22.02.2007

• Iran to create a female-only tourist island
• The island of Arezou (wish), one of the 102 islands in the gigantic Oroumiyeh Lake, close to the Turkish border is being converted by the Iranian authorities as a female-only island.
• All public transport, facilities and restaurants on the island will be staffed only by women.
• Lean manufacturing
• It allows manufacturers to quickly react to changes in customer demand do it with little inventory.
• South Korea lets kids use mother’s name
• South Korea is revising its laws to allow children to use their mother’s last name in a bid to achieve greater gender equality.
• Budget related terms
• Fiscal deficit: The difference between revenue receipts plus non-debt capital receipts on one side and total expenditure including loans, net of repayments, on the other side. In other words, this is the budget deficit plus borrowings and other liabilities.
• Fiscal policy: An instrument of demand management which seeks to influence the level of economic activity in an economy through the control of taxation and government expenditure.
• About service tax
• It was introduced through the 1994 budget, with a levy on three services viz., telecom, stockbroking and insurance.
• Today it covers 99 services. The rate of tax was raised from 10% to 12% in the 2006-07 budget.
• GM crops in India and the world
• The global acreage under the GM (Genetically Modified) crops has risen from a paltry 17 lakh (1.7 mn) hectares in 1996 to about 10.20 crore (102 mn) hectares now.
• This acreage accounts for 40.9% of the total land under cultivation in the developing world while it stood at 61.1% in case of the developed world.
• In India, the acreage has risen from 29,000 hectares in 2002 to touch 38 lakh (3.8 mn) hectares in 2006. The number of farmers using GM seeds has risen from 75,000 to touch 23 lakh (2.3 mn) farmers.
• Risks of climate change
• A recent study by British economist Nicholas Stern estimates that the overall costs and risks of climate change would be about 5% of global GDP every year.
• Semiconductors
• Silicon is the most commonly used semiconductor today, along with gallium arsenide, germanium, hafnium, and some other materials.
• Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to create chips.
• A fabless semiconductor company specializes in the design and sale of hardware devices implemented on semiconductor chips.