Current Affairs Update – 7th-8th July, 2016

• The State Bank of India (SBI) on
  1 July 2016 launched SBI Mingle, a social media banking platform for Facebook
  and Twitter users.
• The platform was launched by SBI
  Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya, on the occasion of 61st State Bank Day that is
  observed on 1 July every year.

• It will allow SBI’s customers to
  access various banking services via these social platforms.
• To avail services from this
  platform, customers will have to register for it through a simple one time
  registration process using either their social account number or their
  ATM/Debit Card details.
• After registering they can
  undertake the various banking facilities available on the platform.
• Currently, SBI services such as
  balance enquiry, mini statement, funds transfer within SBI as well as
  inter-bank and beneficiary management services are available for Facebook.
• On Twitter, customers using
  hashtags can find out their account balance and view mini statements.

• Sidbi on Friday entered into a
  partnership with private sector lender Yes Bank to guarantee 75% of loans of up
  to Rs 15 crore extended to energy efficiency projects under a World Bank
  initiative.
• The state-run Sidbi expects to
  provide credit guarantee to more than 500 projects and mobilise financing of up
  to $127 million through the tie-up.
• A memorandum of understanding was
  signed between Sidbi and Yes Bank under the Partial Risk Sharing Facility
  (PRSF) for financing energy efficiency projects programme sponsored by the
  World Bank, Sidbi said in a statement.
• The Small Industries Development
  Bank of India (Sidbi) is the project execution agency whereas Yes Bank claims
  to be the first Indian lender to be empanelled for the programme.
• Sidbi will extend the guarantee
  for securing up to 75% of the loan amount of up to Rs 15 crore extended by the
  bank to MSMEs under this programme.

• In a first-of-its-kind move in
  the country, Kerala has introduced a ‘fat tax’ on the consumption of junk food
  items like pizzas and burgers sold through branded restaurants.
• The newly-elected LDF government
  imposed 14.5% tax on branded restaurants selling items like tacos, pizzas,
  burgers, sandwiches, among others. The announcement was made by state finance
  minister Thomas Isaac as a part of the newly-elected LDF government’s first
  State Budget presentation after being elected to power.
• Multi-national fast food chains
  like McDonalds, Pizza etc. are set to be hit on the back of the new tax
  imposition.
• Meanwhile, the state government
  has also made consumption of ready-to-eat chapatis dearer with the introduction
  of 5% tax on wheat products in packets. Along with this, 5% tax has been
  imposed on packaged basmati rice and coconut oil. Disposable glasses made out
  of plastic are set to be taxed at a whopping 20%.

• The National Association of
  Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) on 7 July 2016 unveiled India’s first
  Centre of Excellence focused on Internet of Things (CoE- IoT) at its Startup
  Warehouse in Bengaluru.
• The centre was launched in a bid
  to encourage start-ups to come up with tech solutions centred on Internet of
  Things (IoT).

• The centre is a joint initiative
  between the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeITY),
  Education and Research Network (ERNET) and NASSCOM.
• It is also supported by
  Accenture, Cisco, Intel, HCL Technologies, Qualcomm, TCS and L&T Technology
  Services, among others.
• It will function as an enabler of
  funding, accelerating, and mentoring for start-ups in this area.
• The CoE laboratory, along with
  the Nasscom 10000 Startups Warehouse, has the capacity to incubate up to 40
  start-ups.

• Rajasthan in the first week of
  July 2016 became the first state in the country to introduce minimum wages for
  part time workers.
• The Labour Department of
  Rajasthan has also issued a notification in this regard.
• As per the notification, it
  becomes mandatory to pay 50% of the prescribed a day minimum wage to a person
  who works for less than four hours in a day.
• With the notification, part time
  workers now come under the Minimum Wages Act 1948.

• India and South Africa on Friday
  inked three Memoranda of Understanding and one Programme of Cooperation to take
  their “partnership in progress” one more step forward.
• Ministry of External Affairs
  spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted “India-South Africa: Partners in
  Progress – The two countries announce MoUs/Programme in four areas of
  cooperation.”
• The three Memoranda of
  Understanding are in the fields of ICT (Information and Communications Technology);
  Tourism and Grassroots Innovation in Science and Technology (S & T). A
  Programme of Cooperation in Arts and Culture was the fourth bilateral agreement
  between the two sides after delegation-level talks held in the presidential
  boardroom at the Union Building in Pretoria.

• Search Giant Google on 6 July
  2016 acquired Moodstocks, a startup based out of Paris that develops
  machine-learning based image recognition technology for smartphones.
• Moodstocks’ application
  programming interface (API) for developers are described as the Shazam for
  images. With this acquisition, Moodstocks’ API and SDK will be discontinued
  soon.

• The Telecom Regulatory Authority
  of India (TRAI) on 5 July 2016 launched MySpeed mobile application for measuring
  real time mobile Internet speed of consumers.
• The idea behind the app is that
  customers should know about the experience of their as well as other networks
  in order to select the best mobile operator in their locality. This is the
  first application to be launched under the Digital India initiative which is
  directly trying to tackle the issue of poor data speeds.

• The MySpeed app is a free to
  download, and is currently available only for Android smartphones.
• It takes up 23MB after it is
  installed on the phone.
• The interface is clutter-free and
  easy to follow.
• In terms of graphics, MySpeed
  looks pretty basic in comparison to the most popular speed testing app
  Speedtest.
• It allows users to report poor
  mobile network to TRAI, which will eventually help the regulator assess the
  service quality of an operator.

• India and Mozambique on 7 July
  2016 signed three Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) in areas of drug
  trafficking, pulse trading and sports
• These MoUs were signed between
  two countries at Maputo, Mozambique during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra
  Modi to Mozambique.
• MoU on long term agreement for
  purchase of pulses
• It will promote the production of
  Tur (Pigeon Peas) and other pulses in Mozambique to encourage trading of
  pulses.
• It will also play an important
  role in augmenting domestic availability of pulses in India.
• The contract will be valid for
  five financial years 2020-21 and pulses under it will be imported by India
  either through G2G or private channels nominated by two countries.

• MoU on cooperation in the field
  of youth affairs and sports.
• MoU on reduction of drug
  trafficking and psychotropic substances and related materials.

• Water Resources Minister Uma
  Bharti on 7 July 2016 inaugurated 231 projects under the Namami Gange
  Programme.
• The projects were inaugurated
  from Haridwar, Uttarakhand in various locations in different states namely
  Uttrakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Haryana and Delhi.
• These projects involve
  modernization and redevelopment of Ghats and crematoriums, development of
  sewage infrastructure and treatment, afforestation, tree plantation, pilot
  drain project, interceptor drain project, trash skimmers and conservation of
  biodiversity.

• 47 such projects were inaugurated
  at various locations in Dehradun, Garhwal, Tehri Garhwal, Rudraprayag, Haridwar
  and Chamoli districts of Uttrakhand.
• 20 projects will be inaugurated
  at various locations in North 24 pargana, Nadia, South 24 pargana and Howrah
  districts of West Bengal.
• 26 projects were inaugurated at
  various locations in Buxar, Vaishali, Saran, Patna and Bhagalpur districts of
  Bihar.
• 112 projects under Namami Gange
  programme were inaugurated at various locations in Amroha, Bijnor, Hapur,
  Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Mathura, Allahabad, Varanasi, Farukhabad and Kanpur
  districts.

• The second phase of Haritha Haram
  programme of Telangana government was launched in the state on 8 July 2016.
• Chief Minister Chandrasekhar Rao
  participated in the plantation programme at Gundrampalli near Chityal in
  Nalgonda district by planting a Neem sapling.
• Ministers, legislators, officials
  besides a large number of school children and MGNREGA workers have been asked
  to take up similar plantations across the state.
• 2nd Phase of Haritha Haram
  programme
• The two-week long Haritha Haram
  programme aims at planting 46 crore plants, including 25 lakh in Hyderabad, to
  improve green belt in the state.
• The trees were planted over 163
  kms of highway by over a lakh of people on the first day of the programme.
• As part of its five year
  programme to increase the forest cover in the state to 33 percent, the
  government has selected Hyderabad – Vijayawada highway as a pilot project to
  plant trees on either side of highways.

• Union Minister of Road Transport
  & Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari on 1 July 2016 launched the National
  Green Highways Mission (NGHM) in New Delhi.
• Under this initiative, plantation
  drive on 1500 km of National Highways was launched at a cost of about 300 crore
  rupees.

• It was launched under the Green
  Highways Policy that was unveiled in September 2015 to actualize the vision of
  developing eco-friendly and green National Highways.
• The greening project has a huge
  potential to generate jobs and can prove to be a game-changer for agriculture
  and rural economy.
• Greening of one km of highway
  provides employment to ten people. The initial launch on the 1500 km stretch will
  employ 15000 people.
• The government has made it
  mandatory to set aside 1 per cent of the total project cost of any NH contract
  to a Green Fund corpus that will be used for plantation purposes.

• India was placed at 91st position
  in the Networked Readiness Index (NRI) 2016 that was released by the
  Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF) on 6 July 2016. The index was released
  as the part of the WEF’s Global Information Technology Report 2016.
• It measures countries’ success in
  creating the necessary conditions for a transition to a digitised economy and
  society.

• It finds seven countries are
  excelling when it comes to economically benefiting from investments in information
  and communications technologies
• Finland, Switzerland, Sweden,
  Israel, Singapore, the Netherlands and the US are leading the world when it
  comes to generating economic impact from investments in information and
  technology.
• Singapore leads the Index
  followed by Finland, Sweden, Norway and the United States.
• India (91st) was ranked the
  lowest among the BRICS countries- Russia (41st), China (59th), South Africa
  (65th) and Brazil (72nd).

• South African writer, filmmaker
  and photographer Lidudumalingani Mqombothi on 5 July 2016 won the 17th edition
  of prestigious Caine Prize 2016 for his short story Memories We Lost. 
• With this, Lidudumalingani was
  awarded with 10000 Euros and a month at Georgetown University in the US as a
  writer-in-residence.
• The winning story explores a difficult
  subject of tackling schizophrenia. This is a troubling piece, depicting the
  great love between two young siblings in a beautifully drawn Eastern Cape.
• The Caine Prize is an annual
  literature prize awarded to an African writer of a short story published in the
  English language.

• 1982 batch IAS officer Deepak
  Singhal was on 6 July 2016 appointed as the Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh.
  Singhal succeeds 1978 batch officer Alok Ranjan, who retired on 30 June 2016
  after a three-month extension of service.
• He will also hold additional
  charge of Principal Resident Commissioner of UP in New Delhi, and chairman of
  the Pradeshiya Industrial & Investment Corporation of UP (PICUP).

• Scientists has named a newly
  discovered species of tarantula (a big hairy spider) as Kankuamo Marquezi after
  the famed Colombian novelist and 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Gabriel
  Garcia Marquez.
• The species was discovered in
  large number in an isolated mountain range in Caribbean Colombia.  It was named after him as homage to the
  country where it was found.
• It was discovered by a group of
  Uruguayan and Colombian scientists, led by Carlos Perefan from the University
  of the Republic of Uruguay.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin
  in July 2016 signed the “anti-terrorist” legislation adopted by the lower and
  upper houses of parliament in June 2016.
• This anti-terror amendment is
  dubbed as Big Brother by US intelligence contractor turned privacy activist
  Edward Snowden.
• Critics say that the measures may
  cost billions to the internet and telecom companies.
• Law enforcement agencies will be
  granted access to any user’s messages without any judicial oversight.
• It boosts the surveillance powers
  for the security services by requiring communication providers to store users’
  calls, messages, photographs and videos for six months, and the Metadata for up
  to three years.
• They will have to provide Federal
  Security Service (FSB) with access to this data and any necessary encryption
  mechanisms necessary to use it.

• Indian gymnast Dipa Karmakar was
  named a ‘Gymnaste de Classe Mondaile’ (World class gymnast) by the
  International Gymnastics Federation (FIG).
• In this regard, she received the
  official letter confirming the distinction from the federation on 6 July 2016.
• With this, she also became the
  first-ever Indian gymnast to receive the honour.
• She is the first woman in the
  gymnast history to land the Produnova, one of the most dangerous vaults.