CURRENT AFFAIRS  September Week IV

Awards and Honours

Appointments

National Round-Up

• India’s first inter State river interlinking project was given a go-ahead by the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) at a meeting chaired by Environment Minister Anil Madhav on August 23,
• The National Society for Change for Childhood Cancer will be organizing a first-of-its-kind exhibition‘CanKids-Kidscan’ on childhood cancer awareness at the iconic Taj Mahal in Agra from September 25 to 27.
• Public sector lender Andhra Bankhas entered into agreements with private insurers Cigna TTK and Reliance General Insurance to provide health and general insurance services to its customers.
• The NDA Govt Cabinet on Sep 21, 2016 approved Rs.1102.38 crore projects for a direct communication link through a dedicated submarineOptical Fibre Cable (OFC) between the mainland and Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
• The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, attended the function for the release of the book“Citizen and Society,” written by the Vice-President Shri Hamid Ansari.
• A global study on a range of health indicators released has ranked India 143rd among 188 countries, citing various challenges, including mortality rates, malaria, and hygiene and air pollution.
• The steering committee on Greenfield airports headed by Secretary, Civil Aviation (MoCA), Government of India, met and considered four new airport projects.
• India has climbed 16 places to the 39th rank on the Global Competitiveness Index prepared by the World Economic Forum as improved business sophistication and goods market efficiency pushed its ranking higher.
• The GMR consortium-AAI run Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport has become the first carbon neutral airport in Asia-Pacific following a series of measures taken by it to reduce carbon footprint.

Snippets from the States

• Tamil Nadu government has allotted Rs.204 croretowards the implementation of enhanced gold scheme under a marriage assistance programme named ‘Thaaliku Thangam’ (Gold for Mangalsutra) scheme for the year 2016-17.
• The northeastern state of Sikkim has the best working conditions for women, whereas the national capital has the worst,according to a report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
• Adani Green Energy(Tamil Nadu) Ltd, part of the Adani Group, has dedicated to the nation the world’s largest solar power plant of 648 megawatts (MW), set up at Kamuthi in Ramanathapuram district of Tamil Nadu.
• Rajasthan becomes the first state to adopt Centre’s Street Lighting National Programme (SLNP) in all its urban local bodies (ULB).
• Gurgaon will now be known as Gurugram, with the Centre approving the name change.
• The Punjab government has asked the SBI-led consortium of banks, which advances it a cash credit limit (CCL) every harvest for foodgrain procurement, to restructure an accumulated outstanding of Rs 21,000 crore.
• Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal laid the foundation stone of a mega food park project in Ludhiana to be developed at a cost of Rs 117.61 crore.

Banking and Economy

• India’s government has picked three economists from the academic world for a new monetary policy committee (MPC), The non-RBI members named are
  • Chetan Ghate, a professor at Indian Statistical Institute;
  • Pami Dua, a director at the Delhi School of Economics;
  • Ravindra Dholakia, a professor at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad.
• Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a $631-million loan to the proposed Vishakhapatnam-Chennai industrial corridor (VCIC), the first coastal one in the country.
• Mobile payments and loans start-up ftcash, backed by IvyCap Ventures is the first fintech startup to launch Unified Payment Interface (UPI) for merchants in association with ICICI Bank.
• The Central Bank of Iran is allowing local financial institutions to issue credit cards for the first time in the Islamic Republic’s history.

International Round-Up

• The International Day of Peace (“Peace Day”) is observed around the world each year on 21 September.
• French Company Alstom unveiled a Zero-emission train powered by hydrogen at Innotrains Trade fair.
• The world’s largest flower, Rafflesia arnoldii, has bloomed in two different locations in the rainforests of Indonesian island Sumatra.
• President Barack Obama heralded the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, an institution dedicated to the many threads of black suffering and triumph
• Paving the way for the automatic exchange of tax information with India and other nations, Switzerland has ratified the multilateral convention on administrative assistance in taxation matters.
• Technology Company Microsoft has partnered with the alliance between automotive manufacturers Renault-Nissan to work on connected car technologies.
• World Tourism Day (WTD) is held annually on 27 September. Its purpose is to foster awareness among the international community of the importance of tourism and its social, cultural, political and economic value.
• Russia and Cuba have signed an agreement on cooperation in the field of peaceful atomic energy use. The agreement was signed between Russian state nuclear agency Rosatom and Cuba’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment in Vienna.
• World Rabies Day is an international campaign which is observed on September 28. World Rabies Day is celebrated annually throughout the world to raise awareness about rabies prevention and to highlight progress in defeating this horrifying disease.
• India is the second deadliest country for outdoor air pollution in the world, with 6,21,138 deaths happening due to air pollution in the country in 2012, according to the World Health Organisation.
• The United States has named diplomat Jeffrey DeLaurentis as its first official ambassador to Cuba in over 50 years.

India and the World

• India has pledged financial assistance worth 30.29 million Nepali Rupees for construction of a new college building in Udayapur district in the country.
• The Indian army and The US troops participated in a joint training operation in the Uttarakhand hills, as a part of the ongoing ‘Yudh Abhyas 2016’ exercise.    
• India has signed a contract to from French defence major Dassault Aviation for around Rs.58,000 crore in an effort to modernize Indian Air Force’s ageing fleet.
• Chandigarh Administration and French Development Agency (AFD) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoUs) on Chandigarh Smart City Project and ‘Technical Cooperation’ in the field of Sustainable Urban Mobility.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that India would ratify the Paris climate deal on October 2, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
• India’s efforts to isolate Pakistan on the issue of terrorism got a boost with Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Bhutan also deciding to skip the SAARC Summit in Islamabad in November, setting the stage for the postponement of the meet.

Science and Technology

• US space agency NASA is building the world’s largest and most powerful rocket at its Michoud Assembly Facility, US.
• Chinese space authorities have confirmed they have lost control of the country’s first space station ‘Tiangong-1’, which is expected to crash into Earth’s atmosphere in 2017.
• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched eight small satellites into two different orbits in space on board its workhorse launch vehicle, the PSLV.
• A National Mission on Bioeconomy was launched by the Institute of Bio-resources and Sustainable Development (IBSD) under the Ministry of Science and Technology in Shillong, Meghalaya.
• SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has unveiled the design for the giant rocket booster he wants to build in order to colonize Mars. It is part of what SpaceX is referring to as the “Mars Vehicle”.
• A new species of a ground-dwelling lizard has been discovered in Thane’s Badlapur forested belts in Mumbai.

Sports Point

Obituary

Important Days