GUJARAT
- Amul ranked 73rd globally among top 100 megabrands
- Homegrown brand Amul has become the only ‘Indian’ brand to be featured in the latest study of the top 100 global megabrands.
- Euromonitor International, a UK-headquartered global market research firm, has ranked Amul at 73 rank at global level in its report ‘Top 100 megabrands: how the world’s fast-moving brands remain at the top’.
- The report is a ranking of the top 100 most successful fast-moving consumer goods(FMCG) brands worldwide released by the global market research company that provides strategic intelligence on industries, companies, economies and consumers around the world.
- Each of the brands making it into the top 100 qualified based on their retail sales value for 2017. The report puts Amul’s brand value in the range of US $ 2 to 3 billion based on the sales that the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) – the marketers of Amul brand – had registered in the financial year 2016-17.
- Amul brand’s turnover is currently US $ 6 billion while its brand value is pegged at US $ 18 billion.
- last year Amul had emerged as top ten milk processors in the world as it was ranked as ninth largest milk processor globally in 2018 by the International Farm Comparison Network (IFCN), a global dairy research network.
INTERNATIONAL
- International Women’s Day: 8 March
- International Women’s Day is being observed on 8 March across the world.
- NGOs and other organisations across the world observe the day on the 8th of March every year to highlight the achievements of women.
- The theme for this year’s women’s day is ‘Think Equal, Build Smart, Innovate for Change’.
- The purpose of the theme is to achieve gender equality by putting innovation by women and girls.
- ISRO and CNES signed to set up a joint maritime surveillance system
- National space agency ISROand French space agency CNES signed an agreement to set up a joint maritime surveillance system in the country in May. K.Sivan, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation, and Jean-Yves Le Gall, President of CNES of France, signed the agreement in Bengaluru.
- The two nations will explore putting up a constellation of low-Earth orbiting satellites that will identify and track the movement of ships globally, and in particular, those moving in the Indian Ocean region where France has its Reunion Islands.
- The CNES-ISRO agreement intends to supply an operational system for detecting, identifying and tracking ships in the Indian Ocean. It provides for a maritime surveillance centre to be set up in India in May this year; sharing of capacity to process existing satellite data and joint development of associated algorithms. The two agencies have put up two climate and ocean weather monitoring satellites Megha-Tropiques (of 2011) and SARAL-AltiKa (2013) that are considered a model.
- Malaysia to join the International Criminal Court
- Malaysia has ratified the Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court (ICC). The UN released a depositary notification indicating Malaysia’s accession to the ICC.
The ICC is a court of last resort meant for the prosecution of serious international crimes. The Rome Statute conferred jurisdiction to the ICC in 2002, allowing the court to consider cases of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression.
- The ICC has territorial jurisdiction over nations that are party to the Rome Statute or have accepted the court’s jurisdiction. Malaysia will officially be the 124th member of the court on June 1, 2019.
NATIONAL
- PM STIAC indentified 9 national missions for Indias sustainable development
- The Prime Minister’s Science, Technology and Innovation Council (PM-STIAC) have identified nine national missions to address major scientific challenges to ensure India’s sustainable development. Through the nine missions, the PM STIAC aims to facilitate collaboration to solve complex problems.
The identified Nine Missions are:
♦ Natural language Translation
♦ Quantum Frontier
♦ Artificial Intelligence
♦ National Biodiversity Mission
♦ Electric Vehicles
♦ BioScience for Human Health
♦ Waste to Wealth
♦ Deep Ocean Exploration
♦ Agnii
- Centre to launch work from home jobs in the IT sector
- The government is working on a scheme to push work-from-home jobs in the IT sector by offering financial incentives to both employees and employers. Incentivising work-from-home jobs through policy-level initiatives can help in creating jobs in the ITES domain while increasing the available talent pool for the sector.
- This will create employment opportunities in the IT/ITES industry, especially for women and differently-abled persons. Currently, the scheme is proposed for a three-year period till March 31, 2022, with an outlay of about Rs.270 crore to create about 50,000 work-from-home jobs.
- The initiative is likely to be launched as phase II of the IT Ministry’s India BPO Promotion Scheme that incentivises firms to set up operations in tier-2 and tier-3 cities in the country. The scheme, launched in 2016, had an outlay of about Rs. 500 crore with an objective to create about 1.45 lakh jobs.
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