13 JANUARY 2014

Ø  India will on January 30 revise its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate for 2011-12 from 6.2 to about 7 per cent.

Ø  India completes three years without reporting any case of polio. It is only the second time in the history that a disease is being eliminated in India through immunisation after small pox in May 1980. India’s being declared polio-free is particularly important because it was the only country in the South East Asian region with polio cases. India carried a large burden of polio disease but has made impressive progress in the past 35 months. The number of polio cases came down from 741 in 2009 to 42 in 2010 and just one in 2011 – from West Bengal. No polio case has been reported in the country since then.

Ø  Notwithstanding Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s stand against taking security cover, the Ghaziabad Police have decided to provide ‘Z’ category protection to him from Monday. According to the plan by the district police, 30 personnel would be deployed round-the-clock to provide him security.

Ø  South Korean President Park Geun-hye will arrive here this week on a largely symbolic visit, during which there will not be much for Seoul to cheer on its wish-list of disentangling the multibillion dollar Posco project in Odisha and allotment of a nuclear park to Korea Electric Company on the lines of the ones given to U.S., French and Russian nuclear power companies. Normally, first-year South Korean presidential visits are earmarked for close and important partners such as the U.S., Russia, China and Japan. Ms. Park was elected in April last year. New Delhi and Seoul have now posted defence attaches in each other’s countries and India is poised to make the first purchase of South Korean military equipment in the form of minesweepers. In view of the heavily tilted balance of trade in Seoul’s favour, India is keen on faster entry for its pharmaceutical and IT companies.

Ø  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will lay the foundation stone on Monday for a nuclear power project near Gorakhpur village in Fatehbad district of Haryana. The project will comprise two reactors of 700 MWe each. They are Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) that will use natural uranium as fuel and heavy water as both coolant and moderator.