1st week of July - CA

1. India's growing trade deficit

April-May 2010:
country exported goods and services worth $33.03 billion (Rs149,111 crore) while cumulative value of imports for April-May 2010 stood at $54.75 billion (Rs247,211 crore), recording an increase of $21.71 billion (Rs125,100 crore).


2. Net International Investment Position

The difference between a country's external financial assets and liabilities is the net international investment position (NIIP)

A country's international investment position (IIP) is a financial statement setting out the value and composition of that country's external financial assets and liabilities.

International Investment Position = domestically owned foreign assets - foreign owned domestic assets.

In layman's terms, it means the difference between the amount of foreign investment in India and Indian investment abroad

So what is India's NIIP?

As of end-March 2010 increased by $94.8 billion over the previous financial year, primarily due to increase in net inflow of portfolio and direct investment in India.

India's total external financial liabilities went up by $127.5 billion to $536.5 billion as of end-March 2010 over the previous year.

Total external financial assets increased by $32.6 billion to $378.8 billion as of end-March 2010 from $346.2 billion at end-March 2009

3. India's Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is partnering Swedish company Saab in fitting its CARABAS (Coherent All RAdio BAnd Sensing)

radar on the HAL-developed Dhruv Advanced Light Helicopter (ALH). This would allow the scanning of wide swathes of territory to detect deep buried IEDs well in advance.

Recently Naxal IEDs have been playing havoc in parts of central India causing extensive casualties amongst para-military personnel.

The CARABAS radar is designed to detect metallic components of an IED, even when it is buried deep below the ground. A computer scan of fresh images of a particular area, compared to previous images of the same area, allow the detection of any new metallic objects recently embedded. With such information in hand the IEDs can be defused of by bomb disposal squads.


4.After nearly a five-year wait, India has finally become a full-fledged member of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an inter-governmental body responsible for setting global standards on anti-money laundering (AML) and combating financing of terrorism (CFT).

With its induction as the 34th member-country of the global body that chalks out policies to counter financial frauds, India will have access to information on suspicious financial transactions in Switzerland, China, the U.S. and the U.K. The development marks a significant step towards tracing the source of terror financing and black money stashed away in tax havens abroad.

5. Ending six decades of hostility, China and Taiwan signed a historic trade pact under which Beijing generously granted tariff cuts and concessions to hundreds of products to export dependent Taipei.

The Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) pact, which was finalised after months of excruciating negotiations signed by both sides in China’s Chongqing city . The new deal was expected to boost their $110 billion bilateral trade to a new high with Taiwan expected to make the most of it.

6. Access to Medicine Index:

- The companies are graded on many factors, including whether they offer lower prices or donate drugs in poor countries, whether they license generic versions of their products or fight to prevent them, whether they donate expertise or money to struggling health systems and whether they do research on neglected diseases

- GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Novartis have taken the top three spots again on the Access to Medicine Index, which ranks pharmaceutical companies on how readily they make their products available to the world's poor. It was the second time the rankings, which were created in 2008, have been issued. This time, 95 per cent of the brand-name companies approached by the Dutch foundation that started the index agreed to provide information; two years ago, only about half did


- The index is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Dutch and British governments, Oxfam and other donors

- For the first time, generic drugmakers were ranked separately. Three Indian companies, Ranbaxy Laboratories, Cipla and Dr. Reddy's, took the top three spots.


7. Steps taken by government in the textile sector:

- scheme for integrated textile park (SITP) - to supplement the efforts of the industry by providing state-of-the-art infrastructure facilities in textile growth centres. Forty parks have been sanctioned throughout the country

- Recent inaguration of Dodballapur Integrated Textile Park at Benguluru

- subsidy of Rs912 crore to 7,383 beneficiaries within 3 working days under the Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (TUFS)

- inclusion of sericulture and allied activities in the central government's Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY), extending the various benefits to the silk industry.

- The Central Silk Board, Bengalure in association with Indian Space Research Organisation intends to take up remote sensing imagery rogramme in eight sericulture districts to assess mulberry acreage in the country

8. Aditya Puri, managing director of HDFC Bank Limited and Sam Ghosh, CEO of Reliance Capital, have won nominations as `Asian Captain of Finance 2010' in a poll conducted by `Institutional Investor' magazine

9. Resveratrol — found in red wine — stops out-of-control blood vessel growth in the eye

10.Induction of two new warships to Indian Navy:

- The Indian Navy inducted two indigenously built fast attack craft, INS Cankarso and INS Kondul

- Fitted with a 30-mm CRN-91 gun and Igla missiles and light and heavy machine guns, the warships will be tasked to detect, locate and destroy small but fast-moving enemy surface craft engaged in covert operations

- INS Cankarso and INS Kondul, named after two islands off Goa and in Nicobar, have a displacement of 325 tons each and reach a speed of 35 knots.

11. Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) announced its seventh oil discovery in exploration block CB-ONN -2003/1 (CB 10 A&B) in the Cambay basin off the Gujarat cost, at a distance of 130 km from Ahmedabad

- The block, awarded under the NELP-V round of exploration bidding, covers an area of 635-sq km in two parts, viz. Part A and Part B. RIL, as operator, holds 100 per cent participating interest (PI) in the block.

12. Research on effects of oil spill:

Oil spills can increase levels of toxic arsenic in the ocean, creating an additional long-term threat to the marine ecosystem

Arsenic is a poisonous chemical element found in minerals and it is present in oil. High levels of arsenic in seawater can enable the toxin to enter the food chain. It can disrupt the photosynthesis process in marine plants and increase the chances of genetic alterations that can cause birth defects and behavioural changes in aquatic life

For their research, the team analysed a mineral called goethite, one of the most abundant ocean sediments in the world, which is an iron bearing oxide.

13. Rana Kapoor, founder, managing director and CEO of YES Bank, has been conferred with the `Indian Business Leader of the Year' award at the Global Indian Business Meeting held in Madrid

14. The Banker magazines' annual survey

four UK-based banks figure in the top 15 in the list of biggest 1,000 global lenders
In terms of size:

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) - 4th
HSBC - 1st
Barclays Bank - 4th
Lloyd's - 12th

The US, home to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, is the most powerful banking centre in the world, followed by the UK at the second spot, according the survey.

The Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, the China Construction Bank and Goldman Sachs are the most profitable banks in the world according to the survey.

15. foundation of Rohtang tunnel near Manali
The idea of constructing a tunnel beneath the Rohtang Pass at 13,000 feet was envisaged in 1983 and its construction received an impetus after the Kargil conflict


16. Indian-American Nisha Desai Biswal - has been nominated to the post of Assistant Administrator for Asia in the United States Agency for International Development (USAID),

17. scientists have discovered the oldest fossils of a multi- cellular organism Shaped like biscuits, the specimens are 200 million years older than for any previous claim

The ancient macrofossils were discovered near Franceville in Gabon two years ago.

After analysing their structure and chemical content, it emerged the specimens were not rock formations, but the remains of living organisms.

The first traces of life were simple "prokaryotic" organisms, which appeared 3.5 billion years ago, while 600 million years ago the Earth underwent The Cambrian Explosion - where oxygen levels in the atmosphere soared alongside a huge proliferation in the numbers of different species of life.

18. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) proposed limiting annual salary increases of CEOs or wholetime directors of private banks to 10-15 per cent, besides a provision for slashing remuneration in case of poor financial showing.

19. India's external debt as of end-March 2010 increased by $36.9 billion to $261.4 billion, recording an increase of 16.5 per cent over the end-March 2009 level even as the external debt to GDP ratio stood at 18.9 per cent. The increase is attributed to a significant increase in IMF liabilities due to additional allocations of SDR, commercial borrowings, NRI deposits and short-term trade credits

20. Key component identified that helps plants go green

Plants have an array of photoreceptors that are tuned to different wavelengths of light. One type, called phytochromes, are sensitive to red and far-red light and play a major role in the making of chloroplasts and the growth of the stem

One of the first things that happens when the plant detects light is that these phytochromes move from the cell's cytoplasm to its nucleus, where the genes are kept. The photoreceptors gather in discrete spots known as phytochrome nuclear bodies

Identification of a new gene called HEMRA(named after Greek goddess of daylight, Hemera), that seems to be required for both the localization and the signaling of phytochrome.

21. Arunachal Pradesh, home to 570 species of orchids, half the number available in the country, is facing problems because of numerous hydro projects, roads, airports and other infrastructure coming up under the Prime Minister’s package.

Over 80 species of orchid, including some rare ones, have been relocated by the forest department in the same climatic zone from the project area of the 2000 MW Lower Subansiri hydro power project being constructed at Gerukamukh by the CPSU major NHPC

- The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Fauna and Flora (CITES) stipulates protection of orchids in their natural habitat and prohibits their export.

Even tourists are not allowed to disturb orchids habitats, which is is punishable under law