Sri Lanka PM Mahinda Rajapaksa to resign

  • Sri Lanka Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa will resign from office.
  • This comes after the Supreme Court refused to stay an order from a lower court, which seeks to restrain Rajapaksa from holding office until it fully heard a case challenging his appointment.
  • Rajapaksa was appointed as prime minister on October 26th this year by President Maithripala Sirisena.

Novelist Amitav Ghosh wins 2018 Jnanpith Award

  • English writer Amitav Ghosh has been honoured with this year’s Jnanpith Award.
  • The literary award is presented to an author for “outstanding contribution towards literature”.

Railways to give TTEs hand-held devices to check seat availability

  • The Indian Railways will soon give hand-held terminals (HHTs) to its staff members.
  • This will allow for computerised on-board ticket checking and allotment of vacant berths.
  • The HHTs were first introduced in the Patna Rajdhani and will be rolled out across India soon.
  • The system will give a real-time reflection of vacant berths to passengers who are boarding trains from stations en-route.

SEBI eases norms around cyber security ops for small market intermediaries

  • The SEBI has relaxed guidelines pertaining to setting up of cyber security operations centres for small market intermediaries, because they lack knowledge in cyber security.
  • Small intermediaries can utilise services of market security operations center (SOC), which is proposed to be set up by market infrastructure institutions (MIIs).
  • Such a centre will be set up as a separate entity and MIIs will have at least 51 per cent stake in the new entity.

MMRDA terminates contract with L&T-Scomi JV, takes over monorail operations

  • The MMRDA has terminated its contract with the L&T-Scomi Engineering consortium that has been operating the country’s first monorail network.
  • The reason for termination is because the Malaysian company has reportedly “failed to meet contractual obligations”.
  • The 19.5-km monorail network on the Chembur-Wadala-Jacob Circle corridor connects the eastern periphery of the island city to the central parts.

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