2010- AT A GLANCE PART 2

▪The 8th ASEAN-India Summit was held at Hanoi, Vietnam on October 30, 2010.

▪Malaysia is the second largest trading partner for India within ASEAN, and India is the largest trading partner for Malaysia in South Asia, excluding China. Bilateral trade between the two countries is now estimated at $ 10.5 billion, and this has doubled in the past five years.

▪India and its old military partner Russia will soon ink a deal to jointly develop an advance stealth fighter. 

India and South Korea have struck a deal to finalise an agreement on civil uses of nuclear energy. This was a major success for India during the PrimeMinister Manmohan Singh’s Asia tour.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has appointed a high-level committee headed by a former Comptroller and Auditor General, V.K. Shunglu, to go into allegations of corruption related to the Commonwealth Games held in New Delhi in October 2010.

Liberhan Commission submitted report to the Prime Minister : The Justice Liberhan Commission, which probed the sequence of events that led to the Babri Masjid demolition in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992, submitted its report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Inflation turns negative for first time since 1977-78 : The annual rate of inflation (wholesale price index) turned negative and stood at -1.61 % for the week ended 6 June 2009.

The first commercial landing of the Airbus A380, the largest aircraft of the world, took place at the newly inaugurated Terminal 3 of the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi.

Former Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan has been appointed as the Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission.He was the first Dalit Chief Justice of India and will be the first Dalit heading NHRC.NHRC was headless for over a year.

India's Export-Import (Exim) Bank has given a loan of $5 million to Burkina Faso to start its first call center with 400 positions. Burkina Faso is also part of India's flagship project - Pan African e-network project. Previously, India also approved the setting up of a tomato processing factory through a line of credit of $15 million in Burkina Faso.

 The Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) at Shamshabad, Hyderabad was declared the World’s Best Airport under the 5 to 15 million passengers category by Airports Council International (ACI). This is the first time that an Indian airport will be featured among the top airports of the world.

International Conference on Biodiversity in relation to food and human security was held in Chennai.

Anti-government protests broke out in Kyrgyzstan and its President Kurmanbek Bakiyev has reportedly left the country and Prime Minister Usenov resigned, clearing the way for the Opposition to form its own government. A “Cabinet of people’s trust” has been headed by Opposition leader Roza Otunbayeva.

China is building a new airport near Mount Everest, to be called ‘Peace Airport’ in Xigaze prefecture in Tibet.

The Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) was held in Washington 

The President of Poland Lech Kaczynski and a high-level delegation were killed when the president’s Tu-154 passenger jet carrying 97 people crashed as it was approaching a Russian airport in the city of Smolensk.

The annual ministerial meeting of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was held in Paris with Economy and Trade Ministers from 40 countries, representing 80 per cent of the world economy attended. India, Russia, Brazil ,China, Indonesia and South Africa have been invited to participate as observers.

The Conservative leader David Cameron took over as Prime Minister and his Liberal Democrat counterpart Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister in the Britain’s first post-war coalition government.

The two-day G-20 summit or the meeting of the heads of the world’s major industrialised powers was held in Toronto, Canada.

Guinea, the West African country is holding in its first free election since independence in 1958.

Julia Gillard was sworn in as Australia’s first woman Prime Minister after Kevin Rudd was toppled as the leader of the ruling Labour party.

Argentina became the first country in Latin America to legalise same-sex marriage.

The Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), developed and applied by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative with UNDP support reveals that there are more ‘MPI poor’ people in eight Indian states (421 million in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal) than in the 26 poorest African countries combined (410 million).

 Ms. Rosa Otunbayeva (59), the first woman President in Central Asia was sworn in Kyrgyzstan.

During the sidelines of a summit of the Eurasian Economic Community (Eurasec) in Astana, Kazakhstan, the three countries Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus signed a declaration to launch a customs union as a first step towards forming a broader EU-type economic alliance of former Soviet states.