Prime Minister Shinzo Abe won a ruling party leadership vote. This win can set him on track to become Japan’s longest-serving premier. Abe defeated former defence minister Shigeru Ishiba in the election for Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) chief.
Tokyo is the capital of Japan
Kumar Mangalam Birla-led $45-billion Aditya Birla Group has sold its entire stake in retail to mid-market private equity firm Samara Capital. Aditya Birla Retail Limited (ABRL) was operating food and grocery retail under the ‘More’ brand.
Walmart acquired Flipkart recently.
A startup incubated at Indian Institute of Technology-Hyderabad (IIT-H) has developed lithium batteries with wide applications in fields of agriculture and aerospace. It is in talks with defence laboratories for applications in tanks, missiles.
Lithium batteries have high energy density.
The Cabinet chaired by PM Narendra Modi approved the Dam Rehabilitation Improvement Project (DRIP). DRIP projects will improve the safety and operational performance of selected 198 existing dams in seven States.
Water is in State list.
On average 39 children out of 1,000 worldwide did not live beyond the age of five in 2017. India’s under-five mortality (U5M) is the same as the world’s average, which has decreased over time. China has shown the sharpest decline in U5M.
MMR in India is 130 per 1,00,000 live birth.
American company SpaceX revealed that Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire, would be the first private paying customer to ride around the Moon aboard the company's next-generation rocket. Big Falcon Rocket will be used for this.
SpaceX is founded by Elon Musk.
BSE, NSE get SEBI approval to launch commodity derivatives. BSE will enter the segment with non-agriculture commodities like metals initially, followed by agricultural commodities subsequently.
BSE is Asia’s first stock exchange
Alibaba has no issues with Govt's mandate of data localization for e-commerce companies in India. Data localization is the act of storing data on any device that is physically present within the borders of a specific country where the data was generated.
Alibaba Group founded in 1999 by Jack Ma.
Government has raised interest rates. PPF and NSC will fetch annual interest rate of 8% as compared to existing 7.6%. Kisan Vikas Patra will yield 7.7%and will now mature in 112 months. Sukanya Samriddhi account will earn higher interest rate of 8.5%
NSC- National Saving Certificate & PPF - Public Provident Fund.
The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) unveiled the second phase of the 10,000 start-ups initiative that will focus on mentoring deep technology ventures in areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML).
NASSCOM is a non-profit organization established in 1988.