1. Weekly news from 18th october
Submitted By: Karan Kapoor

2. Vodafone to spend $500 m on 3G
equipment
 Vodafone Essar will spend $400 million to $500 million on its
third-generation services electronic equipment before they are
launched in the first quarter of 2011,.
 The company will fund it through bank loans and by issuing
some new shares to its existing shareholders,
 In a highly-competitive Indian telecom market, 3G services are
being considered the next revenue generator after regular
value- added services. Consumers may take time to adopt data
services that would be priced much higher than existing voice
tariffs, which have recently seen radical reduction.

3.  Vodafone is likely to be one of the later private players to
launch these services. Tata DoCoMo is expected to announce
that it will begin offering its high-speed services from the first
week of November. State-run telecoms are already providing
3G services in select circles.
 Vodafone expects 10% of 2G network users in India to switch
or upgrade to 3G in a year, depending on the proliferation of
3G enabled handsets,

4. IMF reform to start in 2013:
Pranab Mukherjee
 International Monetary Fund reform that will see
emerging markets given increased voting rights and board
seats will be start in 2013
 India would become the IMF's eighth largest member and
its share of voting rights would rise to 2.75 per cent.
 Europe will give up two of the eight or nine seats it
controls at any given time on the IMF's Executive Board,
which will continue to have 24 members.

5. India may beat China next year:
World Bank
 China’s economy expanded 9.6% in the three months to September,
its slowest pace in 12 months, a day after the World Bank tipped
India to outpace the world’s second-largest economy in 2011.
 The multilateral lender had pared China’s growth forecast for 2011 to
8.5%, just a shade below its projection of 8.6% for India, catapulting
the latter to the top of the growth chart
 China’s industrial production also fell from the previous quarter to
13.3%, a report of the National Bureau of Statistics said. However,
industrial production rose 16.3% in the nine months to September.

6.  Others also expect India to start growing faster than China, but
not so soon. A research report by Morgan Stanley had said
India could overtake China’s growth rate by 2013 and expected
it to be notably ahead from 2015 onwards.
But China’s main challenge going forward would be to change
the structure of the economy, from a export driven to
consumption driven economy, wherein it becomes less prone to
external shocks in demand

7. Microsoft launches 'cloud' version
of Office
 Microsoft Corp launched a fully online version of its popular
Office suite of applications on Tuesday as it looks to extend its
customer base and beat back rival Google Inc .
 The new service, called Office 365, is available as a test from
Tuesday in 13 countries, and will be on sale on a subscription
basis
 Combining some of Microsoft's existing cloud-based services,
it will be available through most browsers, including Mozilla's
Firefox, Apple's Inc's Safari and Google's Chrome, and can be
used on mobile devices

8.  Customers get access to more features when the software is
also installed. The move strikes a blow against rival Google,
which has had some success with its Google Apps service,
which provides a low-cost, Web-based alternative to
Microsoft's traditional Office software for $50 per user per year
 A fuller "professional" version will cost up to $27 per user per
month. Office is one of Microsoft's biggest money-earners,
alongside its Windows operating system.

9. E-voting Indian researcher wins
pioneer award in US
 San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a
leading civil liberties group, has chosen to confer the
2010 Pioneer Award on Hari Prasad, who was recently
released on bail after being jailed for his security work
on Electronic Voting Machines.

10.  About Hari Parsad
 Hari Krishna Prasad Vemuru is a security researcher in India
who recently revealed security flaws in India's paperless
electronic voting machines.
He has endured jail time, repeated interrogations, and ongoing
political harassment to conduct the first independent security
review of India's electronic voting system," the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF) said in a statement.
EFF's Pioneer Awards recognize leaders who are extending
freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier

11.  Three other awardees for the Pioneer award in 2010 are
Transparency Activist, Stephen Aftergood, public domain scholar
James Boyle; and legal blogger Pamela Jones and the website
Groklaw.
 "These winners have all worked tirelessly to give critical insight and
context to the tough questions that arise in our evolving digital
world," said EFF executive director Shari Steele
 The award ceremony is scheduled for November 8 in San Francisco.
Pioneer Award candidates are nominated by the public and the
winners of 2010 were chosen by a panel of eminent judges.

12. Geithner demands emerging
nations strengthen currencies
 US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Saturday pressed
emerging economies to allow their currencies to appreciate and
raise domestic demand to help rebalance distorted global
growth.
 At a news conference after G20 talks in South Korea, Geithner
said a "gradual appreciation" in the currencies of major trade-
surplus nations was required.
 Without naming China, he said such countries should move
away from export dependence and towards stronger domestic
demand