INTERNATIONAL NOVEMBER 2009

INTERNATIONAL NOVEMBER 2009

• Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) appealed for a day-long worldwide hunger strike against chronic hunger. According to FAO statistics, 1.02 billion people live in chronic hunger. The FAO has also launched an online anti-hunger petition on www.1billionhungry.org Hunger Summit will be held at Rome, Italy from 16th to 18th November, 2009.
  
• The National University of Defence Technology (NUDT) unveiled China’s fastest supercomputer. The supercomputer named Tianhe, meaning Milky Way, will do more than 1 quadrillion calculations per second (one petaflop) at peak speed.
  
• China offered billions of dollars of concessional loans to Africa and pledged to contribute significantly to the continent’s skilled human resources base.
  
• A meeting of G20 Finance Ministers was held in Scotland. They failed to reach an agreement on funding climate change.
  
• The U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) has launched a campaign in the Kenyan capital Nairobi to mobilise people around the world to take part in a drive to stop the pandemic of violence suffered by women.
  
• 55th Golf World Cup was won by Italy in Shen Jen, China.
  
• Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM)took place at Port of Spain. The Commonwealth Climate change Declaration has been agreed by the 53 Heads of Commonwealth countries.
  
• China has announced that it would cut carbon intensity to 40-45 per cent of 2005 levels by 2020.
  U.S. proposed 17 per cent reduction below 2005 levels by 2020.
  
• International Conference of Jurists 2009 on International Terrorism started in New Delhi. It was organized by International Council of Jurists, All India Bar Association, All India Senior Advocates Association and Indian Council of Jurists.
  
• Unfriend was declared as word of the year 2009 by New Oxford American Dictionary. It is defined as to remove someone as a friend on a social networking site.
  
• India was ranked 84 with score of 3.4 out of 180 countries, by Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) 2009. New Zealand, Denmark and Singapore were ranked top 3 in low levels of corruption.
  
• APEC 2009 summit was held in Singapore. Global financial crisis, free trade etc were discussed at the summit.
  
• Iceland has claimed the top spot of the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index 2009. India has been ranked 114th out of 134 countries measured.