Current Affairs Update – 1-3 October, 2016

Hello and welcome to exampundit . Here are the important Current Affairs from 1st October to 3rd October, 2016. These are important for the upcoming IBPS PO Mains, BOM PO, IBPS Clerk Mains 2016 Exams.

• The State Bank of India on Monday
  announced its entry into Myanmar by opening a branch in the capital city of
  Yangon, becoming the first domestic lender to do so.
• The Yangon branch is the 54th
  foreign branch of the nation’s largest lender, chairperson Arundhati
  Bhattacharya, who opened the office, said in a statement here on Monday.
• This branch extends the global
  presence of SBI in 37 countries through 198 offices, she said.
• The Myanmarese central bank
  earlier this year allowed SBI to open a branch with the primary objective of
  extending wholesale banking services to foreign corporates.
• India has been a major trading
  partner of Myanmar for centuries. Since the signing of India and Myanmar trade
  agreement in 1970, bilateral trade has been growing steadily and rose from USD
  328 million in 1997-98 to USD 2.052 billion in 2015-16.
• Bhattacharya also donated equipment
  for recreation of cancer-surviving children to the Yangon Children’s Hospital.

• Multilateral lending agency Asian
  Development Bank (ADB) on Monday said it will extend a $200 million loan to
  India for installation of energy-efficient home and street lights, and water
  pumps.
• The entire exercise could save
  energy to the tune of 3,800 gigawatt-hours per year.
• The statement said ADB will
  provide the funds to Energy Efficiency Services Ltd (EESL), a joint venture between
  four public sector bodies – the National Thermal Power Corporation, Powergrid
  Corporation of India, Power Finance Corporation, and Rural Electrification Corporation
  – established in 2009.
• EESL will make loans available
  for installing light-emitting diode (LED) municipal streetlights,
  energy-efficient domestic lights and fans, and energy-efficient agriculture
  water pumps.
• The entire $400 million project
  will install 1.5 million LED street lamps, 42 million LED household lamps,
  ceiling fans and LED tube lights, and 225,000 new pumps. Lending will be made
  available in Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Telangana,
  and Uttar Pradesh, as well as other states going forward, the statement said.

• HDFC Bank on Monday announced
  that it has selected software major Adobe’s ‘Marketing Cloud’ platform to
  deliver personalised digital experiences to its 37 million customers.
• HDFC Bank has developed a
  comprehensive e-mail marketing solution based on the Adobe platform that will
  span multiple outbound channels including email, SMS, social and mobile apps.
• HDFC Bank will replace its
  current engine for outbound campaigns with an all new solution based on the
  “Adobe Campaign” marketing solution.
• With this new technology, HDFC
  Bank will be equipped to handle tremendous volumes of 37-million customer
  enquiries and 400 million e-mails a month.
• The implementation will augment
  HDFC Bank’s marketing efforts by helping plan, automate, orchestrate and
  measure marketing communications across channels.
• The company will also take
  advantage of optimised costs, extensive reporting and marketing resource
  management capabilities that this implementation will deliver.

• Amazon has partnered with Yes
  Bank to provide to provide working capital loans to merchants on its platform
  as it looks to boost business during the festive season and overtake reigning
  e-commerce champion Flipkart.
• Sellers on Amazon will get access
  to unsecured financing at competitive rates at with quicker turnaround times
  enabling them to keep abreast with their monetary needs in the fast paced
  online commerce space. The partnership will see the bank also become the
  primary corporate banker for Amazon in India.
• Amazon had launched its seller
  lending programme earlier this year, making it easier for its merchants to get
  loans ranging between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 2 crore. Initially the company had tied
  up with Mumbai-based non-banking financial company (NBFC) Capital First, but
  will now use Yes Bank to power such loans.
• Further, the partnership will
  provide Yes Bank with business from part of Amazon’s 120,000-strong seller base
  in terms of maintaining current accounts, enabling forex transactions and
  payment gateway, apart from disbursing business loans to them.

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi on
  30 September 2016 inaugurated the India Sanitation Conference (INDOSAN) in New
  Delhi.
• During his inaugural address at
  INDOSAN, PM Modi said that Swachhta Abhiyan is touching people’s lives. He
  added that a healthy competition is now developing among cities and towns, for
  promoting cleanliness. He also emphasized that cleanliness is not something to
  be achieved by budget allocations. Rather, it is something that should become a
  mass movement.
• During the conference, Prime
  Minister Modi also gave away cleanliness awards to Sindhudurg District
  (Maharashtra), Mandi district (Himachal Pradesh), Pune, Chandigarh and Mysore
  Municipal Corporations, Gangtok city (Sikkim), National Cadet Corps (NCC),
  Surat railway station, PGIMER Chandigarh, 
  heritage site Rani ki vav in Gujarat and Kendriya Vidyalaya FRI
  Dehradun.

• Botanical Survey of India (BSI)
  in the last week of September 2016 announced that almost one of every four
  species of flowering plants found in India is endemic to the country. Of these,
  Tamil Nadu garners the highest number of species with 410.
• Tamil Nadu is followed by Kerala
  with 357 and Maharashtra with 278.
• As per scientific data in a
  recently released book, Endemic Vascular Plants of India, of the 18259 flowering
  plants reported in the country, 4303 are found only in India.
• When it comes to the geographical
  distribution of endemic plants, the Western Ghats tops the list with about 2116
  species, followed by the Eastern Himalayas with 466 species.
• At least 37 species of Black plum
  Syzyguim (Jamun), 10 varieties of Musa (banana), along with 274 species of
  orchids are found only in India.

• Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh
  Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan will be the Chief Guest at the Republic Day
  celebrations on 26 January 2017. The Crown Prince has accepted the Indian
  invitation.
• His visit will give a strong
  boost to the bilateral ties between the two nations in key areas like trade and
  security. This is his second visit to India, earlier he came on a three-day-visit
  in February 2016.
• This acceptance of the invitation
  by Sheikh Al Nahyan, who is also the Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE armed
  forces, sends out an important message at a time when tensions between India
  and Pakistan are escalating. This can be treated as the masterstroke of the
  government, which is trying to isolate diplomatically over the issue of
  cross-border terrorism.
• UAE is one of the closest allies
  of Pakistan and once the two nations along with Saudi Arabia recognised the
  Taliban government in Afghanistan.
• Earlier during PM Modi’s visit to
  UAE in August 2015, the two countries condemned the act of terrorism that
  originates from one country to trouble the other. In a joint statement, the two
  countries rejected extremism and any link between terrorism and religion.

• Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister
  Pema Khandu on 29 September 2016 flagged off the all-women Mount Gorichen
  Expedition from his office premises in Itanagar.
• This will be the first all women
  team attempting to summit Mount Gorichen the second highest peak of Arunachal
  Pradesh. Its altitude is 6488 meter (21286ft) high above sea level. It belongs
  to the Himalaya Mountain Group and is a sub-range to Assam Himalaya. It is also
  the Headwaters of the Kameng River in Tawang.
• Anshu Jansempa, who has climbed
  Mt Everest twice, is leading the team of 10 members from Jammu and Kashmir,
  Uttarakhand, Himachal, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh with four support staff.

• S. Sivakumar, professor at Indian
  Law Institute (ILI), in the last week of September 2016 was appointed as
  full-time member of the 21st Law Commission of India.
• Earlier, Rajkot-based lawyer
  Abhay Bhardwaj, who had represented the accused in the 2002 Gulbarg Society
  Massacre case, had been selected as part-time member of the 21st Law Commission
  of India.
• In March 2016, former Supreme
  Court judge Justice Balbir Singh Chauhan was appointed as the new Chairman of
  Law Commission of India.
• Former Gujarat High Court judge
  Justice Ravi R Tripathi was also appointed as a member of the Commission.

• The Union Government on 1 October
  2016 gave a year extension to Arundhati Bhattacharya as the Chairman of State
  Bank of India (SBI), first time in the history of the country’s largest lender.
• The extension will come to effect
  from 7 October 2016. The extension will help in smooth transition at a time
  when SBI’s consolidation with its associate banks is underway.
• She is the first woman to be the
  Chairperson of State Bank of India.
• She joined SBI in September 1977
  as a probationary officer at the age 22.
• She is the first woman to lead an
  India-based Fortune 500 company.

• Reliance Life Insurance has appointed
  Ashish Vohra as the new CEO of the company. Vohra joins Reliance Nippon Life
  Insurance from Max Life Insurance where he spent 8 years and served as senior
  director and chief distribution officer.
• Further, Reliance Home Finance
  also announced the appointment of Ravindra Sudhalkar as the CEO of the company.

• Ambati Venu was on 29 September
  2016 appointed as Managing Director of Abbott India Ltd. The appointment came
  almost five months after its previous MD Rehan Khan resigned from the company
  in April 2016.
• Venu was appointed for a
  five-year term and will report to Bhasker Iyer, Vice President with Abbott’s
  Established Pharmaceuticals Division.

• Services emerged as the overall
  champions at the 56th Atheletics Open Nationals that ended on 30 September 2016
  in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. The highlight of the final day’s action was a
  surprise win in triple jump by the Airforce Sergent Malkit Singh that sealed
  the gold.
• Malkit, who earlier in September
  2016 set a new meet mark of 16.47meter during the Inter-Services championships,
  added 10cm to his personal best on the second round that sealed the gold.
• Rakesh Babu, the teammate of
  Malkit stood second with 16.09 meter mark, while three-time Olympian Renjith
  Maheswary (Railways) stood third with 16.02meter mark.
• On the same day, distance runners
  Suriya Loganathan and G Lakshmanan claimed their second gold medals through
  10000 metres victory.

• The World Habitat Day was on 3
  October 2016 observed across the world with the theme Housing at the Centre.
• The 2016 World Habitat Day
  campaign aims to raise awareness about the need for affordable housing for all
  in urban areas, towns and cities.
• World Habitat Day is observed
  every year on the first Monday of October throughout the world.

• The International Day of Older
  Persons (IDOP) was on 1 October 2016 observed across the world with the theme
  Take A Stand Against Ageism.
• The theme for the 2016 IDOP draws
  attention to and challenges negative stereotypes and misconceptions about older
  persons and ageing.
• Ageism is a widely prevalent and
  prejudicial attitude that stems from the assumption that age discrimination,
  and sometimes neglect and abuse of older persons is a social norm and
  therefore, acceptable.

• The International Day of
  Non-Violence was observed across the world on 2 October 2016, the date that
  marks the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi. This day is referred in India as Gandhi
  Jayanti.
• Gandhi was the leader of the
  Indian independence movement and pioneer of the philosophy and strategy of
  non-violence.
• The UN General Assembly through
  its resolution dated 15 June 2007 established the International Day of
  Non-Violence to disseminate the message of non-violence through education and
  public awareness.

• Indian-origin South African girl
  Kiara Nirghin on 1 October 2016 won the Google Science Fair prize 2016. She won
  this grand prize of 50000 US dollars scholarship for using orange peel to
  develop a cheaper super-absorbent material that helps soil retain water.
• Kiara Nirghin is a Grade 11
  student at St Martin’s private school. She did a project titled No More Thirsty
  Crops which was aimed at tackling the severe drought plaguing South Africa. Her
  solution to the problem of drought uses orange and avocado fruit peel, which
  are normally discarded.
• The Google Science Fair is a
  programme for budding scientists between the ages of 13 to 18, who are invited
  to solve the world’s biggest challenges using science and technology.

• Syed Shamsul Haq, one of
  Bangladesh’s best known writers, passed away on 27 September 2016 in Dhaka,
  Bangladesh following a brief illness. He was 81.
• He was known for his mastery over
  novels, poetry, essays and plays. He was also vocal against religious
  fundamentalism.

Regards

Team ExamPundit