International Japan has now relinquished its position as the world's second largest economy to China.

Japan's gross domestic product fell an annualised 1.1 per cent in the fourth qua rter in 2010, marking the first decline in five quarters due to a drop in export s, diminishing government stimulus programmes and weak consumer consumption Japan has now relinquished its position as the world's second largest economy to China. Japan's nominal GDP, before adjustments for prices, totalled $5.47 trillion in 2 010, lower than China's figure of nearly $5.8 trillion. Japan has held the title of world's second largest economy for 42 years.

National Centre evolves new educational methodology for rural development To ensure proper use of its Rs. 86,553 crore annual rural spending, an ambitious curriculum to train and educate all those involved in the execution of the prog rammes concerned is on the anvil. This mass-based decentralised capacity buildin g process, the first of its kind among developing countries, intends to develop skills of 40 lakh hands annually. To achieve this, the Centre has evolved a new educational and training methodolo gy for rural development and improving the livelihoods of the rural folk under a Central Training Authority to be set up under a new law currently under conside ration. The Union Ministry of Rural Development has come up with the draft National Rura l Development Training Authorities Bill, 2011 which has received the approval of both the Law Ministry and Expenditure Ministry. It has been circulated for publ ic opinion before its introduction in Parliament for ratification.

DRDO crosses Rs.1 lakh crore-mark in production value The production value of weapons and systems developed by the Defence Research an d Development Organisation (DRDO) had crossed Rs.1 lakh crore during the six yea rs

Persons New ICAI President G. Ramaswamy has been elected President of the Institute of Chartered Accountant s of India (ICAI) for 2011-12. Jaydeep Narendra Shah is the Vice-President.

Awards Tamil Nadu AGRISNET, has won a national gold award The Tamil Nadu Agriculture Department's portal, AGRISNET, has won a national gol d award for e-governance in the Focus Sector category. The focus for the Specifi c Sector Award for 2010-11 was on agriculture. Silver and bronze awards had gone to e-Krishi', a Kerala government portal, and t he Tea Board's e-auction portal respectively.

Tribal institute bags e-governance award 2010-11 A project on the use of geoinformatics in the implementation of the Forest Right s Act, 2006 in Maharashtra by the Tribal Research and Training Institute (TRTI), Pune has been given the National e-Governance award, 2010-11 (Silver) in Aurang abad

Pushkin Gold Medal to Professor Arun Mohanty Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has awarded the prestigious Pushkin Gold Medal to Professor Arun Mohanty of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) for his cont ribution to studies on Russia and promotion of bilateral cultural ties and frien dship.

Sports V.V.S. Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar won ESPNcricinfo awards

V.V.S. Laxman and Sachin Tendulkar won the awards for best batting performances in Tests and ODIs respectively, while Dale Steyn bagged the top prize in Test bo wling in the fourth annual ESPNcricinfo Awards, here on Monday.

India's first cricket mentoring portal launched India's first cricket mentoring portal CricketMentor.tv owed presence of India's World Cup squad was launched in the hall