News in Short

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) gave licence to the ?6,000 crore National Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd. (NARCL), a move that will help kickstart operations of the bad bank.
• NARCL was incorporated in July in Mumbai following registration with the Registrar of Companies (RoC).
• The company has hired P.M. Nair, a stressed assets expert from State Bank of India (SBI), as the managing director.
• The other directors on the board are IBA CEO Mehta, SBI deputy managing director S.S. Nair and Canara Bank’s Chief General Manager Ajit Krishnan Nair.

• The Nobel Prize in the field of physiology or medicine has been awarded to US. scientists David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian.They were cited for their discovery of receptors for temperature and touch.
• Last year's prize went to three scientists who discovered the liver-ravaging hepatitis C virus, a breakthrough that led to cures for the deadly disease and tests to keep the scourge from spreading though blood banks.
• The prestigious award comes with a gold medal and 10 million Swedish kronor (over $1.14 million). The prize money comes from a bequest left by the prize's creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.

• The Election Commission assigned new symbols for the warring LokJanshakti Party (LJP) factions led by Chirag Paswan and Pashupati Kumar Paras.
• The Paswan-led faction will be recognised as LokJanshakti Party (Ram Vilas) with a ‘helicopter’ symbol. Whereas, Paras’ faction will be termed as the RashtriyaLokJanshakti Party with a ‘sewing machine’ symbol.
• The EC’s decision comes three days after it froze the ‘bungalow’ symbol for the LJP, allowing neither Paswan nor Paras to use it in the upcoming bypolls.

• India has urged Sri Lanka to hold elections to its provincial councils without further delay, according to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA).
• The five-year terms of the provincial councils — born out of the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987 as a step to devolve political power to all the provinces — last expired in 2018 and 2019.
• Despite the then oppositional Rajapaksa camp demanding that the polls be held to the nine provinces, the Sirisena administration, postponed holding the elections, as it grew increasingly unpopular amid internal rifts.

• The government has proposed absolving agencies involved in national security projects and border infrastructure projects from obtaining prior forest clearance from the Centre as part of amendments to the existing Forest Conservation Act (FCA).
• The FCA that first came in 1980 and was amended in 1988, requires such permission. The proposed amendment is part of a larger rationalising of existing forest laws.
• There is also a plan in the document to exempt land acquired before 1980 — before the FCA came into effect — by public sector bodies such as the Railways.