June Current Affairs - 2010

·        India is expected to be the world's fastest growing economy by 2018, according to Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the research arm of the Economist magazine.

·        Encouraged by faster growth in trade between India and South Africa, industry body CII forecast a $12-billion business by 2012 between the two nations.

·        Currency notes are used for the bulk of transactions in the country, despite the growing use of instruments like credit cards and electronic payments, RBI Regional Director Surekha Marandi said.

·        The UN Security Council has decided to pull out 2,000 troops from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) this year and fully withdraw its contingent in June 2011.

·        China will soon launch its fourth orbiter into space as part of its indigenous satellite navigation and positioning network known as 'Beidou'.

·        Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said his government will invest Rs 36,000 crore in programmes for providing basic services to urban poor and development of slums.

·        Filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra will be honoured by the organisers of the Indian Film Festival of London (IFFL) for his contribution to cinema during the event which will be held in August.

·        India and Seychelles signed an agreement to promote and protect each other's investments on reciprocal basis to enhance bilateral economic ties.

·        The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has granted $5 million to the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) to strengthen the National Tobacco Control Programme in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, over a three-year period.

·        China is entering into a new and powerful form of relationship with Pakistan. It has decided to allow Pakistan to participate in cross-border trade using the Chinese Yuan as the base currency in dealing with the western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

·        The World Bank approved two projects worth USD 407 million to India, consisting of a USD 300-million credit/loan for scaling up the Sustainable and Responsible Microfinance Project and a USD 107-million loan to strengthen statistical data base.

·        The MCD(Municipal Corporation of Delhi) claimed that it has become the first civic body in the country to win carbon credit through its municipal solid waste compost plant in Okhla area of south Delhi.

·        China has emerged as the world's second biggest arms spender for the second consecutive year after the US, splurging a whopping $100 billion despite the global financial crisis, according to a Swedish think-tank. Latest figures released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), also estimated that some 8,100 nuclear warheads were in operation worldwide in the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, India, Pakistan and Israel. SIPRI said that around 2,000 nuclear warheads were still on "high alert" or ready to be launched within minutes.

·        Prominent taxonomists V Jayachandran Nair and Ramakrishna have bagged the Environment Ministry's prestigious E K Janki Ammal award for plant and animal taxonomy.

·        The Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) announced its huge dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong, which could be the world's largest-ever initial public offering, says a media report. ABC, the biggest bank in China by customers, plans to sell as many as 22.24 billion A shares in its IPO in Shanghai and another 25.4 billion shares in Hong Kong.

·        Former President and distinguished scientist Dr A P J Abdul Kalam said, India would be a developed country by 2020 with the support of science.