Current Affairs Update – 15th October, 2015

• Real estate developer Tata Housing on 14
  October 2015 tied-up with social networking firm Facebook to sell its
  affordable homes online. For this purpose, Tata Housing launched the new
  campaign titled Social sell on Facebook.
• Through this new campaign Social sell, the
  company plans to sell around 250 units of its new five-acre residential project
  in Goa called Goa Paradise. The initiative is in line with the company’s target
  to generate over 30 percent of its overall sales online in the next five years.
• Tata Housing started selling homes online
  in India in 2013 through its partnership with Google as part of The Great
  Shopping Festival. Currently, the company has sold around 2000 homes online in
  the last three years.

• The Union Government on 14 October 2015
  gave a green signal to payment of Performance Related Pay (PRP) to executives
  and non-unionised supervisors of Coal India Ltd (CIL) and its subsidiaries.
• The recommendations of the Committee of
  Secretaries were approved by the Union Cabinet to regularise the 2007 Pay
  Revision implemented by CIL with effect from 1 January 2007 in the loss making
  subsidiaries.
• The payment will be given out of the corpus
  created by pooling the profits of CIL subsidiary companies, duly setting off
  the losses of the loss making subsidiaries and stand-alone profits of CIL,
  excluding dividends received from its subsidiary companies.
• However, it will be done with the condition
  that the corpus for payment of PRP should be treated as a yearly corpus with no
  provision for carrying it forward to subsequent years.

• Dell Inc and EMC Corporation on 12 October
  2015 signed a definitive agreement under which Dell, together with its owners
  will acquire EMC Corporation, while maintaining VMware as a publicly-traded
  company.
• This will the biggest tech deal in history
  with a 67 billion US dollars acquisition of EMC Corp by Dell. The owners of
  Dell include Michael S Dell, founder, chairman and CEO of Dell, MSD Partners
  and Silver Lake, the global leader in technology investing.
• VMware Inc is a US company that provides
  cloud and virtualization software and services. It is a subsidiary of EMC
  Corporation.

• India and Israel on 14 October 2015 signed
  two agreements to enhance bilateral cooperation. The agreements were inked
  after President Pranab Mukherjee, who was in Jerusalem on the final leg of his
  tri-nation tour to West Asia, held a meeting with his Israeli counterpart
  Reuven Rivlin.

• A cultural exchange programme for 2015-2018
• The amendment to the protocol on Double
  Taxation Avoidance Agreement

• The Union Cabinet on 14 October 2015
  approved the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the India-Taipei
  Association (ITA) in Taipei and Taipei Economic and Cultural Center (TECC) in
  India. The memorandum was signed for the cooperation in the field of Micro,
  Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME).
• The memorandum provides a structured
  framework and enabling environment to the MSME sector of the two parties to
  understand each other’s strengths, markets, technologies, policies etc.
• The MoU also includes an agreement between
  the two parties to enable their respective MSMEs to participate in each other’s
  trade fairs/exhibitions and to exchange business delegations with the other
  party. The agreement will eventually help the parties understand the policy and
  explore markets so that joint ventures, tie-ups, technology transfer etc. could
  take place.

• The country’s prestigious DRDO Missile
  Complex in Hyderabad was on 15 October 2015 renamed as Dr APJ Abdul Kalam
  Missile Complex by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar during an event at
  Research Centre Imarat on the occasion of the 84th Birth Anniversary of Dr
  Kalam, the Missile Man.
• Dr Kalam joined the Missile Complex, DRDO
  in 1982 and was a part of it for nearly two decades. The Missile Complex
  comprises Advanced Systems Laboratory (ASL), Defence Research and Development
  Laboratory (DRDL) and Research Centre Imarat (RCI), which are considered to be
  the brain child of Dr Kalam.

• Portugal on 9 October 2015 became the first
  European country to sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the
  establishment of Nalanda University.
• The MoU was signed in New Delhi by
  Portuguese Ambassador to India Ana Martinho and Dr Jitendra Nath Misra, the
  Ambassador of India to Portugal.
• With this, Portugal became the 17th country
  overall and the fourth outside the East Asia Summit to do so.

• Uttar Pradesh government on 13 October 2015
  launched the mobile app mSehat for health workers to record maternal and infant
  data in real-time.
• The application was developed by Kellton
  Tech, a company that was selected as the technology partner for the initiative
  by State Innovations in Family Planning Services Agency (SIFPSA).
• The application is aimed at improving the
  infant mortality rate outcomes.

• mSehat is a cloud-hosted solution to
  facilitate remote access and enrolment from across the region through
  2G-enabled mobile devices.
• The recorded data will be stored in the
  cloud, which will act as the central repository.

• The Navies of India, United States and
  Japan on 14 October 2015 began the five-day Malabar exercise 2015 on the
  Eastern Coast in which several warships, aircraft carriers and fast attack
  submarine will be participating.
• Malabar 2015 is a latest in the continuing
  series of exercises conducted to advance multi-national maritime relationships
  and mutual security issues. Generally, the United States and India annually
  hold naval drills to sharpen skills, but this year the fleet of aircraft
  carriers, destroyers and frigates conducting war games included a warship from
  Japan.
• The Naval personnel of the three countries
  will participate in the event called Complex, High-end war-fighting exercise.
  During the exercise which includes both ashore and at-sea training, there would
  be knowledge sharing sessions as well.

• The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister
  Narendra Modi on 14 October 2015 gave its approval for the Revised Cost
  Estimate (RCE) of 2904.04 crores rupees for the Kaladan Multi Modal Transit
  Transport Project in Myanmar.
• Since the project is of political and
  strategic significance, it was decided to execute it through India’s grant
  assistance to Myanmar.
• The project will provide an alternate
  access route to the North-Eastern region of India and contribute towards the
  region’s economic development. Being a key connectivity project, it will
  promote economic, commercial and strategic links between India and Myanmar.

• The Union Government on 14 October 2015
  approved a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Ministry of New and
  Renewable Energy, India and Mozambique.
• The agreement was inked between the
  Ministry of New and Renewable Energy of the Government of India and the
  Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy, Government of Mozambique in New Delhi
  on 5 August 2015.
• The agreement aims at establishing a
  cooperative institutional relationship to encourage and promote technical
  bilateral cooperation, investment promotion and partnership on new and
  renewable energy issues on the basis of mutual benefit, equality and
  reciprocity.

• An Indian national, Kundhavi Kadiresan was
  on 14 October 2015 appointed as the Assistant Director of the United Nations
  Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Regional Representative for Asia
  and the Pacific. She was appointed at the post by FAO Director General José
  Graziano da Silva.
• Kadiresan succeeded Hiroyuki Konuma who
  retired from FAO earlier in 2015.

• Actress Shruti Haasan will be the new brand
  ambassador for FMCG Emami’s ayurvedic hair care brand, Kesh King. Shruti will
  be endorsing the Kesh King Ayurvedic Medicinal Oil specifically for the
  southern markets and the brand’s Aloe Vera Herbal Shampoo on a pan-India basis.
• Actress Juhi Chawla, who is the current
  brand ambassador of Kesh King Ayurvedic Medicinal Oil, will continue as the
  national face of the product, Emami said as per a release.
• The Kesh King brand was acquired by Emami
  in June 2015, marking the company’s foray into the ayurvedic hair & scalp
  care segment. The brand portfolio includes ayurvedic medicinal oil, herbal
  shampoo & conditioner and ayurvedic capsules.

• Fast bowler Zaheer Khan announced his
  retirement from international cricket on Thursday.
• The 37-year-old pacer made the announcement
  on Thursday, ending his 14-year long international career. Zaheer made his
  India debut in 2000 and played his last game for India in 2014 at Wellington
  against New Zealand.
• He has played 92 Tests (311 wickets), 200
  ODIs (282 wickets) and 17 Twenty20 matches (17 wickets).
• The left arm seamer made his Test debut
  against Bangladesh at Dhaka in 2000 and played his last Test against New
  Zealand at Basin Reserve in February 2014. He was part of the Indian team that
  won the 2011 World Cup at the Wankhede Stadium.
• Zaheer was the joint highest wicket-taker
  in the 2011 World Cup along with Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi, claiming 21 wickets
  at 18.76.

• Tibetan Prime Minister Lobsang Sangay on 14
  October 2015 was awarded with the prestigious Presidential Medal by Salisbury
  University in Maryland, US for promoting peace and understanding.
• PM Sangay dedicated the medal to the sufferings
  of the Tibetan people and the non-violent Tibetan movement to reinstate freedom
  and dignity inside Tibet.
• Lobsang Sangay was born in Darjeeling,
  India in 1968. He became Sikyong (equivalent to Prime Minister) of the Tibetan
  Government-in-Exile on 8 August 2011. He obtained his BA (Hons) and LLB degrees
  from the University of Delhi in India. He obtained his LLM degree from the
  Harvard Law School in 1995.
• He is also the recipient of the 2004 Yong
  K. Kim’ 95 Prize of excellence for his dissertation Democracy in Distress: Is
  Exile Polity a Remedy? A Case Study of Tibet’s Government-in-exile.

• China on 13 October 2015 operationalised
  the Zam hydropower station on the Brahmaputra River in Tibet Autonomous Region
  (TAR). It is considered to be the highest-altitude hydropower station in the
  world.
• While the first unit began operations in
  November 2014 itself, the present initiative connected the remaining five units
  to the power grid.

• It was built on the river Brahmaputra that
  is also known as the river Yarlung Zangbo in Tibet.
• It was built at a cost of 1.5 billion US
  dollars in Shannan Prefecture in the South East China.
• It produces 2.5 billion kilowatt-hours of
  electricity a year.

Regards

Team ExamPundit

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