Daily News Notes

· A new draft Sports Bill giving powers to Appellate Sports Tribunal to recognize or derecognize the National Sports Authorities was unveiled. Earlier these powers were with the government. The ministry has also introduced six exclusion clauses(related to players’ health and the selection process) in the application of Right to Information Act, 2005 to the sports federations and bodies.
· The Government is hopeful that the issue of the striking workers at the Maruti plant in Manesar will be resolved by the end of this week. On the issue of providing service benefit to the contract labors inline to permanent labors he asserted that that it would be implemented soon.
· The Prime Minister in his departure statement, before leaving to Pretoria(SA) said that coordination among IBSA countries in Commerce and Women and Child Development, Economic Situation, United Nations Security Council, sustainable development, the forthcoming meetings of the Conference of Parties under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, and the Conference of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol being hosted by South Africa later this year, & the Rio+20 Conference being hosted by Brazil in 2012, will be discussed. IBSA is a forum which provides the international stage to review comprehensively the international, political and economical environment.
· Inaugurating a function to mark the Silver Jubilee celebrations of India and Asian Development Bank partnership, in New Delhi today, Mr. Mukherjee asserted the country will attain 8.5 to 9 percent growth in the medium to long term but it has to be on alert and respond to the emerging challenges and concerns to achieve the desired objectives. The Minister said that infrastructure development is critical for enhancing productivity and sustaining growth momentum and ADB's help in improving India's infrastructural development and food productivity in order to check the volatility in food prices. Re-emergence of Asia on the world stage calls for renewable efforts to develop on Asian consciousness and four strong bonds of Unity within the region. Asian development bank have pursued and encouraged sub-regional co-operation within Asia through the South Asia sub-regional economic co-operation programme. The President of the Asian Development Bank Haruhiko Kuroda said that the bank remains committed in strengthening its partnership with India in the areas of rural development, water resources management, Agri business, infrastructure development and financial inclusion.
· On the occation of inaugural function of the 4th International Civil Aviation Conference, first time held in Mumbai and India too, the President has urged the world aviation industry to partner with India’s growing civil aviation sector and must continuously negotiate new bilateral treaties to expand access to new and emerging markets for their carriers. The President emphasized that many stake holders of the aviation sector including equipment manufacturers, software developers, infrastructure builders and airport services should interface with each other for sustainable growth. India is likely to conduct 25 bilateral negotiations during this conference.
· China has surpassed the United States to become the European Union's largest trading partner (China-EU trade totaled 49.4 billion dollar in July).