22 JANUARY 2015: Big Cat population up by whopping 30%

Ø  As the global business elite converge on Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF), two Central Ministers and two Chief Ministers will be pitching the Modi government’s ambitious ‘Make in India’ programme amid renewed international interest in India’s economic potential. The Indian contingent is being led by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and includes Power Minister Piyush Goyal and the Chief Ministers of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, Devendra Fadnavis and N. Chandrababu Naidu, along with Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian. Industry Secretary Amitabh Kant is also a key member of the Indian contingent.

Ø  Ending an eight-year dispute on spectrum sharing with defence, the Union Cabinet earmarked bands for exclusive use of the security establishment while making available the remaining radio waves for commercial use in telecom and broadcasting.

Ø  Google likes its ambitions sky high. This time, it has gone a little further. The Internet giant, along with Fidelity, has invested $1 billion in Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), the private rocketry company founded by Elon Musk. The move could help Google achieve its aim of bringing satellite Internet to remote corners of the world while giving SpaceX more money for its founder to pursue dreams of going to Mars. In addition to a payoff on its investment, Google may be seeking to put itself into orbit. Last year, Google bought Skybox Imaging, a maker of small, high-resolution imaging satellites, for about $500 million. Google already offers satellite imagery in its Google Earth product but must purchase these images from multiple sources, often receiving what company executives have said is uneven image quality. Google may also be interested in developing satellites with other kinds of sensors, like infrared detectors that show the health of crops, or lasers that can pierce forest canopies to show underlying terrain.

Ø  According to the ‘Status of Tigers in India, 2014’ released recently, tiger numbers rose from 1,706 to 2,226 between 2010 and 2014. The numbers were arrived at by a double sampling approach that brings together data gathered from ground surveys and camera-traps to estimate tiger abundance.