March 15 – Current Affairs Quick Gyan

In Current Affairs 2017
March 15, 2016

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the Quick Gyan (QG) Section of D2G. QG is just a glimpse of what happened today all over the world.

Only For Serious Candidates : We strongly recommend you to read the Current Affairs in detail. For your convenience, we have provided quick links under the updates. Make use of it.

Always Keep Yourself Updated!!!

BANKING AND FINANCE

ICICI Bank, Ferrari tie up for credit cards

The Ferrari Credit Cards, which will be available in two variants — Ferrari Platinum Credit Card and Ferrari Signature Credit Card — will be offered to elite customers, who are enthusiasts of the iconic luxury brand.
The cards have been launched on the Visa platform
An all-expense paid invitation for top spenders each calendar year,
To attend an official Ferrari Challenge race,
Visit the Ferrari factory & museum as well as participate in an event conducted by Ferrari (with Ferrari Signature Credit Card);
A Scuderia Ferrari watch as a complimentary joining gift (with Ferrari Signature Credit Card).

Quick Link – ICICI with Ferrari

Kotak Mahindra Group ties up with Canada Pension Plan for investment in Indian stressed assets

The agreement entails a total investment of up to $525 million, of which as much as $450 million will come from CPPIB.
This investment is aimed at tapping the growing opportunity arising from the current stress in the Indian banking and corporate sectors. Kotak Mahindra and its affiliate Phoenix Asset Reconstruction Co. have been dealing in the distressed and structured credit market for over a decade.
Kotak will act as an advisor as CPPIB invests in assets that suit its long-term investment mandate.
For example, if a bad loan portfolio of Rs 1,000 crore is valued at half the price, the Kotak asset reconstruction company (ARC) will fund 15% or Rs 75 crore while the remainingRs 425 crore will be funded by the pension fund to take over the assets. Later, Kotak ARC will issue security receipts to the fund house and a trust will be set up for the same. As and when the recovery takes place.
The CPP Investment Board, formally the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, is a Canadian Crown corporation established in 1997 to oversee and invest the funds contributed to and held by the Canada Pension Plan (CPP).

Quick Link – K M – CPPIB

RBI said Banks to Pay interest on savings accounts every quarter

At present, the interest is credited in savings bank account on half-yearly basis. Interest rate on savings bank account is calculated on daily basis since April 1, 2010.
While public sector banks offer 4 per cent interest on savings deposit, private players offer as much as 6 per cent.
In 2011, the central bank had decided to give freedom to commercial banks to fix savings bank deposit rates, the last bastion of the regulated interest-rate regime.
While giving banks this freedom, the RBI had said a uniform rate will have to be offered on deposits of up to Rs. 1 lakh.
On higher amounts, banks are allowed to offer differential rates to depositors.

Quick Link – Pay interest on every quarter

INDIAN AFFAIRS

MoU Signed between M/O Tourism and Ecotourism Society of India

The Ecotourism Society of India (ESOI) was established in 2008 at the behest of the Ministry of Tourism (MOT) as a non-profit organization to promote environmentally responsible and sustainable practices in the tourism industry across the country.
This national body was formed by a group of eminent professionals from the tourism industry, Government, Parliament and environmentalists& Conservationists.
The Society has over the past eight years attempted to spread awareness and educate tourism service providers as well as local government officials on the urgent need to ensure sustainable tourism practices.
ESOI works closely with both Central and State Government bodies as well as relevant institutions and individuals to facilitate and support synergy of policies, initiatives and activities relating to responsible travel.

Quick Link – ESOI-MOT

UP Cabinet approves Kanpur Metro project, senior citizen policy

The Cabinet also cleared the UP State Senior Citizen Policy that seeks to safeguard the interests of the senior citizens by setting up old age and protection homes where 25 per cent seats will be reserved for the BPL category.
The government also decided to increase the monthly old-age pension by Rs 100, following which a revised pension of Rs 400 will be given to the beneficiaries from April 1 onwards.
The Cabinet has also started a senior citizen welfare fund, where contributions from private companies, trusts and individuals would be accepted.
The fund, which has been declared tax-free, will be initially set up by the UP government with a corpus of Rs 5 crore.

Quick Link – Kanpur Metro project, senior citizen policy

P&G stops sale of ‘Vicks Action 500 Extra’ after govt ban

Drug majors Pfizer and Abbott stopped sale of their popular cough syrups Corex and Phensedyl respectively, after the government banned over 300 fixed dose combinations (FDCs) drugs.
Pfizer said it has stopped the sale of its Corex cough syrup that garnered sales ofRs. 176 crore in the nine-month period ended December 31, and said the government’s move will have an adverse impact on it.
In view of the government ban on manufacture and sale of Corex, the “company has discontinued the manufacture and sale of its drug ‘Corex’ with immediate effect.
Abbott also stopped sale of its Phensedyl cough syrup.
In a gazette notification on March 10, the government had, among others, banned manufacture, sale and distribution of fixed does combination of chlopheniramine maleate plus codiene syrup which is used in the cough syrups.

Quick Link – Vicks Action 500 Extra

RUSA scheme for achieving equity, access, quality in higher education

A total of 115 Universities and 1218 colleges have been approved by RUSA PAB for infrastructure grants.
The States have furnished proposals for construction of Model Degree Colleges and upgradation of Colleges to Model Degree Colleges in excess of the approved target for the 12th Plan.
The RUSA Project Approval Board (PAB) has already accorded approvals under these components and exhausted the sanctioned targets.
Further, 1218 Colleges out of a target of 3500 colleges and 115 Universities out of a target of 150 universities during 12th Plan have been approved for funding support from RUSA.
To achieve the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) target of 25.2% by the end of 12th Plan and 32% by the end of 13th Plan.

Quick Link – RUSA PAB

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

UN Security Council praises Russia’s Syria pullout

The UN Security Council views Russia’s decision to begin withdrawing from Syria as a positive step.
The council discussed the surprise Russian announcement during a closed-door meeting, when it also heard a report from UN envoy Staffan de Mistura on a new round of peace talks that opened in Geneva.
President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia will begin withdrawing the bulk of its forces from Syria.
The Kremlin leader said his forces had achieved their military goals and expressed hope that peace talks will yield a settlement to end the five-year war.
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said following the meeting that “finally” all the components of Syria’s peace process were in place, including a cessation of hostilities, humanitarian aid deliveries and negotiations.

Quick Link – Russia’s Syria

China to set up maritime ‘judicial centre’

The top court gave few details in its announcement, but said the centre would help China become a “maritime power”.
Beijing is locked in disputes with its neighbours over claims in the resource-rich South China Sea, with tensions raised in recent months over China’s aggressive land reclamation.
It has also squared off with Japan over the Diaoyu or Senkaku islands.
The announcement of the new centre came from Chief Justice Zhou Qiang during the ongoing annual meeting of China’s parliament.
China claims a large swathe of the South and East China Sea, creating multiple overlaps with areas claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Japan.
The Philippines currently has a case lodged against China at the UN’s Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.

Quick Link – judicial centre

Mother Teresa to be made a saint : Pope announced

Last December, he cleared the way for sainthood for the Nobel peace laureate, who died in 1997 at the age of 87 and was known as “saint of the gutters”.
Teresa, who was born Agnese Gonxha Bojaxhiu of Albanian parents in 1910 in what was then part of the Ottoman Empire and is now Macedonia, became an international figure but was also accused of trying to convert people to Christianity.
Francis, who has made concern for the poor a major plank of his papacy, was keen to make Mother Teresa a saint during the Church’s current Holy Year.
She founded the Missionaries of Charity with about a dozen nuns in the 1950s to help the poor on the streets of Calcutta, now known as Kolkata. The religious order spread throughout the world.
She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979.
The Church defines saints as those believed to have been holy enough during their lives to now be in Heaven and can intercede with God to perform miracles.

Quick Link – Saint of the gutters

World Consumer Rights Day : March 15

Consumer organisations around the world, big and small, use materials produced by CI to generate local initiatives and media coverage for their work over the coming year.
Initiatives can take the shape of special campaigns, press conferences, public exhibitions, workshops, street events or new publications, to name only a few possibilities.
Consumer groups may adapt CI’s materials to have the greatest local impact. Whatever the objectives, they share the same underlying aim of bringing about important and needed benefits for consumers.
15 March is observed as World Consumer Rights Day (WCRD).
It is an annual occasion for celebration and solidarity within the international consumer movement.
It marks the date in 1962 President John F Kennedy first outlined the definition of Consumer Rights.

Quick Link – World Consumer Rights Day

Htin Kyaw elected as first civilian President of Myanmar

Myanmar’s parliament has elected Htin Kyaw as the country’s first non-military president since the army took power in a 1962 coup.
A close adviser and loyal friend to Aung San Suu Kyi, the 69-year-old was nominated by the National League for Democracy party last week and voted into the presidency by parliament.
Suu Kyi, who is barred from the presidency under an army-drafted constitution, has made clear she will be “above the president” and Htin Kyaw is expected to act as a proxy.
A final tally giving Htin Kyaw 360 out of 652 votes was met with applause. The two runners up, military nominee Myint Swe and ethnic minority Chin candidate Henry Van Thio, will become first and second vice-presidents respectively.
Aung San Suu Kyi, herself a member of parliament, cast her vote and later smiled broadly and clapped when the results were announced. Myint Swe received 213 votes and Henry Van Thio took 79 votes.

Quick Link – Htin Kyaw as first civilian President

M&M enters farm equipment rental biz

The start-up will connect farmers either through an app or a call (call centre).
TRRINGO will operate as a franchisee-based model and bring in new-age digital technology to the tractor rental business.
This is expected to significantly increase the reach of farm mechanisation and enable digital empowerment of farmers in India.
This venture, which will provide tractors and farm equipment on a rental basis, is being formed as a new age start-up company.
Mahindra began manufacturing tractors for the Indian market during the early ’60s.
It is the top tractor company in the world (by volume) with annual sales totaling more than 200,000 tractors.
Mahindra & Mahindra’s farm equipment division (Mahindra Tractors) has over 1,000 dealers servicing approx. 1.45 million customers.

Quick Link – M&M FES

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

ExoMars 2016 spacecraft successfully launched by ESA-Roscosmos

The Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Schiaparelli will travel to Mars together before separating on 16 October at distance of 900 000 km from the planet. Then, on 19 October, Schiaparelli will enter the martian atmosphere, descending to the surface in just under six minutes.
TGO will image features on the martian surface that may be related to trace-gas sources such as volcanoes. In addition, it will be able to detect buried water-ice deposits, which, along with locations identified as sources of the trace gases, could influence the choice of landing sites of future missions.
The spacecraft was launched on a Proton-M rocket operated by Russia’s Roscosmos from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. ExoMars 2016 is the first of a two-phase of ExoMars (Exobiology on Mars) program.The ExoMars programme is a joint endeavour between ESA and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos.
The primary goal of the ExoMars programme is to address the question of whether life has ever existed on Mars. This relates to its name, with the ‘exo’ referring to the study of exobiology – the possible existence of life beyond Earth (sometimes also referred to as astrobiology).

Quick Link – ExoMars 2016

OBITUARY

Lloyd S. Shapley, 92, Nobel Laureate and a Father of Game Theory, Is Dead

Lloyd S. Shapley, who shared the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science for work on game theory that has been used to study subjects as diverse as matching couples and allocating costs, died in Tucson.
He was 92.Dr. Shapley, a mathematician and emeritus professor at U.C.L.A., was considered one of the fathers of game theory, which tries to explain the choices that competitors make in situations that require strategic thinking.
The “Shapley value,” named for him, is a concept through which the benefits of cooperation can be proportionally divided among participants based on their relative contribution.
He was a close friend and mentor to John Forbes Nash Jr., a mathematician and Nobel laureate who had schizophrenia.

Quick Link – Lloyd S. Shapley Passes away

Anita Brookner, art historian and Booker prize winner, dies age 87

The literary world was in mourning for Anita Brookner, the celebrated novelist and art historian, who has died.
Anita Brookner, the surprise winner of the Booker prize for fiction in 1984, was 87.
Anita Brookner was highly regarded for her style and stories centring on the theme of middle-class loneliness, often featuring female protagonists.
Anita Brookner had been rated a 6-1 outsider when her fourth novel, Hotel du Lac, was the unexpected winner of the Booker prize in 1984.
Born into an immigrant family in Herne Hill, south London, in July 1928, Brookner’s Jewish background was to inform much of her writing in later life.
Later in life, Brookner was candid about her regrets, citing not getting married and not becoming a mother, but saying that the latter was the reason why she continued to be a writer.
Brookner continued to write late into her life and a novella, At the Hairdressers, was published as an e-book in 2011.

Quick Link – Anita Brookner Passes away

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