast at Italy
• INS Krishna : One of Indian Navy's First Training Squadron since 1995 accorded a farewell from Southern Naval Command
• Heading towards Mumbai for decommissioning
• World Health Organisation's (WHO) list of Endemic Countires : PAIN (Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Nigeria)
• India to be removed from the list after ascertaining that wild polio virus is not circulating in among children in India
• $8.48b Cairn-Vedanta deal red-flagged by Home Ministry to put up before Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs for review
• Salman Rushdie : Indian origin author & Booker Prize winner
• His participation in Jaipur Literature Festival 2012 strongly opposed
• Mukarram Khan Atif : Voice of America's journalist
• He was shot dead in Pakistan
• Portugal Supreme Court rejects CBI plea on Abu Salem extradition that the extradition treaty was violated by India by slapping of new cases against the underworld don that attract death penalty
• Wen Jiabao : Chinese PM
• Dai Bingguo : Chinese State Councillor
• Shivshankar Menon : National Security Adviser (NSA) of India
• 15th Meeting of Special Representatives on India-China Border Quest : held @ New Delhi
• Agreement was signed between S Jaishankar (Indian Ambassador to China) & Liu Zhenmin (Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister) to establish "Working Mechanism for Consultation & Coordination on India-China Border Affairs"
• SM Krishna : Union Minister of External Affairs
• GL Peiris : Sri Lankan Minister of External Affairs
• Mahinda Rajapaksa : Sri Lankan President
• SM Krishna-GL Peiris ink MoU for the next phase of housing project being implemented with India's assistance of about $260m
• India extended $382.37m line-of-credit for restoring Northern Railways services in Sri Lanka
• MoU signed by TCA Ranganathan (CMD of EXIM Bank of India) and PB Jayasundera (Sri Lankan Finance & Planning Secretary)
• They also signed a MoU on a Buyer's Credit Agreement of $60.69m for financing Greater Dambulla Water Supply Project
• MoU signed between Ashok K Kantha (Indian High Commissioner to Sri Lanka) and W Sakalasooriya (Sri Lankan Agriculture Secretary) for cooperation in the field of agriculture
• MoU signed by TRAI & TRCSL to strengthen competency in the field of telecommunication regulation in Sri Lanka
• JS Sharma : Chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)
• Anusha Palpita : Director General of Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL)
• Jimmy Wales : Founder of Wikipedia the online encyclopedia
• Wikipedia to black-out its English language site for 24 hours to seek support against proposed US bills, Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) & Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA)
• This will threaten Internet freedom and will harm open sites like Wikipedia
• "The Artist" : film sweeps BAFTA (British Academy of Film & Television Arts) Awards nominations
• Nominated for 12 categories
• Centre through a notification through Central Board of Excise & Customs (CBEC) changed the fixed amounts of excise & customs duties on precious metals to ad-valorem rates with immediate effect
• Import duty of Gold revised to 2% from earlier fixed Rs.300 per 10grams
• Import duty of Silver to 6% from earlier fixed rate of Rs.1500 per kg
• Excise duty of Gold revised to 1.5% from fixed Rs.200 per 10grams
• Excise duty of Silver revised to 4% from fixed Rs.1000 per kg
• This duty structure will fetch an additional Rs.600 Cr in Q4 of this fiscal
• SK Goel : Chairman of CBEC
• RBI decided to permit banks to grant permissions to companies to hedge the price risk of any commodity (except Gold, Silver & Platinum) in the international exchanges/markets
• Japan's Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG) & Sumitomo Corp to buy Royal Bank of Scotland's (RBS) Aviation business for $7.3b
• RBS will shrink to its core British retail & commercial banking business
• Chinese Banks lend $1.18b to Reliance Communications to repay overseas convertible bonds
• Standard & Poor's (S&P) downgrades Eurozone's European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) rescue fund from AAA to AA+
• Francois Baroin : French Finance Minister
• Narendra Singh : appointed new Chairman & MD of Bank of Maharashtra with effect from Feb 1 2012
• He was serving as Executive Director of Corporation Bank
• Anup Sankar Bhattacharya : Current CMD of Bank of Maharashtra
• International Shooting Federation ISSF Beijing World Cup scheduled to be held from June 16 to 25 has been cancelled