1 JANUARY 2014

Ø  Vice Chief of the Air Staff (VCAS) Arup Raha takes over as 24th Chief of the Air Staff from N.A.K. Browne at Vayu Bhawan.

Ø  A prestigious journalism award, instituted by a trust founded by Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, will be conferred on Mammen Mathew, Chief Editor and Managing Director of Malayala Manorama . The Lokmanya Tilak National Award for Excellence in Journalism, instituted by the Kesari-Mahratta Trust, consists of Rs.1 lakh and a memento.

Ø  Maldivian President Yameen Abdul Gayoom will arrive here on Wednesday on his first official foreign visit after winning the elections in November.  New Delhi has given his trip the status of a state visit.

Ø  India will sign on Thursday a labour cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia, which will benefit a quarter of the 28 lakh Indians working in the Gulf kingdom. Labour Minister Abdul Fakieh, will sign the agreement with Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vyalar Ravi, Syed Akbaruddin. Mr. Fakieh will meet External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid on Friday. The meeting comes at a time when India has been invited for an international conference to discuss the Syrian situation, in which Saudi Arabia has huge stakes.

Ø  A group of volunteers from different parts of Assam have made an innovation of sorts by designing an Assamese word processor similar to the Microsoft Word with a spell checker and word suggestions to boot. Named Jahnabi, the word processor has came as a boon for those who need help in writing the language and can be easily used by those with a rudimentary knowledge of Assamese. The website www.jahnabi.org has received more than 60,000 hits and the free-of-cost software has been downloaded by more than 1,000 people since it was launched online.

Ø  Chen Guangbiao, listed as one of China’s 400 richest people and a man known as much for his publicity stunts as his wealth, claims he is in talks to buy The New York Times .

Ø  Four foreign direct investment (FDI) proposals, including that of Mahle Holding India and HBO India, totalling Rs.502 crore have been cleared by the government.