3rd,4th and 5th June - CA

1. Amendments to the Securities Contracts (Regulation) Rules:

i)Minimum floor limit for public investment has been raised 25 per cent.for all listed companies
ii)Existing listed companies with less than 25 per cent public holding have to reach the minimum 25 per cent level through an annual addition of at least 5 per cent public holding.
iii)For new listings, if the post issue capital of the company calculated at offer price is more than Rs4,000 crore, the company may be allowed to go public with 10 per cent public shareholding and comply with the 25 per cent public shareholding requirement by increasing its public shareholding by at least 5 per cent every year.

2. A new step in tele medicine:

Doctors in the country will now be able to view patient's electrocardiogram (ECG) reports on their Blackberry smartphone if it is connected by GSM mobile service operator Vodafone.

This service has come about with of three companies – Canada's Research In Motion (RIM), the maker of BlackBerry smartphones, Navi Mumbai-based Maestros Mediline Systems, a designer and manufacturer of diagnostic and patient monitoring devices and cellular operator Vodafone

3.Global Investors Meet in Bangalore:
State Government has signed 361 memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with investors for a total investment of Rs. 4 lakh crore.

4. The Red Sari: When Life is the Price of Power - biography of Sonia Gandhi by Javier Moro. Senior figures in the Congress have objected to passages in the book, saying they are inaccurate

5. Toxic chromium and other pollutants in the soil and water around five Coca Cola and Pepsico plants in northern India Mehdiganj and Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, Kaladera and Chopanki in Rajasthan, and Panipat in Haryana

6. Naoto Kan - elected as Japan's Prime Minister. He succeeds Yukio Hatoyama, who resigned citing his failure to stay in step with the people's wishes.

7.ICCPR : The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is a multilateral treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 16, 1966, and in force from March 23, 1976. It commits its parties to respect the civil and political rights of individuals, including the right to life, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, electoral rights and rights to due process and a fair trial. As of October 2009, the Covenant had 72 signatories and 165 parties.

Denmark and Japan are First World democracies that have signed and ratified ICCPR. But these countries have come under a lot of criticism on whether they adhere to the principles laid out in the ICCPR in their letter and spirit. This is in the wake of how these two countries handled the Red Carpet Four and Tokyo Two


Red Carpet Four:
During the climate conference in Copenhagen in December 2009, for example, four Greenpeace activists were held for 20 days in preventive detention for gate-crashing a banquet held by the Danish Queen and unfurling banners

Tokyo Two:
anti-whaling activists Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki. They also were subjected to similar arbitrary detention

8. Meeting of G-20 finance ministers at Busan, South korea : India, Australia and Canada are opposed to the idea of levying tax on banks put forth by the EU. Rather, India is in favour of regulatory mechanism as being followed by Indian banks.

9. proposed agreements between India and South Afirca:

i)Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) between India and South African Customs Union (SACU)
ii)Bilateral Investment Promotion & Protection Agreement (BIPPA)

SACU: The Southern African Customs Union (SACU) is a customs union among five countries of Southern Africa : Republic of South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Namibia

The major items of exports to South Africa are: petroleum, drugs, pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals, transport equipment, electronic goods and machinery.

The major items of imports from South Africa are: gold, coal, coke, inorganic chemicals, non-ferrous metals, pulp and waste paper

10. Elite Panel of ICC Umpires for 2010-11:Billy Bowden, Aleem Dar, Steve Davis, Asoka de Silva, Billy Doctrove, Marais Erasmus, Ian Gould, Daryl Harper, Tony Hill, Asad Rauf, Simon Taufel, Rodney Tucker

11.COAPS model:developed by Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Florida uses numerical models to predict seasonal hurricane activity. A key component of the COAPS model is the use of predicted sea surface temperatures.

12. The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a joint program by NASA and the German Aerospace Center, achieved a major milestone recently, with its first in-flight night observations

13.The South Asian University (SAU), Delhi:will have students from eight member States of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)

The concept of a world-class university was initiated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the 13th SAARC summit at Dhaka in 2005 with a formal agreement for establishing the institute signed in April 2007 during the 14th summit in New Delhi.

14.The curious case of rare Earth Metals:

Rare earths are a select group of 17 elements that are crucial to many of the world's most advanced technologies starting from green technologies through hybrid cars and wind turbines to solar cells. They also happen to be found widely in China, which is estimated to account for more than 95 per cent of their global supply.

15. Agatha - eastern Pacific tropical storm which hit central America recently

16. Survey on preferred FDI destinations:

By ‘European attractiveness survey': 1. China 2. W. Europe 3. Central and Eastern Europe 4. India

By E & Y : 1. China 2. India 3. Central & Eastern Europe

17. Pollachi coir industry has developed into a major coir centre accounting for a close to Rs. 250 crore export of which Rs. 210 crore is from the coir pith and fibre exports alone. With this it has sought for obtaining the tag of Town of Export Excellence

18. Miss Ellie, a small, bug-eyed Chinese Crested Hairless dog whose pimples and lolling tongue helped her win Animal Planet's ‘World's Ugliest Dog' contest in 2009, has died at age 17 after a career in resort show business.

19.Vaxiflu-S - India's first indigenously manufactured anti-influenza vaccine that will protect people against the A(H1N1) flu, manufactured by Zydus-Cadila Healthcare

20.K.G. Balakrishnan - appointed as the sixth chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).

21. Gershwin Prize, the highest American award for popular song - awarded to Sir Paul McCartney in 2010.Created in 2007 by the Library of Congress, the prize is named for brothers George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin, whose contributions to popular music included songs such as "I Got Rhythm," "Embraceable You," and "Someone to Watch Over Me," the orchestral pieces Rhapsody in Blue and An American in Paris, and the opera Porgy and Bess. The first recipient of the award was Paul Simon

22.World'slargest IPO so far - China's biggest bank, the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, raising at least $19.1 billion in a dual listing on the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges

The previous record was a $18.4-billion initial stock offer by Japanese mobile phone company NTT DoCoMo in 1998.

The proposed IPO by Agricultural Bank of China Limited (ABC) in China may overtake Industrial & Commercial Bank of China as the biggest IPO in the world