International Affairs
- Delegates from some 140 countries and territories on Thursday signed a United Nations treaty to control mercury near the site of Japan's worst industrial poisoning, after Tokyo pledged $2 billion to help poorer nations combat pollution.
- Pakistan rearrested former president Pervez Musharraf on Thursday following accusations that he was personally responsible for the deaths of more than 100 people after he ordered commandos to storm the Red Mosque in 2007.
National Affairs
- President Pranab Mukherjee has cut short his scheduled visit to Bihar by a day possibly because it was clashing with a rally of BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in Patna.
- Union home minister Sushilkumar Shinde on Thursday indicated that placing Andhra Pradesh under President 's rule was a possibility if the crisis in Seemandhra worsened further.
- On the eve of the International Day of the Girl Child on Friday 11, Unesco's Education for All Global Monitoring Report releases figures showing that if all girls went to primary school, one-sixth of child marriages could be prevented among girls aged under 15 years in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia. If all girls got the chance to go to secondary school, child marriages could be reduced by two-thirds in these regions, saving almost two million girls from becoming child brides.
- Faced with a financial crunch due to shortfall in revenue, the Congress-led UDF Government in Kerala announced a slew of austerity measures, including restrictions on creation of new posts and foreign travel by Ministers and bureaucrats.
Science and Technology
- A free-floating planet has been directly imaged just 80 light years away from Earth by scientists at Hawaii. This lonely planet is an orphan - it has no mother star, like Earth has Sun, to orbit around. Dubbed PSO J318.5-22, it has a mass only six times that of Jupiter and it formed a mere 12 million years ago — a newborn in planet lifetimes.
- A study conducted near Heathrow, London's biggest airport, has linked aircraft noise to higher rates of heart disease and stroke.
- Over two years after introducing them in the US, Google on Thursday announced that Chromebooks would be available in India from October 17. Chromebooks are light and portable laptops that are powered by Google's Chrome OS instead of Microsoft Windows.
Awards and Honors
- Pakistani teenage activist Malala Yousafzai (16), who shot in the head by the Taliban last year for campaigning for better rights for girls, won the European Union's annual human rights award on Thursday, beating fugitive US intelligence analyst Edward Snowden.
- Canada's Alice Munro won the Nobel literature prize on Thursday for her short stories that focus on the frailties of the human condition, becoming just the 13th woman to win in the history of the coveted award.
Economy
- The number of millionaires in the country is expected to jump over 66% at 3 lakh by 2018, even as 94% of India's population has wealth below $10,000, according to a global wealth report.
- Global wealth has risen by 68% over the past 10 years to reach a new all-time high of $241 trillion and the United States accounts for nearly three quarters of the increase, Credit Suisse said in its World Wealth Report.
- Noting that India's slowdown has significant spillover effects on the rest of South Asia, the World Bank has said South Asian countries need to work hard on reforms.
- Years after dropping out of an ONGC-led consortium for developing a giant oilfield in Venezuela, Reliance Industries is close to taking an oil block in the Latin American nation that can produce as much as 10 million tons of oil per annum.
Sports
- Sachin Tendulkar, regarded as the greatest batsman in contemporary cricket, called it quits from Test cricket, announcing his retirement after his 200th match against the West Indies next month, bringing the curtains down on an extraordinary career spanning a marathon 24 years.
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