News in Short

• Frank Carney, who with his brother started the Pizza Hut empire in Wichita, died from pneumonia. He was 82.
• Frank Carney was a 19-year-old student at Wichita State University when he and his brother borrowed $600 from their mother to start a pizza business in 1958 near their family’s Carney’s Market.
• PepsiCo bought Pizza Hut for $300 million in 1977. Over the years, he got involved in various business ventures, including other food companies, real estate, oil and gas, automotive, rental, and recreational businesses.

• Dharampal Gulati, the owner of MDH Spices and the face of the company’s advertisements, passed away. He was 97.
• Popularly called ‘King of Spices,’ Gulati was undergoing treatment at a hospital in Delhi for the last three weeks.
• Gulati was born in Sialkot in present-day Pakistan. He came to India in September 1947 after Partition with a total of ?1,500.
• He started a small wooden shop in Karol Bagh, New Delhi, and re-started his family business of ground spices, which now has a turnover of about ?1,500 crore. Gulati was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2019.

• Former French President Giscard d’Estaing passed away. Giscard was elected president in 1974 at the age of 48 to become France`s youngest postwar leader.
• Giscard presided over a modernisation of French society, legalising abortion, allowing divorce by mutual consent, and lowering the voting age to 18 from 21.
• He sought to liberalise France`s economy, was the father of France`s high-speed TGV network, and projected the image of a young, modern president who was closer to the people than his predecessors.

• The Supreme Court has ordered the Centre to compulsorily install CCTV cameras and recording equipment in the offices of central agencies like National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
• The CCTVs and recording equipment would be used as a measure to protect the fundamental right to dignity and life.
• Likewise every police station in every State should be under similar CCTV coverage as a deterrent against custodial torture.
• Large posters informing people about the CCTV coverage should be prominently placed at the offices of these central agencies and police stations.

• China has started importing Indian rice for the first time in at least three decades due to tightening supplies and an offer from India of sharply discounted prices.
• India is the world's biggest exporter of rice and China is the biggest importer. Beijing imports around 4 million tonnes of rice annually but has avoided purchases from India, citing quality issues.
• The breakthrough comes at a time when political tensions between the two countries are high because of a border dispute in the Himalayas.
• China's traditional suppliers, such as Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Pakistan, have limited surplus supplies for export and were quoting at least $30 per tonne more compared with Indian prices.