The Daily Brief – 14th October, 2016

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• Singer and songwriter Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. He is the first American to win the prize since novelist Toni Morrison, in 1993.
• The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), along with several other organisations associated with the Muslim community, has opposed the Law Commission’s questionnaire on the possibility of a Uniform Civil Code (UCC).
• Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi are expected to sign an agreement on S-400 Triumph anti-missile defence systems during the BRICS Summit.
• Environment Minister Anil Dave has said India will no longer permit the release of HFC-23, a family of potent greenhouse gases, released when local companies produce the refrigerant HCFC-22. Mr. Dave is at Kigali, Rwanda, in the midst of thrashing out a deal with developed countries to amend the Montreal Protocol, a 1987 agreement whereby countries have agreed to limit the emission of gases that destroy the ozone layer.
• Inaccurate estimates of the tuberculosis burden in India between 2000-2015, has led the World Health Organisation (WHO) to seriously underestimate the global TB epidemic. The most crucial finding of the latest Global TB Report 2016 is that India had reported only 56 per cent of its TB burden in 2014 and 59 per cent in 2015. This massive underestimating will result in health authorities revising the global TB data.
• Expanding their cooperation in civil nuclear energy, India and Russia are collaborating to set up integrated irradiation centres in India to reduce agricultural losses. A bilateral agreement for cooperation in the development of a network of integrated infrastructure irradiation centres was signed between the Indian Agricultural Association, Hindustan Agro Co-Op Ltd (HACL) and United Innovation Corporation (UIC), a subsidiary of ROSATOM State Atomic Energy Corporation of Russia, on the sidelines of the BRICS Business Forum in Delhi.
• Vice-President Hamid Ansari has recognised a group of 22 MPs belonging to smaller parties and certain Independents as a consolidated bloc — the United Group. With this recognition the United Group, will be the third largest group of MPs in the Rajya Sabha, after the Congress and the BJP. This is only the third time in the history of Indian Parliament consolidated bloc has been recognised, the first was in 1983 and the second in 1990. In 1983, the first such consolidated group was called United Associations of Members was recognised by the then Rajya Sabha Chairman M.Hidayatullah. In 1990, the then chairman of Rajya Sabha recognised organised group of Parliamentarians and was renamed as the United Group. The Vice President acts as the ex-officio Chairman of the Rajya Sabha.
• India has been ranked a low 97th among the 118 countries surveyed in 2016 Global Hunger Index (GHI).
• Mukesh Singh Gehlot and Gaurav Sharma won gold medals in their respective categories at the World powerlifting championship held in England.
• Leander Paes and Andre Begemann of Germany stormed into the doubles final of the $125,000 ATP Challenger tennis tournament.
• World No. 1 Novak Djokovic said he hadn’t made any plans to keep Boris Becker as a coach next year as they appeared headed for a split. Djokovic, speaking after cruising into the Shanghai Masters quarterfinals, said he had only made arrangements with the German great for the rest of the season.
• The Maldives quit the Commonwealth after years of wrangling over its human rights record since the toppling of Mohamed Nasheed, its first democratically elected leader, four years ago. The island nation said it had been treated “unjustly and unfairly” by the bloc, a voluntary association of more than 50 countries, many of them former territories of the British empire.
• The moon is bombarded by so much space rock that its surface gets a complete facelift every 81,000 years, according to a study based on NASA data. The study also estimates that asteroids and comets crashing into Earth’s only natural satellite create, on average, 180 new craters at least 10 metres in diameter every year.
• Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Bangladesh this weekend, kicking off a “milestone” visit, the first by a Chinese head of state to Bangladesh in three decades since President Li Xiannian’s visit in March 1986.
• Three women have accused Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump of assaulting them, less than a week after a decade-old recording in which he brags about groping and kissing women surfaced. Mr. Trump had said it was only words and denied kissing or groping women against their will.

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