Intellectual Property Facilitation Cell (IPFC), Department of Defence Production, Ministry of Defence and National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), Ministry of Science and Technology, yesterday signed an MoU with a vision to bridge the capacity shortfall and provide a major fillip to the ongoing efforts of Ministry of Defence towards promoting a culture of Innovation and Intellectual Property Rights IPR in Indian Defence industry. 

An official release said, the move will be a boost to the Mission Raksha Gyan Shakti. It may be recalled that Mission Raksha Gyan Shakti was launched with the aim to inculcate IP culture in Indian defence manufacturing ecosystem. 

Under this mission, an IPFC has been established under the aegis of Directorate General Quality Assurance (DGQA) which has within a short span of a year achieved the challenging target of training more than 12,000 personnel on IPR and facilitating the filing of more than 1000 new IPR applications.

Delhi girl Isha Kanth has made India proud after being selected for a prestigious internship with the International Court of Justice.

The 20-year-old, who did her higher secondary in humanities from Sanskriti School, Delhi, is pursuing her graduation in law at Queen Mary University, London. 

The ICJ internship is offered to just two candidates from across the world. Isha’s father Pratyush Kanth, while speaking to this newspaper, said that his daughter wanted to work in India for the poor and the marginalised after completing her master’s course. 

The Railway Protection Force (RPF) registered 732 cases against 801 persons for selling unauthorised water bottle brands across 18 zones including the East Central Railway (ECR), headquarter at Hajipur in Bihar, on July 8 and 9 respectively. 

The nationwide arrests were conducted under 'Operation Thirst' launched across the Indian Railway (IR) following the direction of director general of RPF A Kumar given to all the chief security commissioners.

Ravindra Verma, chief security commissioner of RPF in ECR, said, "A total 732 cases of selling unauthorised brands of bottled water were registered during the Operation Thirst and 801 persons including 154 from Bihar were arrested under 114 and 133 of the Railway Act."

An internal committee of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which was set up to review timings of different financial markets, suggested that the foreign exchange market could function from 9 am to 9 pm At present, the currency market works from 9 am to 5 pm.

“Calibrated extension of market hours, and to begin with, revised market timings of 9 am — 9 pm, may be considered to gauge demand and potential benefits,” the draft report of the committee said.

With rising focus on reducing dependency on carbon-based fuel for electricity generation, the government has waived off basic customs duty (BCD) for a clutch of products which are imported for nuclear power plants and allocated more funds in atomic energy research.

The French government is to impose a tax of up to 18 euros ($20) on plane tickets for all flights from airports in France to fund less-polluting transportation projects, a minister said Tuesday.

The move, which will take effect from 2020, will see a tax of 1.5 euros imposed on economy-class tickets on internal flights and those within Europe, with the highest tariff applied to business-class travellers flying outside the bloc, Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne said.

The new measure is expected to bring in some 182 million euros a year which will be invested in greener transport infrastructures, notably rail, she said.

State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender, reduced its benchmark lending rate by 5 bps across all loan tenures. The lender’s one-year marginal cost of funds based lending rate (MCLR) will be 8.4% compared with 8.45% from Wednesday.

“Interest rates on all loans linked to MCLR stand reduced by 5 bps with effect from 10th July 2019. This is the third rate cut in the current financial year. With today’s MCLR cut, the reduction in the home loan rates since April 10, 2019 is 20 bps,” SBI said.

The move comes after RBI decided to cut its repo rate by 25 bps last month. RBI has reduced the repo rate by 75 bps in 2019.

Walmart Labs, the technology arm of the US retail giant, has acqui-hired health tech start-up FloCare and B2B trading platform BigTrade for an undisclosed amount. Walmart has brought on-board the teams of the two Bengaluru-based companies to help strengthen its customer technology and supply chain.

“We are in an exciting phase of transformation and it feels great to add terrific minds from the startup ecosystem in India to our growing team,” said Hari Vasudev, centre head and vice president – technology, Walmart Labs India. “Walmart’s online pharmacy and supply chain business are renowned across the globe and I am sure the FloCare and BigTrade teams will strengthen our capabilities as we strive to build awesome omnichannel customer experiences around the globe,” Vasudev added.

Former India football goalkeeper A. U. Celestine, passed away here on Monday. He was ailing for a while. He was 73, and is survived by his wife and son.

Celestine played for the Tamil Nadu men’s team in the senior Nationals as a ‘keeper in the 1965 and ‘69 National championships. He represented India in the Merdeka Cup in Malaysia in 1969.

He joined Reserve Bank of India, Madras in 1967. His contemporaries include Poyyathoppan, Orlando, Raju, Gunapandi, Thomas, Kosshy, Edwin Ross and Victor. Later, he was also the member in-charge for the Reserve Bank FC.

The second India-Russia Strategic Economic Dialogue will be held in New Delhitoday. It will be held under the chairmanship of NITI Aayog Vice Chairman RajivKumar and Deputy Minister of the Economic Development of Russia, TimurMaksimov.

The meeting will focus on six core areas of cooperation, including developmentof transport infrastructure and technologies, agriculture and agro-processingsector and small and medium business support. The first Dialogue was held inSt. Petersburg in November last year.