Indian-American Thomas Kurian, former Oracle President of product development and technologist, will become the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Google Cloud in early 2019. Thomas Kurian will replace Diane Greene. Thomas Kurian will join Google Cloud on 26th November 2018. Diane Greene will continue as CEO till January 2019 and help Thomas Kurian transition into the leadership role. Thomas Kurian resigned from Oracle in September 2018. He had worked in Oracle for 22 years. He had been a member of Oracle’s Executive Committee for 13 years. He hails from Bengaluru.

• The report titled ‘Children, HIV and AIDS: The World in 2030’ was released by UNICEF on 29 November 2018.
• According to the report, in India, an estimated 120,000 children and adolescents aged 0-19 were living with HIV in 2017.
• The report noted that South Asia has made substantial progress in reducing HIV risks and vulnerability among children, adolescents, pregnant women and mothers.

On November 29, 2018, the High Level Empowered Committee (HLEC) chaired by Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha released its recommendations for stressed thermal power projects. This committee was set up by Government of India in July 2018 and aimed at suggesting measures to resolve the challenges faced by the thermal projects. This report focused on 34 thermal power stations, totaling to a capacity of 40 gigawatt (GW), which are entirely fuelled by coal and lignite. The problems arose when after the twelth Five Year Plan, 99 GW capacity of plants were added against a requirement of 88GW which led to overabundance and lower productivity. Other factors included: the debt burden of the distribution utilities and the financial stress and the erratic coal supply.

The Sustainable Blue Economy Conference, co-hosted by Kenya, Canada and Japan, was held in Nairobi.

Scientists have found that MRI brain scans can help predict whether a person will develop dementia in the next three years before the symptoms of the disorder appear. In a study, researchers from Washington University and the University of California, San Francisco in the US used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans to predict dementia with 89 per cent accuracy.

On 27th November 2018, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) issued norms for interoperability among clearing corporation which is expected to bring down the compliance costs for market intermediaries and thereby the trading costs a well. Interoperability among clearing corporations means linking of multiple clearing corporations in order to allow market participants to effectively consolidate their clearing and settlement functions at the single clearing corporation. SEBI has directed all the clearing corporations to establish peer-to-peer link for ensuring interoperability. Interoperability will lead to efficient allocation of capital for the market participants.

On November 29, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has successfully launched its earth observation satellite ‘ Hyper Spectral Imaging Satellite (HysIS) into orbit from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. Beside HysIS, The rocket ‘PSLV-C43’ successfully injected 30 small satellites of 8 nations into their designated orbits. With this launch, India will have an eye in the sky to capture the images of the earth surface in high definition. The satellite HysIS can send pictures and data in multiple frequencies with high resolution. Its data will be useful in many fields including agriculture, forestry, soil survey, geology, coastal zone studies, inland water studies, environmental monitoring and pollution detection from industries. The primary mission of the HysIS, whose mission life is five years, is to study the earth’s surface in visible, near infrared and shortwave infrared regions of the electromagnetic spectrum. In simple words, HysIS is the India’s first hyperspectral imaging satellite for advanced Earth observation and ISRO’s first full-scale working satellite with this capability.

The government will give a subsidy of 5 percent for non-basmati rice exports for the four months to 25 March, 2019