Current Affairs Update – 5th May, 2015

Hello and welcome to ExamPundit. Here are the Important Current Affairs of 5th May, 2015.

• The government has approved French insurance firm AXA raising stake in its life insurance joint venture with Bharti Group to 49 per cent for Rs 858.6 crore.
• The French firm has also been permitted to raise stake in the general insurance joint venture with Bharti. This will entail capital flow of Rs 431.40 crore.
• Together, AXA's FDI in Bharti group will be worth Rs 1,290 crore.
• Both the insurance deals were multi-structured transactions.
• These are the first FDI proposals cleared after the passage of Insurance Bill in March that allowed raising of foreign investment cap from 26 per cent to 49 per cent.
• More foreign partners are expected come forward and raise stake in the Indian insurance business.
• These two were among the 19 foreign direct investment proposals approved by the government today.
• Based on the recommendations of Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) in its meeting held on April 9, the central government has approved 19 proposals of Foreign Direct Investment(FDI) amounting to Rs 2,165.04 crore approximately, a finance ministry statement said today.

• India's per capita retirement and pension assets as a percentage of GDP is among the lowest in the world, according to survey report by Reliance Capital Asset Management.
• India has 15.1 per cent of retirement assets as a percentage of GDP, when compared to 21 per cent in Germany, 41 per cent in Brazil, 78.9 per cent in USA and 146 per cent in Australia, the first retirement survey by RCAM, which is a part of Reliance Capital, said today.
• The survey was conducted online pan-India in collaboration with IMRB International.
• The online survey reveals that retirement planning is the most important financial goal for respondents, ahead of other goals, including buying a house, education of children and marriage. The retirement planning goal is the most important for the 30-40 and 41-55 age groups.

• The Indian Army inducted the 'Akash' missile system into its arsenal on Tuesday to protect the country from possible aerial threats.
• It is a surface-to-air short range defence system that operates up to a maximum range of 25 kilometres and upto an altitude of 20 kilometers.
• The missile system can detect aerial threats from enemy's fighter planes, helicopters, drones and unmanned aerial vehicles. It can evaluate and track danger and is capable of launching missiles on the information obtained by the radar system.
• Developed by the Defence Research Development Organisation, the Akash missile system is also capable of engaging multiple threats simultaneously and can provide comprehensive short range missile cover to the vulnerable assets in the field.

• Rajasthan Government on 4 May 2015 signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with National Health Mission (NHM), UNICEF and GAIN (Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition) in Jaipur to tackle the severe problem of malnourishment of the state.
• Initially, the programme will be implemented in thirteen districts in which more than 10000 children have been identified as malnourished. To deal with malnourishment, a special management programme will be organised on the community basis.
• At present, Rajasthan has 40 malnourishment treatment centres, which are equipped with 10000 beds. It is also facilitated with 107 centres with six beds.

• The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 5 May 2015 approved the 119th Constitutional Amendment Bill on Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) between India and Bangladesh.
• Under the land boundary agreement, India and Bangladesh will exchange several enclaves which are under each other's adverse possession. The bill also includes the territories in Assam in addition to territories of West Bengal, Tripura and Meghalaya.
• The bill will need ratification by the Parliament and would also require ratification of at least 50 percent of the state legislatures before it comes into effect.

• Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari on Tuesday introduced The National Waterways Bill 2015 in the Lok Sabha.
• The Bill proposes to convert 101 rivers across the country into waterways to promote it as a cheaper mode of transportation, as compared to roads and railways.
• So far, the Government has declared only five river stretches as waterways.
• In an earlier event, Gadkari had said the Bill would help the Government reduce the traffic burden on the roads by promoting water transportation, where the cost is barely 50 paise a km, compared with ₹1 for the Railways and ₹1.5 a km for roads.
• Inland waterways, comprising rivers, lakes, canals, creeks and backwaters, extend in about 14,500 km across the country.              

• France on 4 May 2015 signed a 7.02 billion US dollars agreement with Qatar to supply 24 Dassault Aviation-built Rafale fighter jets. This is the third contract to sell Rafale Fighter jets after contracts with Egypt and India.
• Agreement was signed by the French President Francois Hollande and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Doha, Qatar.
• The agreement also includes training of 36 Qatari pilots and 100 technicians by the French military. It will also provide for the training of a number of Qatari intelligence officers.
• Since the first sale of Rafale fighter jets to Egypt, the French planes have become the best-seller worldwide and it could help to make France the world’s second biggest supplier of weaponry after the United States.

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 4 May 2015 joined Chinese social media platform Weibo.  Weibo is the main microblogging service of China.   Weibo is often referred to as Twitter of China.
• PM Modi joined Chinese social media platform just weeks before his scheduled visit to China. Modi will start off his three-nation tour to the East on 14 May 2015 with China, Mongolia and Later South Korea.
• Sina Weibo is a Chinese microblogging website. It is similar to Twitter and Facebook. It is one of the most popular sites in China, in use by well over 30% of Internet users, with a market penetration similar to the United States' Twitter.

• Microsoft has launched Edu-Cloud, a cloud computing based offering to provide digital learning and teaching in schools and higher educational institutions.
• Announcing this at a press conference here on Tuesday, Microsoft India Chairman Bhaskar Pramanik said Edu-Cloud will enhance the productivity of teachers and students with applications for teaching, learning, and administrative processes. The students will have to use a tablet or any computing device to use the service.
• Microsoft has also announced a tie-up with the Chaitanya group of educational institutions which will adopt Edu-Cloud as the first tie-up for the offering. The Hyderabad-based corporate education group has already got 14,000 students with tablets to use Edu-Cloud.

• India has slipped further in an annual survey analysing the world's best places to be a mother, ranking 140th behind countries like Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Iraq.
• Save the Children's 'State of the World's Mothers' report for 2015 ranked India at 140, down from last year's 137th, on an index of four indicators that measure risk of maternal death, under-five mortality rate, expected number of years of formal schooling, the gross national income per capita and participation of women in government.
• Researchers compiled the index of 179 countries by using data from UN agencies to show where mothers and children fare best and where they face the greatest hardships.
• According to Save the Children, Indian children on average spend 11.7 years in formal schooling and 52.7 out of 1,000 children in India die before their fifth birthday.
• The report found that children living in Delhi were among the most unequal with large gaps between health provision for the poorest and the richest.
• This year, as last, the top of the table was dominated by European countries and Norway replaced Finland at pole position. In a ranking of child survival in 25 capital cities in the world’s wealthiest countries, Washington DC came last.
• The next worst were Vienna in Austria and Bern in Switzerland.
• Somalia remained in the bottom spot for the second year running. All but two of the 11 bottom-ranked countries in the world are in west and central Africa.

• England batsman Jonathan Trott announced his retirement from international cricket.
• Trott struggled on his return to the Test arena during England's 1-1 drawn series with he West Indies in the Caribbean concluded Sunday, managing just 72 runs in six innings including three ducks.
• The West Indies series saw Trott recalled by England for the first time since his premature exit from the 2013/14 Ashes series in Australia following the first Test in Brisbane with what team officials later said was "situational anxiety".
• His retirement means England will have to make at least one change for their next Test, against New Zealand at Lord's starting on May 21.

• World Asthma Day 2015 was observed globally on 5 May 2015. Theme of the year is You Can Control Your Asthma and sub-theme is It’s Time to Control Asthma.
• World Asthma Day takes place on the first Tuesday of May. The inaugural World Asthma Day was held in 1998.
• The day is annually organized by the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) to improve asthma awareness and care around the world.

• Freedom fighter and CPI leader K Rami Reddy passed away in his native Nalgonda district of Telangana today.He was 96.He died due to old-age related ailments, CPI sources said here.
• He is survived by wife, three sons and three daughters, they said.
• Reddy had participated in the freedom movement and also the Telangana Armed Struggle and was incarcerated for three years at a jail in Jalna in 1949. He is a recipient of Freedom Fighter's Tamrapatra (certificate).
• Reddy was subsequently active in CPI and held several party positions in Nalgonda district.

• Michael Blake, the Oscar-winning author on 3 May 2015 passed away in Tucson, Arizona, after a long battle with cancer. He was 69. He got the fame by one of his penned novel Dances With Wolves.
• The novel had sold over 3.5 million copies, and was translated into 15 languages, and was later converted into film, which Kevin Costner directed and starred in.
• The film bagged 7 Oscars including Best Picture and Best Screenplay for Blake, who also won the WGA Award and Golden Globes for the novel.

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