Daily News Notes

· The government will double investment(abt 1 trillion under PPP) in the next five years to speed up development of infrastructure in the country as to achive a 9% growth. An Infrastructure Debt Fund is being set up to enhance the work on the long term projects.
· The Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC) had projected industry to grow by 7.1 per cent in the current fiscal. The government, in February had pegged it at 8.6 per cent. The IIP had grown by 7.8 per cent in 2010-11. The PMEAC has projected GDP to grow by 8.2 per cent this fiscal.
· Despite three rounds of vaccination for Japanese Encephalitis the disease continues unabated in the Himalayan foothills of Uttar Pradesh, as the death toll due to encephalitis or brain fever has mounted to 259 this year as four more patients have succumbed to the virus-borne disease during the past 3 days. The dead include mostly children below 14 years of age.
· In Odisha, more than 14 lakh people of about 3,000 villages have been affected by the current wave of flood.
· In Rajasthan, the state government today launched the ambitious Janni Shishu Suraksha Yojna in all the 33 districts. Scheme aims to bring down maternal and child mortality rate in the state. The government will provide free treatment and transport facility to pregnant women and sick infants.
· In Assam, culling of birds in avian flu affected Dhubri district has been intensified.
· In Sikkim, the festival of Pang-Lhab-Sol is being celebrated today in which people worship the Mount Kanchenjungha they revere as their guardian deity. The festival also commemorates the signing of the historic blood brotherhood treaty between the ethnic Bhutia and Lepcha tribes in the thirteenth century AD.
· The Industrial growth in July this year fell to 3.3 percent compared to 9.9 percent in the corresponding month last year.
· The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has called on the Syrian regime to implement serious and immediate reforms that honour aspirations of the Syrian people.
· Iran is to formally inaugurate Bushehr plant today, its new nuclear power plant whose construction was started in 1975 by several German companies. However, work was halted when the United States imposed an embargo on hi-tech supplies to Iran after the 1979 revolution. Russia signed a contract with Iran in 1998 to complete the construction.
· In Pakistan, people in many cities and big towns have been badly affected by dengue fever. WTO confirmed 2,726 Dengue virus cases in Pakistan.
· India beat Pakistan 4-2 in a penalty shootout in the final of Asian Champions Trophy hockey tournament at Ordos in China last evening.