Get all the details of the big national and international news so that you are up to date with the goings-on in India and the world.
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of Paperless Vanijya Bhawan in New Delhi.
- The new building will house the Department of Commerce when its construction is completed.
- The Paperless Vanijya Bhawan will be a completely paperless office, and have state-of-the-art facilities such as smart access control, central air-conditioning, video conferencing and completely networked systems.
- The Department of Commerce is currently housed in Udyog Bhawan.
SEBI modifies regulations on share buyback, shortens timeline for IPO
- The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has announced a reduction in the timeline for the announcement of Initial Public Offering (IPO) prices.
- The timeline for announcing IPOs has been reduced from 5 days to 2 days.
- The minimum anchor investor size has been reduced to Rs.2 crore from the existing Rs.10 crore.
- For Market Infrastructure Institutions (MIIs), foreign and domestic entities will be able to hold shares of up to 15%. (Up until now, only a few investors were allowed to hold 15% stake in exchanges and depositories.)
Paul Polman to succeed Sunil Mittal as ICC Chairman
- Sunil Bharti Mittal, Founder and Chairman of Bharti Enterprises, will step down as Chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC).
- Mittal will be succeeded by Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever.
- Mittal will assume the role of ICC Honorary Chair from July 1, 2018.
- Also, Ajay Banga, President and CEO of MasterCard, has been appointed as the next ICC First Vice-Chair.
Kota sets record as 2 lakh people perform yoga
- The Gujarat city of Kota received a Guinness World Record as nearly 2 lakh people performed yoga on the occasion of International Yoga Day.
- The previous record was of 55,524 people performing yoga, which was set in 2017 in Mysore.
- The yogic session was presided over by Baba Ramdev.
India hits back at USA’s tariffs on steel, aluminium, raises import duties on US farm, steel products
- Retaliating to Donald Trump’s decision to increase tariffs on products shipped from India, the Indian Government raised tariffs on many US items.
- India has imposed higher tariffs on agriculture and steel products imported from the US.
Gujarat launches wind-solar hybrid power policy
- In order to make optimum utilisation of the land and grid, the Gujarat government has announced wind-solar hybrid power policy.
- As per the policy, the developers of existing solar projects will be able to use the same land for setting up wind and solar power units.
- The electricity generated from these hybrid projects will be exempted from energy charges.
- The policy provides 50% concession for cross-subsidy surcharge.
- For captive users, the hybrid projects will have a complete waiver on cross-subsidy surcharge and additional surcharge.
- Gujarat currently generates more than 5,500 MW through wind power and 1,600 MW through solar power.
Microsoft acquires education video start-up Flipgrid
- Microsoft has purchased Flipgrid, which is a start-up that deals with educational software.
- Flipgrid has 20 million users all over the world, including teachers, students and parents.
- Flipgrid will now be completely free for schools. Previously, the service cost $1,000 each year per school.
- The three-year-old start-up company raised $17 million in venture funding.
- The acquisition comes one-and-a-half years after Microsoft announced a partnership with Flipgrid.
Sensex loses 115 points, Nifty 31 points
- After large gains on Wednesday, both Sensex and Nifty fell sharply on Thursday.
- Heavy selling caused BSE’s Sensex closed at 35,396.97 points, 114.94 points lower (0.32%), while NSE Nifty50 closed at 10,741.10 points, down 30.95 points (0.29%).
- Stocks in Europe and Asia declined, and global markets were dominated by US-China trade war fears.
