The Daily Brief – 4th October, 2016

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• Following a unanimous resolution in the State legislature, Karnataka ended its defiance of the Supreme Court’s orders and started the release of 6,800 cusecs of water for irrigation purposes from the KRS dam.
• Anil Ambani led-Reliance Group signed an agreement with Dassault Aviation of France, the makers of Rafale fighter jets, for a joint venture in India to be named Dassault Reliance Aerospace, to execute offsets for the Rafale deal. India had agreed to buy 36 Rafale jets in a flyaway condition from France for €7.87 billion, or about Rs. 59,000 crore, on September 23.
• Prasar Bharati Corporation CEO Jawhar Sircar has submitted his resignation four months ahead of the end of his tenure, which was to draw to a close in February 2017.
• The Union Urban Development Ministry has declared the urban areas of Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh open defecation free (ODF). These are the first states to become open defecation free in urban areas.
• Jharkhand has become the first state in the country to implement Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) in the Kerosene Scheme. The scheme is being implemented in four identified districts of the state from 1st of October 2017.
• The Haji Ali Dargah Trust has moved the Supreme Court challenging the Bombay High Court order lifting the ban on women from entering the sanctum sanctorum of the renowned Muslim shrine in South Bombay. The High Court on August 26 held that the ban imposed by the Dargah Trust, prohibiting women from entering the sanctum sanctorum of the Haji Ali Dargah, contravened Articles 14, 15 and 25 of the Constitution and said women should be permitted to enter the sanctum sanctorum like men. The High Court had ruled on a PIL plea filed by two women from the NGO Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan. It had held that the trust had no power to alter or modify the mode or manner of religious practices of any individual or any group.
• Twenty years after Arundhati Roy won the 1997 Booker prize for her debut novel The God of Small Things , the Indian novelist’s second, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, is set to be published in 2017. Ms. Roy has also published a wide range of non-fiction, covering topics from the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan to a condemnation of India’s nuclear tests.

  

• Japan’s Yoshinori Ohsumi has won the 2016 Nobel prize for medicine for ground-breaking experiments with yeast which exposed a key mechanism in the body’s defences where cells degrade and recycle their components. The process is called autophagy, whereby cells eat themselves — which when disrupted can cause Parkinson’s and diabetes.
• The world’s tallest wood building with 18 storeys — about 174 feet — will soon be completed at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Construction will now focus on interior elements, with completion expected in early May 2017 — 18 per cent (or four months) faster than a typical project.

• Filmmaker and elephant researcher Prajna Chowta has been appointed Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite (Knight in the National Order of Merit), one of the highest civilian recognitions of the French government. The appointment by the President of the French Republic comes “in recognition of a life devoted to caring for wild Asian elephants”.  Ms. Chowta is the founder of Aane Mane Foundation, which for the past 16 years has been researching and conserving wild Asian elephants. She is among the few Indian women to be appointed a Knight. Earlier this year, businesswoman Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and actor Kamal Hassan were recognised under the French government’s Legion of Honour award.
• China is to build an ocean park on Hainan Island, which is located in the disputed South China Sea. With this, the number of ocean parks in the country will go up to 42.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a halt to an agreement with the United States on plutonium disposal. The deal, signed in 2000, was meant to allow both nuclear powers to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium from their defence programmes, a move seen as a key step in the disarmament process. The two countries recommitted to the deal in 2010. Mr. Putin charged earlier this year that the United States was not honouring the agreement by disposing of plutonium in a way that allowed it to retain its defence capabilities.
• The World Habitat Day (WHD) is observed every year on the first Monday of October throughout the world. This year it was observed on 3 October 2016. The observance of the day seeks to remind the world of its collective responsibility for the habitat of future generations.
• Shaking off three consecutive defeats, the United States recaptured the Ryder Cup in Golf by defeating Europe.

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