The Daily Brief – 21st January, 2017

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• The Centre has cleared the Tamil Nadu government’s proposal to promulgate an ordinance to hold jallikattu, the local bull fighting sport.

• A group of Hindi professors have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting not to add dialects of Hindi, like Bhojpuri and Rajasthani, in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution as full-fledged Indian languages. This development comes months after Union Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal had announced that Rajasthani will be added to the 8th Schedule. In December 2016, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar also had raised a similar demanded for Bhojpuri.

• The World Economic Forum (WEF), NITI Aayog, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and Cornell University will work to develop an India Innovation Index to provide impetus to states to drive innovative spirit. Based on the WEF’s GII (Global Innovation Index), the India Innovation Index will be tailored to better reflect of India’s ground reality and include metrics well suited to the Indian context for innovation.

• The Union Ministry of Water Resources has constituted negotiations committee to assess availability and utilisation of waters of Mahanadi and its tributaries to resolve disputes over sharing of river waters among five states. These five states are Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Jharkhand. The committee will be chaired by member (water planning and projects) of the Central Water Commission (CWC). It will have 11 other members comprising representatives from the state governments.

• India and the UAE held the first meeting of their strategic dialogue in New Delhi to elevate the bilateral relationship to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. The meeting was co-chaired by Minister of State (MoS) for External Affairs M J Akbar and MoS in Ministry of Foreign Affairs of UAE Anwar Gargash.

• Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China has withdrawn the visa-free facility for Indians who will have to complete a pre-arrival registration. Henceforth, Indian Nationals will require Pre-arrival Registration.

• Saina Nehwal advanced to the semifinals of the $120,000 Malaysia Masters Grand Prix Gold badminton tournament, beating eighth-seeded Indonesian Fitriani Fitriani. Saina will face Hong Kong’s Yip Pui Yin in the semifinals.

• Donald J. Trump took oath as the 45th President of the U.S., succeeding Barrack Obama. A document uploaded on the White House website moments later said, “peace through strength will be at the centre” of the new President’s foreign policy. The inaugural address that Mr. Trump drafted himself echoed the themes of the campaign that catapulted him to office, touching upon “national pride” and denouncing “all talk, no action politicians” who, he said, ruined the country.

• In the upcoming Asterix and Obelix comic, Obelix, the Gallic hero’s sturdy sidekick, will finally get a starring role in the French comic book series. The story will be the 37th in the series that began in the Franco-Belgian comic Pilote in 1959. Asterix has since been translated into more than 100 languages and sold around 400 million copies around the world.

• The World Economic Forum and the the Marine Science Institute of University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), have announced a partnership to improve the health of the world’s oceans and maritime resources. The new partnership aims to protect world’s $2.5-trillion ocean economy.

• International Holocaust Remembrance Day is observed on January 27.

• Physicists from Austria have created new form of Hydrogen i.e. negatively charged hydrogen clusters. It is a previously unseen form of hydrogen.

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