Current Affairs Update – 21st May, 2015

Hello and welcome to ExamPundit. Here are the Important Current Affairs of 21st May, 2015.

• State Bank of India (SBI), on Thursday, entered into a strategic partnership with digital payments company, PayPal, to facilitate cross-border trade and payments.
• The service will be extended to SBI and PayPal users both in India and abroad and is targeted at small and medium enterprises (SMEs). SBI currently, has over 900,000 SME customers.
• According to B Sriram, Managing Director &Group Executive (National Banking), SBI, attempts are also being made to extend the services for domestic transactions.
• "Currently the tie-up will be for cross-border remittances and payments. We are looking to explore the domestic payments space too in the coming days," he said after signing an MoU with PayPal.
• This will be SBI's first such tie-up for remittances and payments.
• According to Sriram, SBI is also looking at exploring opportunities in e-visa, e-governance, and remittances for the Clean Ganga Campaign with this tie-up.
• He, however, did not give details of how volumes for such cross-border transactions will be impacted post this tie-up with PayPal.

• State of Bank of India (SBI) on Thursday entered into a seller financing scheme with e-com major Snapdeal.
• Under the scheme, SBI will provide loans to small and medium enterprises at easier interest rates. Data regarding the sellers will be provided by Snapdeal.
• "Rates of interest will be determined by the credit worthiness of the seller," Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chairman, SBI, said after signing the MoU with Snapdeal.
• The country's biggest lender (SBI) had an MSME loan book of approximately Rs 170,000 crore as on December 31, 2014.
• The seller financing scheme will help MSMEs — traders, sellers and manufacturers — scale up their operations by catering to their working capital requirements, Bhattacharya said.
• According to Kunal Bahl, CEO, Snapdeal, there are at least 150,000 sellers associated with Snapdeal. E-com major Snapdeal operates in a marketplace model.

• Close on the heels of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to China, India's National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which runs the RuPay payment card network, has received the Reserve Bank of India's approval to tie up with the Chinese government-supported payment card network China UnionPay International.
• This will allow Chinese tourists and people working in India to be able to use automated teller machines (ATMs) and point of sale (PoS) terminals in India to withdraw cash in the Indian currency.
• This could offer healthy competition to global players such as the US-based MasterCard and Visa, which offer services in India but not in China.
• China has its own local card payment system managed by UnionPay International, which is not supported by Visa and Mastercard, which is why Chinese customers cannot use their cards in India as of now.
• NPCI Chief Executive AP Hota said the two sides have signed a memorandum of understanding, but were still working out the details of the tie-up.
• Under the approval, China UnionPay's cards will be accepted at all the ATMs and point of sale terminals in India through NPCI's network, Hota said.

• For the sixth quarter in a row, India continued to lead the global confidence index in anticipation of improvement in the economy through reforms and stimulus announced by the central government, says a report.
• According to global information and insights provider Nielsen, in the first quarter of 2015, India’s consumer confidence score rose to 130 followed by Indonesia (123) and Philippines (115).
• While, the consumer confidence in urban India has increased by 9 points from first quarter in 2014 (121), 44 per cent of respondents polled feel that India is still in “economic recession”.
• The Nielsen Global Consumer Confidence Index said that over four in five (83 per cent) urban Indian respondents indicated the highest level of optimism globally on job prospects in the next 12 months compared with 74 per cent in first quarter in 2014.

• Union finance Ministry on 20 May 2015 constituted Shah Committee to look into the issue of Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT) on Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs).
• The committee will be headed by Justice A P Shah while the other members are Dr. Girish Ahuja, a chartered accountant and former Associate Professor of Commerce, Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi and Dr. Ashok Lahiri, former Chief Economic Adviser and Executive Director, ADB and currently Chairman of High Level Committee to interact with Trade and Industry on tax laws.
• Further, the committee would examine the matter relating to levy of MAT on FIIs for the period prior to 1 April 2015.
• It will also examine all the related legal provisions, judicial/quasi judicial pronouncements and such other relevant aspects as it may consider appropriate. The committee has been requested to give its recommendations on the above issue expeditiously.

• China will be the largest shareholder in the newly floated Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) with a 30.85 per cent stake followed by India and Russia, Chinese officials have said.
• "Based on the AIIB members' GDP weight in the world economy, China will become the bank's largest shareholder, followed by India and Russia," Chen Fengying, a research fellow at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told state-run Global Times.
• China is likely to have a 30.85 per cent share in the bank, followed by India with 10.4 per cent, the daily quoted media reports as saying.
• Based on the GDP and Purchasing Power Parity, (PPP) China was expected to get the post of President followed by India as one of the Vice Presidents.
• German Ambassador to China Michael Clauss said Germany will have a director on the board of the AIIB.

• Six of the world’s biggest banks were on 20 May 2015 fined 5.7 billion US dollars on Foreign Exchange Benchmark Rates manipulation charges by various authorities in the USA and the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.
• The fines were imposed on Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays Plc, Royal Bank of Scotland Plc, UBS Group AG and Bank of America Corp. as part of the settlements they reached with the government agencies in which they pleaded guilty to the charges and agreed to pay fines.
• As part of the settlement with the US Justice Department the four banks viz., Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays Plc and Royal Bank of Scotland Plc agreed to plead guilty to felony charges of conspiring to manipulate the price of US dollars and euros in the international market. However, UBS Group AG of Switzerland, the first to cooperate with antitrust investigators, was granted immunity from the charges.

• Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee inaugurated the new headquarter of Coal India Ltd at New Town Rajarhat in West Bengal on 15 May 2015.
• The inauguration was held in the presence of Union Minister of state for Power, Coal and New and Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal and the Minister of State for Urban Development, Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Babul Supriyo.
• The new building came up at a sprawling 27000 Sq. Ft. area and it was built by the National Building Corporation (NBCC), a public sector company of Urban Development Ministry.
• Coal India Limited (CIL), a Maharatna company, is the largest coal producer company in the world. It contributes around 81% of the coal production in India.

• Mirage 2000 fighter jet of Indian air force (IAF) on 21 May 2015 landed successfully on Yamuna Expressway as part of developing road runaway for emergency landing.
• It's a kind of first for military aviation in India. IAF conducted the successful trial run of landing on Yamuna Expressway near Mathura under the plan of use of national highways in emergency situations.
• The operations were conducted with active support from the government of Uttar Pradesh, Yamuna Expressway Authority, toll authorities of JP Infratech and the civil police.
• This sucessful trial run gives a push to the planning of authorities to convert the upcoming Agra-Lucknow Expressway, which is the longest greenfield expressway in the country, as India's first road runway. For this, Uttar Pradesh government had given a green signal on 11 May 2015.

• World Bank will offer a credit of USD 250 million to Bihar government over the next five years as part of a programme to help improve effectiveness of elementary school teachers in the state by making them more qualified, accountable and responsive.
• The programme, approved by the World Bank's Board of executive Directors, will be part of the government of Bihar's school education reform programme (also known as Manav Vikas programme), which is implementing a wide-set of reforms to improve the quality of education, especially for elementary level children.
• Lack of trained teachers seems to be one of the biggest impediments in improving the quality of education in Bihar. By 2020, the number of teachers is expected to exceed 600,000, the Bank said.
• However, the state's training capacity is less than 5,000 newly-trained teachers per year, whereas it needs to train at least ten times more teachers annually, it said.

• Indigenously developed Beyond Visual Range (BVR) air-to-air missile, Astra was successfully test fired at the Integrated Test Range (ITR), Chandipur in Odisha on 20 May 2015.
• It was test-fired aboard a Sukhoi-30 MKI fighter aircraft.
• The present test was a part of the series of tests planned to test the missile’s subsystems like propulsion, navigation and guidance and the smooth separation of the missile from the aircraft, etc.  
• The previous test was conducted on 18 March 2015 from the same place.

• Uttar Pradesh Food Safety and Drug Administration (UP FDA) on 20 May 2015 asked Nestle India to withdraw a batch of snack Maggi noodles from the market. UP FDA ordered the removal of the batch of popular snack after it found that the product contained high level of lead in it.
• UP FDA said the order pertained to a 2014 batch of Maggi noodles. It also said that the batch of the noodles contained high levels of added monosodium glutamate (MSG), a taste enhancer.
• During its routine tests conducted on two dozen packets of instant noodles in Kolkata, UP FDA found high lead concentration of 17.2 parts per million (ppm) in these packets, which is nearly seven times more that the permissible limit, which is between 0.01 ppm and 2.5 ppm.

• President of the United States (US) Barack Obama on 20 May 2015 entered Guinness Book of World Record for reaching a million followers in a span of mere 5 hours after going live.
• Barack Obama debuted on Social Media Platform Twitter with @POTUS account.
• He beat the previous record, which was set in April 2014 by Iron Man star Robert Downey Jr., after the actor reached a million followers in 23 hours and 22 minutes.

• India has ranked 24th out of 70 countries in the first Environmental Democracy Index that is topped by Lithuania and evaluates nations' progress in enacting laws to promote transparency, accountability and citizen engagement in environmental decision making.
• Lithuania, Latvia, Russia, the US, South Africa, the UK, Hungary, Bulgaria, Panama and Colombia are the top 10 nations in the list launched by Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI) and Access Initiative yesterday.
• The index evaluates environmental democracy in 70 countries, including 75 legal and 24 practice indicators, based on recognised international standards.

• US President Barack Obama has named an Indian-American professor from Yale University as a member of the prestigious National Council on Humanities.
• The nomination of Akhil Amar, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at the university since 2008, was announced yesterday by Obama along with other key administration positions.
• He is co-editor of a constitutional law casebook, 'Processes of Constitutional Decision-making', and has written several other books on constitutional law.
• Amar is a member of the Board of Directors of the Constitutional Accountability Center and the Coalition of Freedom Advisory Board of the National Constitution Center.

• Indian IT major Wipro has been felicitated by Microsoft with 'Supplier of the Year award' for demonstrating excellence across multiple disciplines.
• "Wipro demonstrated excellence at Microsoft across multiple disciplines including Process Transformation, Product Quality Improvement, and Cost Optimisation Efficiency Improvement and Automation," Microsoft said in a statement.
• Through Wipro's long history and broad engagement with Microsoft, it has repeatedly shown that it strives for excellence in everything it does for Microsoft, the company said.
• Winners of the 2015 MSP Excellence Awards were nominated by employees of Microsoft in various business units, MSP suppliers and Microsoft Procurement Professionals.

• Anti-Terrorism Day was observed across India on 21 May 2015. The day is annually observed on the death anniversary of seventh Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who was assassinated at an election rally near Chennai by a suicide bomber from the LTTE on 21 May 1991.
• The day is observed to make people aware of the ongoing terrorist activities and the precautions to be taken by the commoners to prevent these acts of terrorism. Its motive is to promote unity, peace and harmony across the nation.
• On this day, government employees are administered an anti-terror and violence pledge. Apart from this, several discussions, debates, cultural programmes and lecturers are held on the issue of terrorism and violence across the country.

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