PM Modi lays foundation stone of Paperless Vanijya Bhawan

  • Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of Paperless Vanijya Bhawan in New Delhi.
  • The new building will house the Department of Commerce when its construction is completed.
  • The Paperless Vanijya Bhawan will be a completely paperless office, and have state-of-the-art facilities such as smart access control, central air-conditioning, video conferencing and completely networked systems.
  • The Department of Commerce is currently housed in Udyog Bhawan.

SEBI modifies regulations on share buyback, shortens timeline for IPO

  • The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has announced a reduction in the timeline for the announcement of Initial Public Offering (IPO) prices.
  • The timeline for announcing IPOs has been reduced from 5 days to 2 days.
  • The minimum anchor investor size has been reduced to Rs.2 crore from the existing Rs.10 crore.
  • For Market Infrastructure Institutions (MIIs), foreign and domestic entities will be able to hold shares of up to 15%. (Up until now, only a few investors were allowed to hold 15% stake in exchanges and depositories.)

Paul Polman to succeed Sunil Mittal as ICC Chairman

  • Sunil Bharti Mittal, Founder and Chairman of Bharti Enterprises, will step down as Chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC).
  • Mittal will be succeeded by Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever.
  • Mittal will assume the role of ICC Honorary Chair from July 1, 2018.
  • Also, Ajay Banga, President and CEO of MasterCard, has been appointed as the next ICC First Vice-Chair.

Kota sets record as 2 lakh people perform yoga

  • The Gujarat city of Kota received a Guinness World Record as nearly 2 lakh people performed yoga on the occasion of International Yoga Day.
  • The previous record was of 55,524 people performing yoga, which was set in 2017 in Mysore.
  • The yogic session was presided over by Baba Ramdev.

India hits back at USA’s tariffs on steel, aluminium, raises import duties on US farm, steel products

  • Retaliating to Donald Trump’s decision to increase tariffs on products shipped from India, the Indian Government raised tariffs on many US items.
  • India has imposed higher tariffs on agriculture and steel products imported from the US.

Gujarat launches wind-solar hybrid power policy

  • In order to make optimum utilisation of the land and grid, the Gujarat government has announced wind-solar hybrid power policy.
  • As per the policy, the developers of existing solar projects will be able to use the same land for setting up wind and solar power units.
  • The electricity generated from these hybrid projects will be exempted from energy charges.
  • The policy provides 50% concession for cross-subsidy surcharge.
  • For captive users, the hybrid projects will have a complete waiver on cross-subsidy surcharge and additional surcharge.
  • Gujarat currently generates more than 5,500 MW through wind power and 1,600 MW through solar power.

Microsoft acquires education video start-up Flipgrid

  • Microsoft has purchased Flipgrid, which is a start-up that deals with educational software.
  • Flipgrid has 20 million users all over the world, including teachers, students and parents.
  • Flipgrid will now be completely free for schools. Previously, the service cost $1,000 each year per school.
  • The three-year-old start-up company raised $17 million in venture funding.
  • The acquisition comes one-and-a-half years after Microsoft announced a partnership with Flipgrid.

Sensex loses 115 points, Nifty 31 points

  • After large gains on Wednesday, both Sensex and Nifty fell sharply on Thursday.
  • Heavy selling caused BSE’s Sensex closed at 35,396.97 points, 114.94 points lower (0.32%), while NSE Nifty50 closed at 10,741.10 points, down 30.95 points (0.29%).
  • Stocks in Europe and Asia declined, and global markets were dominated by US-China trade war fears.

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