Current Affairs Update – 25th March, 2015

Hello and welcome to ExamPundit. Here are the current affairs for 25th March, 2015.

• Kerala Finance Minister K M Mani has been appointed as the Chairman of the Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers on Goods and Services Tax (GST).
• The GST, an indirect tax regime, is to be rolled out from April 2016.
• Earlier on March 20, the GST Empowered Committee met Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley wherein state Finance Ministers asked him to select the new Chairman.
• Although 14 Ministers from the States and Union Territories attended the meeting, a decision could not be taken at that meeting as some Ministers could not attend it due to preoccupation with state budgets.
• The Empowered Committee Chairman's post fell vacant after Abdul Rahim Rather, the former finance minister of Jammu & Kashmir, quit following the defeat of National Conference in state elections held in December.

• The Reserve Bank of India has rejected a proposal made by Tata Sons', the holding company of all Tata group firms, to buy NTT DoCoMo's stake in joint venture Tata Teleservices Ltd (TTSL) for about Rs. 7,250 crore.
• In April last year, NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s biggest telecom operator by subscribers, said it will sell its entire 26.5 per cent stake in TTSL, thus exiting India five years after it entered the market. The plans to exit came after the Indian company failed to achieve certain performance targets specified in the agreement between the two companies.
• Tata Sons had in November last year applied to the RBI to purchase NTT DoCoMo's stake at Rs. 58.045 per share.
• The Japanese company had acquired the stake in March 2009 for $2.7 billion (Rs 13,070 crore at the then exchange rate).

• The RBI today signed a $400-million currency swap agreement with the Central Bank of Sri Lanka for three years that will allow the island nation to draw the amount in dollars or euros in multiple tranches.
• The agreement, which will be valid for three years, is expected to further economic co-operation between the two countries, it added.
• The arrangement will also further financial stability in the region, RBI said.
• The swap arrangement is intended to provide a backstop line of funding for SAARC member countries to meet any balance of payments and liquidity crises till long-term arrangements are made.
• In May 2012, Reserve Bank of India had announced in the SAARCFINANCE Governor’s meeting, held in Nepal, that it would offer swap facilities aggregating $2 billion, both in foreign currency and rupee to SAARC member countries.
• The facility is available to all South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) member countries. Besides India, other members of SAARC are: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

• The Government hopes to auction a total of 1,000 new FM radio channels by 2016, with it already giving its nod to partial auctions of 135 channels in 69 cities in phase three of the process, said JS Mathur, Additional Secretary of the Union Information and Broadcasting Ministry.
• He was speaking at the annual convention of FICCI-Frames, a media and entertainment conclave organised by the industry body.
• Mathur spoke briefly about the media and entertainment industry in India, saying that it was "exciting times for the industry, with challenges in emerging technology, new platforms," and new prospects in "content and business and revenue models."
• He also pointed out the growing prospects in the animation and gaming sector.

• Kraft Foods Group Inc, the maker of Velveeta cheese and Oscar Mayer meats, will merge with ketchup maker H.J. Heinz Co, owned by 3G Capital and Berkshire Hathaway Inc, to form the world's fifth-largest food and beverage company.
• Kraft's shares rose about 17 per cent in pre-market trading after the announcement of the deal, which will bring Heinz back to the public market following its takeover two years ago.
• The combined company will have revenue of about $28 billion, the companies said in a statement on Wednesday.
• Kraft shareholders will own a 49 per cent stake in the combined company and Heinz shareholders 51 per cent.
• Kraft shareholders will get one share in the combined company, to be called the Kraft Heinz Co, and a special cash dividend of $16.50 for every share held.

• Google Inc on 24 March 2015 appointed Ruth Porat as Chief Financial Officer (CFO). She will take the charge on 26 May 2015. She will report to Google CEO and Co-Founder Larry Page.
• She succeeded Patrick Pichette who announced his retirement on 10 March 2015. Currently, she is working as Chief Financial Officer at Morgan Stanley.
• Ruth joined Morgan Stanley in 1987 and has played several key roles at the company, including Vice Chairman of Investment Banking, Global Head of the Financial Institutions Group and co-Head of Technology Investment Banking.

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi today launched his ambitious multi-purpose and multi-modal platform, PRAGATI, which is aimed at addressing the common man's grievances and monitoring important programmes and projects.
• Speaking on the occasion, Modi said the step is to ensure that governance in India becomes more efficient and responsive as the whole world is now observing India keenly.
• PRAGATI, or Pro-Active Governance And Timely Implementation, is a unique integrative and interactive platform.
• During the first PRAGATI interaction today, the Prime Minister discussed issues related to unseasonal rain and relief to farmers, public grievances, project implementation, Swachh Bharat and 'ease of doing business'.
• Among the issues discussed were two sets of public grievances of more than 20 people relating to the payment of Employees Provident Fund of private sector and Income Tax refunds, a PMO statement said.

• Madhya Pradesh Governor Ram Naresh Yadav’s son Shailesh, who was named as an accused in the multi-crore Vyapam scam, was found dead under mysterious circumstances at his father’s official residence here today.
• Police said the exact cause of his death could not be ascertained immediately.
• Shailesh’s name had cropped up in the multi-crore scam for allegedly fixing the recruitment of 10 candidates as Grade III teachers.
• The Governor, who himself has been named as an accused in the scam, has been admitted to a hospital in Bhopal following respiratory problems.
• Yadav, a former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, has also challenged in the High Court the inclusion of his name as an accused and had sought immunity.

• Union Government on 24 March 2015 launched new platform named Twitter Samwad that facilitates direct communication between leaders, government agencies and citizens. This platform was launched in association with social networking service Twitter.
• Through this, the government bodies can have a direct communication with citizens on a daily basis via Tweets and SMS on their mobile devices.
• The service was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his meet with Twitter Chief Executive Dick Costolo in New Delhi. The service is aimed to boost the nation's e-governance plans.
• As of now, 16 government offices, including the Prime Minister's Office, Ministry of railways, the Bengaluru Police and the Chief Ministers of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal are participating in Twitter Samvad, which is powered by Bengaluru-based ZipDial, which was recently acquired by Twitter.

• The thirteenth state level philatelic exhibition of Gujarat postal circle or Gujpex-2015 was inaugurated by the Gujarat Governor O.P. Kohli at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel National Memorial in Ahmedabad on 24 March 2015.
• This exhibition will run from 24 March to 27 March 2015 and is organized by the Gujarat Postal Circle with the active support of philatelic associations of Gujarat.

• Utah became the first U.S. State to reinstate execution by firing squad amidst a spiralling crisis due to lethal drug shortages faced by U.S. prisons, even as the State’s Governor was on the record describing the procedure as “a little bit gruesome.”
• According to Republican Governor Gary Herbert, who signed the law approving the use of the firing squad on Monday, the death penalty would be administered in this manner when no lethal injection drugs was available and the latter would remain the “primary method” of executing inmates. Under the law in Utah, inmates would be killed by a firing squad only if the State cannot acquire lethal injection drugs 30 days prior to the scheduled execution date.
• Since 2010, U.S. correctional facilities have struggled to procure a key drug in the three-drug lethal cocktail administered to death row inmates, sedative sodium thiopental, after its sole U.S. producer, Hospira, took its production plants offline in the face of anti-death penalty campaigns and other obstacles.

• Japan's Maritime Self-Defence Force on Wednesday took delivery of the biggest Japanese warship since World War Two, the Izumo, a helicopter carrier as big as the Imperial Navy aircraft carriers that battled the United States in the Pacific.
• The 248-metre-long Izumo resembles U.S. Marine Corp amphibious assault carriers in size and design but it is designated as a helicopter destroyer, a label that allows Japan to keep within the bounds of a constitutional ban on owning the means to wage war.
• Japan is also adding longer-range patrol aircraft and military cargo planes to its defence capability, and buying Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets, amphibious assault vehicles and Boeing's Osprey troop carrier, which can operate from the Izumo.
• The Izumo does not have a catapult necessary to launch fixed-wing fighters, but a planned vertical-take-off-and-landing (VTOL) variant of the F-35 could fly from the Izumo's flight deck.

• Three-year-old archer Dolly Shivani Cherukuri of Andhra Pradesh on 24 March 2015 entered the India Book of Records. She entered the list of records by scoring 388 points in the recurve segment in two distances, seven and five meters, at the Volga Archery Academy in Vijayawada.
• At the time of entering the India Book of Records, she was nine days less than three years.
• She shot 36 arrows each from five metres and seven metres to score 388 points in presence of judges from the India Book of Records and the Archery Association of India (AAI).

• The state government conferred Hindi poet Gopal Das Neeraj with the first Rashtriya Kavi Pradeep Award for the year 2012-13 on Tuesday.
• The poet who is now in his early 90s regaled the audience with his poetry despite ill health. The award was given by Surendra Patwa, Minister for Culture. While giving the award, Patwa applauded Gopal Das Neeraj for his immense contribution in the field of literature.

• Artist Bharti Kher of India on 23 March 2015 was conferred with the Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters (Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres). This is the highest cultural award of France.
• She was awarded for her contribution in contemporary art landscape. Kher's artworks span several mediums like painting, sculpture and installation.
• Her An Absence of Assignable Cause which is a 14-feet- high sculptural interpretation of the heart of the blue sperm whale is among the finest works from the experiment.
• The artist is renowned for her remarkable experimentation with bindis that have over time come to be recognised as her signature style.

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