Current Affairs Update - 28 August 2016

Updated on : 15:24, 6 September 2016

— NATIONAL —

– Himachal Health Minister launches ambulance mobile app:

• In Himachal Pradesh, the 108 mobile app for immediate and easy facility of the National Ambulance Service has been launched by the Health and Family Welfare Minister Kaul Singh Thakur.

• On this occasion, he also flagged off five new ambulances under 108- National Ambulance Service from the historic Ridge Maidan.

• Quoting sources, our correspondent reports that now the number of ambulances under the service has increased to 199.

– J&K CM presents three-point peace plan for Kashmir:

• Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti presented a “three-pronged action plan” during her meeting with PM Narendra Modi.
• According to reports, the plan includes sending an all-party delegation to the valley, changing the Governor, and appointment of an intermediary to hold talks with all the stakeholders in the state. However, no official confirmation has been issued.

– Nalanda University has 1st convocation in 800 yrs:

• Nalanda University, one of the India’s oldest institutes, conducted its first convocation in nearly 800 years on Saturday.
• President Pranab Mukherjee laid the foundation stone of the permanent campus of the university in Bihar’s Rajgir and awarded two gold medals and 12 Post Graduate degrees to the students.
• Currently, 155 students are studying in the university.

– Drones used to monitor traffic on Mumbai-Pune Expressway:

• Drones were used for the first time on the Pune-Mumbai Expressway yesterday to monitor vehicular traffic and 15 drivers were fined during the exercise for cutting lanes.
• Amol Tambe, Superintendent of Highway Police, Pune Region said, on the directives of the Maharashtra government, for the first time they deployed two drones in ghat section between Lonavala exit and Khalapur toll plaza to monitor vehicular traffic.

– Indian government to electrify 1,000 km of rail tracks on pilot basis:

• Power Ministry is looking to engage Power Grid Corp (PGCIL) to electrify 1,000 km of rail tracks on a pilot basis, as part of plans to energise 35,000 km of unelectrified lines.
• Power Minister Piyush Goyal said, this will reportedly lower crude imports and ensure faster movement of trains.
• According to Goyal, electrification of entire rail tracks could raise power consumption by 7 billion units.

– Water tanker scam: ACB questions to ex-Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit:

• The Anti-Corruption Branch has sent a questionnaire to ex-Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit in connection with the alleged water tanker scam. ACB’s questionnaire has 18 questions, it will take me time to answer them, said Dikshit.
• The alleged scam dates back to 2012 when the Delhi Jal Board had awarded tenders for 385 water tankers during Dikshit’s rule.

– Education programme for disabled in Delhi govt schools:

• The Delhi government has asked special educators in government-run and -aided schools to prepare an individualised education programme (IEP) within 15 days that will enable disabled students to get personal attention. The IEP will cover everything from basic education requirements to extra-curricular activities. There are currently around 20,000 disabled children in Delhi’s government schools.

– Sachin presents BMWs to Sindhu, Sakshi, Dipa and Gopi:

• Former cricketer and BMW ambassador Sachin Tendulkar presented India’s Rio Olympics medallists PV Sindhu and Sakshi Malik, gymnast Dipa Karmakar and Sindhu’s coach Pullela Gopichand, BMW cars for their achievements. Chamundeshwarnath, the President of the Hyderabad District Badminton Association, gifted the BMWs to the sportspersons after witnessing their performances at the event.

– Indian Govt to set Rs.1.5k cr fund for solar projects:

• State-run Solar Energy Corporation will set up a Rs.1,500 crore payment security mechanism to prevent delays in releasing viability gap funding (VGF) to solar power developers under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission, an official said. The fund will cover three months’ payments for VGF schemes. The government aims to add 100 GW of solar power by 2022.

– Delhi Police officers to undergo stress courses:

• Due to several incidents of suicides and attempts to suicide, the Delhi Police is planning to conduct stress management classes for its top officers. The organisation has approached several institutions to provide training and support to its officials.
• In the first phase, top 10 officers would be selected from every unit who are stressed with work to undergo the training.

– Ramdev plans world class university in India:

• Yoga guru Swami Ramdev has announced his plans to build a world-class university near New Delhi, India in the next five years. The project would cost around Rs.25,000 crore and a 1,500-acre land has already been acquired, he said.
• Ramdev also added that at least 80% profit from the sale of Patanjali Ayurved products will go towards education.

 

— INTERNATIONAL —

– FB COO Sheryl Sandberg has been most powerful woman in tech for 5 yrs:

• Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, who turns 47 today, was named by Forbes as the most powerful woman in technology for five consecutive years from 2012 to 2016. Sandberg was also one of the youngest female billionaires in the world in 2014, and currently has an estimated net worth of $1.42 billion.
• She has also previously worked with Google and World Bank, and serves on the board of the Walt Disney Company.

– Obama presses Congress for Zika funding as worries grow:

• US President Barack Obama called on Congress to step up funding to combat the Zika virus, warning that delay is putting more Americans at risk.
• Obama’s latest appeal, in his weekly radio address, came the day after the US authorities expressed deepening worry about the spread of the mosquito-borne virus, urging that all donated blood be tested for Zika.

– British PM to trigger EU pull-out ‘without parliament vote’:

• Prime Minister Theresa May wants to trigger Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union without a vote in parliament beforehand, a report said Saturday.
• A source in her Downing Street office said the Daily Telegraph report was speculation but added that May was “committed to delivering on the verdict the public gave” in the June referendum, when 52 percent voted for Britain to leave the EU.

– Tunisia’s new govt wins parliamentary approval:

• The Tunisian Parliament on Friday voted to approve the new government led by Prime Minister-designate Youssef Chahed, who backs the implementation of an austerity programme.
• Chahed’s proposal of public-sector job cuts and tax rises was backed by 167 of the Parliament’s 217 members. Interestingly, 40-year-old Chahed is Tunisia’s youngest Prime Minister since the country became independent in 1956.

– World’s largest marine reserve created off Hawaii:

• US President Barack Obama on Friday announced the expansion of an existing ocean reserve off Hawaii to cover 5,82,578 square miles, thus creating the world’s largest protected marine reserve.
• The national monument, originally created by George W Bush, will now measure more than twice the size of Texas. Commercial fishing and mining are banned in the reserve.

 

— APPOINTMENTS AND RESIGN—

– Tata Sons appoints Bain Capital’s MD, Amit Chandra on its board:

• Tata Sons has appointed Bain Capital’s Managing Director Amit Chandra as a non-executive director on its board with immediate effect. With this, the Tata Sons board now has nine directors, including TVS Motor Chairman Venu Srinivasan and Piramal Group chief Ajay Piramal. Both of them were appointed as non-executive directors on August 25.
• Amit Chandra joined Bain Capital as Managing Director in early 2008 and is part of the firm’s leadership team in Asia.

 

— BANKING —

– RBI asks banks to provide loans to women self-help groups in rural areas at 7% per annum:

• RBI has asked banks to provide loans to women self-help groups in rural areas at 7 per cent per annum, as per the government’s revised guidelines for the current financial year.
• The Reserve Bank said in a notification that all women self-help groups (SHGs) will be eligible for interest subvention on credit up to three lakh rupees at 7 per cent per annum under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Rural Livelihoods Mission in 250 districts.
• It said, SHGs availing capital subsidy under the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana in their existing credit outstanding will not be eligible for benefit under this scheme.

– Banks raise concern over RBI norms for big borrowers:

• Following the RBI’s issuance of new norms for bank exposure to large corporate entities, banks have raised concerns with the RBI Governor, an official said. The new norms will have a “definite impact” on large infrastructure projects and the ability to raise funds for these could get restricted due to reasons like not having credit rating, he added.
• As per the new RBI norms, which will come into effect from April 1, 2017, incremental exposure of banking system to a specified borrower beyond normally permitted lending limit (NPLL) will be deemed to carry higher risk which will be recognised by way of additional provisioning and higher risk weight.

– The Oriental Bank of Commerce to raise Rs.1k cr via Tier-1 bonds:

• The Oriental Bank of Commerce is planning to raise Rs.1,000 crore through additional Tier-I bonds (AT1) to increase its capital adequacy and business growth, reports claimed.
• India Ratings has assigned an ‘A+’ rating to OBC’s AT1 bonds with a stable outlook, which reflects the bank’s standalone credit profile. OBC will reportedly need Rs.5,600 crore of Tier-I capital till FY19.

 

— BUSINESS AND ECONOMY —

– FPIs invested Rs.8k cr in equities in Aug so far:

• Net investment by Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) stood at Rs.8,127 crore in equities in August so far, as per depositors’ data.
• However, Rs.2,727 crore were withdrawn by the FPIs from the debt market, taking the total inflow to Rs.5,400 crore. Experts attributed the latest inflow to the Bank of England rate cut and the GST Amendment Bill’s passage.

– EPFO investments in ETFs to be raised beyond 5%: Dattatreya:

• Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, said that the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation will raise proportion of its investments in exchange traded funds from the present 5 percent and a final decision on the quantum for current fiscal would be taken very soon.
• SBI Mutual Fund and UTI Mutual Fund will manage the corpus of the retirement fund in ETFs, he said.
• As on July 31 this year, amount invested in ETF by Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation is Rs. 7,468 crore and the market value of this as on date is Rs. 8,372 crore, which shows a positive return of 12.10 per cent, the minister said.

– 7 of top 10 companies lose Rs. 29,907 cr in market capitalisation (m-cap):

• The market capitalisation (m-cap) of seven of the top 10 BSE-listed companies fell by Rs.29,906.6 crore in the week ended August 27, with the benchmark Sensex losing 294.75 points to close at 27,782.25.
• TCS emerged as the worst-hit, dropping Rs.14,738.8 crore from its valuation, followed by SBI and ONGC, while the valuation of RIL, HDFC Bank, and ITC went up.

– India-US bilateral trade up at $109 bn in 2015:

• The US today said that bilateral trade with India has reached $109 billion in 2015, against $37 billion in 2005, which will grow further amid reforms like GST despite concerns over business climate in the fast-growing economy.
• US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, who will be on a 3-day India visit from tomorrow, also said that travel and tourism and sub-national engagement have been identified as two new areas of focus to drive commercial cooperation between the two countries in 2017, under which the focus would shift from India and the US to Chennai and Charleston.

– Goldman revises up CPI forecast to 5.5% for FY17:

• US-based Financial services major, Goldman Sachs has marginally revised upwards its India CPI inflation forecast from 5.3% to 5.5% for this fiscal amid higher than expected food prices.
• Contracting of the output gap and declining favourable base effects may contribute to the increase in inflation, it reported. However, upside risks are limited due to delay in the Seventh Pay Commission rollout, it added.

– Toyota is world’s most valuable automobile brand:

• Japanese automaker Toyota is the most valuable automobile brand in the world, according to Forbes. Toyota, which was founded 79 years ago on August 28, 1937, has a brand value of $42.1 billion. German luxury automobile manufacturer BMW comes second on the list, with a brand value of $28.8 billion.

– Airtel launches one-stop-shop connectivity solution:

• Telecom operator Bharti Airtel has announced its ‘India with Airtel’ suite of services, a one-stop-shop for availing all telecom and connectivity solutions like mobile telephony and data centre and cloud solutions.
• This will offer global companies looking to set up businesses in India an “extensive” market reach, it stated. Earlier, Airtel had also announced an Aadhaar-based e-KYC solution.

 

— SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY —

– ISRO successfully test launches Scramjet engine:

• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully tested its Scramjet (Supersonic Combusting Ramjet) engine from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on Sunday. Known as the air-breathing engine, it would be used only during the atmospheric phase of the rocket’s flight and will help bring down the launch cost by reducing the amount of oxidiser required along with fuel.

– Juno probe makes close pass of Jupiter:

• A probe flown by the US space agency NASA has made its first close approach to the planet Jupiter since going into orbit in July.
• Juno was commanded to pass just 4,200 km above the cloud tops of the gas giant yesterday.
• No previous spacecraft has got so close to the world during the main phase of its mission. Juno had all its instruments, and its camera, switched on and primed for the encounter.
• Nasa expects to be in a position to release some images from the approach in the next few days. They will be the highest resolution pictures ever obtained of Jupiter’s clouds.

– Indian-origin boy devises breast cancer treatment:

• A 16-year-old Indian-origin boy in the UK claims to have found a treatment to the most deadly form of breast cancer. Krtin Nithiyanandam has reportedly found a way to make the triple-negative breast cancer into a kind responsive to drugs. Krtin said he devised a way to silence genes that produce ID4, which turns cancer into a less dangerous state.

 

— SPORTS —

– England take 2-0 lead in 5-ODI series against Pak:

• England registered a four-wicket win over Pakistan in the second ODI at Lord’s on Saturday, taking a 2-0 lead in the five-match series. Batting first, Pakistan posted a total of 251, driven by Sarfaraz Ahmed’s 105(130).
• In reply, England chased down the target in 47.3 overs, courtesy Eoin Morgan’s 68*(80) and Joe Root’s 89(108), his fourth straight ODI half-century.

– Sania Mirza wins her 7th title of the year:

• Indian tennis player Sania Mirza won her seventh title of the year and 39th title overall after clinching her career’s third Connecticut Open on Sunday.
• Mirza, along with her Romanian partner Monica Niculescu, took 1 hour 30 minutes to register a 7-5, 6-4 win over the unseeded Ukrainian-Chinese Taipei duo of Kateryna Bondarenko and Chuang Chia-jung in the tournament final.

– Western Railway wins all India railway athletic championship:

• Western Railway won the overall team championship in the 82nd All India Railway athletic Championship held at Tiruchirapalli Tamil Nadu.
• Central railway stood second and Southern Railway third in the overall team category.
• Best athlete award in men’s category was given to Jasdeep Singh of Northern Railway and best women athlete award to Dutee Chand of Northern Railway.

– 16-yr-old boy develops app for Indian Paralympians:

• Arhan Bagati, a 16-year-old from Gurgaon, has developed a mobile app to assist the Indian contingent of 18 athletes in the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro, to be held from September 7-18. The app, named InRio, features information like a list of disabled-friendly gyms, emergency contact of the Indian Embassy, a health monitor, and profiles of other Paralympians.

– India lose 1st T20I against West Indies by 1 run:

• India lost the first T20I against West Indies in Florida on Saturday by one run, scoring 244/4 in 20 overs. This was only the second time India lost a T20I by that margin.
• Indian batsman KL Rahul and Windies’ opener Evin Lewis both scored their maiden T20I centuries, the first instance of two tons being made in this format.