Two Indian cities – Delhi and Mumbai – have made it to a top 30 list of the world’s most powerful, productive and connected cities.
●    According to the study conducted by international real estate consultancy JLL, India’s financial capital Mumbai has been ranked 22nd while the national capital Delhi is placed at the 24th spot.
●    The list is topped by Tokyo, which along with New York, London and Paris make the top four ‘super cities’.
●    These four were the destinations of over 50 per cent of all foreign capital invested in the “Global Top 30″ cities. 
●    Mumbai is also on the top-10 “improvers” list.
●    Top-10 improvers are cities whose scores in the index of “commercial attraction” have improved the most over the past year.
 

Children living on the streets without identity papers are likely to get Aadhaar cards as well as bank accounts soon under the RBI-mandated Jan Dhan Yojana. 
●    This was disclosed by charity, Save the Children, during the course of a workshop on ‘Vulnerable children and families of displaced communities’ here on Tuesday.
●    Sixty per cent of street children have no identity papers. And if they are displaced people or refugees like the Rohingyas in Hyderabad, the children are scared to disclose their identity. 
●    The statistics reveal the city is not friendly to its marginalised citizens. 
●    “A big chunk of the youngsters in the city are migrants from rural Telangana,” said Ms. Singh. 
●    About 78.7 per cent of the street children are from Telangana while 12 per cent are from Andhra Pradesh, according to the census.
 

Indigenous made Light Combat Aircraft, Tejas will make its maiden appearance in upcoming Republic Day parade by participating in the fly past over historic Rajpath.
●    Maruts were the fighter-bombers manufactured by HAL during the 60s. It was India's first jet aircraft.
●    The Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) "Tejas" was inducted into No. 45v Squadron named 'Flying Daggers' of the Indian Air Force (IAF) on 01 July 2016.
●    'Tejas' is the first advance Fly by Wire (FBW) fighter aircraft designed, developed and manufactured in India. 
●    The aircraft has been designed and developed by Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) and produced by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). 
●    LCA by now has clocked 2000 hrs till date in its 3000 sorties and without any accident. Tejas Squadron is presently operating from Bangaluru and will moved to Sulur airbase near Coimbatore soon.’
●    IAF disclosed that 35 Aircraft will be participating in the fly past this year’s Republic day parade. 
●    From Combat Aircraft like the Jaguars, SU 30, to MI 35 and MI17 V5  helicopters along with the Light Combat Helicopter Rudra and LCH Dhruv will take part in the parade. 
●    C17 Globemaster and the C130J Hercules will be the transport aircraft flying past in various formations along the Rajpath.
 

India has been ranked 60th among 79 developing economies, below neighbouring China and Pakistan, in the inclusive development index, according to a WEF report. 
●    WEF’s ‘Inclusive Growth and Development Report 2017’, released today, said that most countries are missing important opportunities to raise economic growth and reduce inequality at the same time because the growth model and measurement tools that have guided policymakers for decades require significant readjustment.
●    The Inclusive Development Index (IDI) is based on 12 performance indicators. In order to provide a more complete measure of economic development than GDP growth alone, the index has three pillars — Growth and Development, Inclusion and Intergenerational Equity, and Sustainability.
●    Lithuania tops the list of 79 developing economies that also features Azerbaijan and Hungary at second and third positions, respectively. 
●    While India is placed at the 60th spot, many of the neighbouring nations are ahead in the rankings. China is ranked at the 15th position, Nepal (27th), Bangladesh (36th) and Pakistan (52nd).
●    Two BRIC nations, Russia and Brazil, are at 13th and 30th places, respectively. Others in the top ten are Poland (4th), Romania (5th), Uruguay (6th), Latvia (7th), Panama (8th), Costa Rica (9th) and Chile (10th).
 

In order to curtail malpractices in the advertisement of AYUSH drugs, the Ministry of AYUSH has signed a MoU with the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI). 
●    Addressing the cases of misleading advertisements with respect to Ayurveda, 
●    Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy drugs, treatments and related services, ASCI will comprehensively monitor these advertisements across print and electronic media. 
●    The MoU was signed by  Advisor (Ayurveda), Ministry of AYUSH Dr, Dinesh Chan Katoch and Chairman, ASCI Shri Srinivasan K Swamy in the presence of Secretary AYUSH Shri Ajit M Sharan at New Delhi.
●     ASCI has been given a self-monitoring mandate by the Ministry of AYUSH to identify potentially misleading advertisement in the AYUSH sector and process complaints through its Consumer Complaints Council (CCC). 
●    The Ministry of AYUSH will also redirect complaints against misleading advertisements they receive, to the ASCI, which will be reviewed using ASCI’s code and guidelines. 
●    The MoU also requires ASCI to report to the Ministry of AYUSH, all advertisements in potential violation of the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954 and Rules thereunder as well as non-compliance of ASCI’s CCC recommendations for the Ministry of AYUSH to take further action.

The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee inaugurated the 28th Dantan Gramin Mela -2017 at Dantan, Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal yesterday (19th January, 2017).
●    Speaking on the occasion, the President Pranab Mukherjee expressed concern over growing tensions and difference of opinion in society. 
●    Referring to the violence in different parts of the world, the President said the general trend of human society is for people to love each other and co-exist, not spread hatred. 
●    Rural fairs like Dantan Gramin Mela promote brotherhood, harmony and peaceful co-existence among people. 
●    They reflect the eternal wisdom of rural areas and increase friendship amongst different sections of society.
 

The first Raisina-Dialogue 2017, a flagship conference on Geopolitics and Geo-economics began in New Delhi. 
●    The three day conference is joint initiative of Union Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and Observer Research Foundation (ORF), an independent think tank based in India. 
●    The geo-political conference was attended by over 250 delegates from 65 countries.
●    The theme of Raisina-Dialogue 2017 is “The New Normal: Multilateralism in a multipolar world”. 
●    It will enable the MEA to reach out to a wider international multi-disciplinary audience. 
●    It will focus on Asia’s economic, physical, human and digital connectivity and shall attempt to discover challenges and opportunities for the region to manage its common spaces. 
●    It will provide platform to explore prospects and opportunities for Asian integration as well as Asia’s Integration with the whole world.
 

Union Minister of MSME, Shri Kalraj Mishra today inaugurated Workshop on MSME Cooperation amongst Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) Member countries. Speaking on the occasion, he said that this workshop will strengthen economic relationship amongst the member countries in the field of trade and investment facilitation especially in MSME sector. He also stated that India has  Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) with 18 countries for cooperation in MSME sector. The National Small Industries Corporation of India, Public Sector Enterprise under the Ministry of MSME has 34 MoUs with its counterpart organizations of foreign countries for cooperation in MSME sector.
●    Shri Mishra also stated that this Workshop on SME cooperation will facilitate exchange of ideas, concerns and experiences of IORA member states and would help evolve a common MoU to address the emerging challenges in the region in MSME sector. He emphasized that the resilience in IORA over the last 20 years has been its innate strength. IORA’s evolution and growth have consistently seen an upward trajectory. He said that this strength must be reinforced by ensuring independence of strategy and priority. The onus of strengthening the regionalism in a composite manner must rest first on the shoulders of IORA members themselves.
●    Minister of State for MSME Shri Haribhai Parthibhai Chaudhary has emphasized that the IORA region has emerged as a strong one with the highest growth prospects in the world. He also stated that India and IORA together represent a huge market in which suppliers can build scale and efficiency and investors can allocate capital most productively.
●    IORA Secretary General, Shri Bhagirath spoke about the IORA secretariat’s efforts in enhancing cooperation between the IORA member countries in terms of industrial and cultural cooperation. He also spoke about how the MSMEs in the IORA member countries help in alleviating poverty by creating more job opportunities.
●    Secretary MSME, Shri KK Jalan said that with the combined population of over 2 billion, IORA and India represent a vast market for goods and services and it is highly attractive due to large segment of high consuming middle class of about 600 million persons in India. He also expressed that this workshop will inspire the member countries to further cooperation and seek opportunities to support the progress towards mutual goals.
 

Addressing the inaugural session at the two-day International Symposium on Medicinal and Aromatic plants of India here today, the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh said that lifestyle diseases like Diabetes Mellitus Type 2 require holistic management and with more than 65% to 70% of India’s population today being less than 40 years of age, Diabetes and heart attack in young are going to be the main challenges ahead, because these tend to affect the youth potential which is imperative in the task of nation building.
●    Dr Jitendra Singh referred to the change of disease spectrum of India over the last few decades and said that India today has evolved from an era of communicable diseases into an era of non-communicable diseases like Diabetes Mellitus, heart attack, lipid disorders, hypertension and other metabolic diseases. 
●    Even though a number of new remedies and medicinal options are available for the treatment of these diseases, he said, the basic Mantra is still based on lifestyle modifications and natural methods, and for this purpose, the various Indian medicine regimens incorporated in Naturopathy, Yoga and other indigenous therapies find a contributory role, he added.
●    India is the fountain- head and original birth-place of all the aromatic and medicinal plants, said Dr Jitendra Singh and regretted that in the last few decades, most of the research on the Indian medicinal plants was conducted in other countries and not in India. To that extent, he said, the Central Government has tried to vindicate the lapse of the earlier decades.
 

In a recent discovery by Dyavanapalli Satyanarayana, ten prehistoric rock art sites in one cluster of four kilometers area with hundreds of red and white colour paintings in Daasarlapalli, Mulugu Mandal of Siddipet District and Yadaram of Medchal District is attracting a lot of attention.
●    On the southern face of the stone two elephants with tusks and trunks lifted are engraved as leaping further.
●    The time period of the engravings cannot easily be determined a Hanuman figure is also chiseled nearby the elephant figures during subsequent times,” says Satyanarayana.
●    In the last six-and-a-half decades the Department of Archaeology discovered 68 sites but in the last few years Satyanarayana has discovered 26 ones across Telangana.
●    Generally rock paintings are said to be 200 years old but there have been some discoveries that are much older.