Current Affairs Update – 12th May, 2015

Hello and welcome to ExamPundit. Here are the important current affairs of 12th May, 2015.

• Indian Army on 8 May 2015 signed Memorandum of Understanding
  (MoU) with the Bank of India (BOI) on the Defence Salary Package.
• The first MoU between BOI and the Indian Army was signed in
  2011 and was valid for a period of three years. This revised MoU is customised
  to suit the requirements of serving soldiers, pensioners and families. Number
  of additional facilities was incorporated in the revised MoU after concerted
  efforts.

• This MoU will benefit a large number of serving and retired
  Army personnel who own their accounts with BOI.
• It will also provide them an opportunity to access modern
  banking facilities.
• It includes the standard bundle of free/concessional
  services including free drafts, free cheque books, free funds transfers to any
  bank in India through RTGS / NEFT, free ATM cards etc.
• Some additional features of this MoU are that the Personal Accident
  Insurance (PAI) cover is extended upto 10 lakh rupees from 5 lakh rupees.
• It provides for Air insurance, Home Loan Insurance on Army
  Welfare housing Organisation (AWHO) for deaths on account of war/external
  aggression/ terrorist attack for up to 50 lakh rupees. 
• It provides applicability of PAI and overdraft facility to
  pensioners and waiver of merchant service fee (MSF) for transaction on BOI POS
  Terminal installed at CSD Canteens for BOI Card holders.
• It also has a provision for yearly review of specific
  features and requests.

• Lok Sabha on 11 May 2015 Undisclosed Foreign Income and
  Assets (Imposition of Tax) Bill 2015. The Bill was passed by voice vote.

• Scope: The Act
  will apply to all persons resident in India. Provisions of the Act will apply
  to both undisclosed foreign income and assets (including financial interest in
  any entity).
• Rate of tax:
  Undisclosed foreign income or assets shall be taxed at the flat rate of 30
  percent. No exemption or deduction or set off of any carried forward losses
  which may be admissible under the existing Income-tax Act, 1961, shall be
  allowed.
• Penalties:
  Violation of the provisions of the proposed new legislation will entail
  stringent penalties.
• The penalty for non-disclosure of income or an asset located
  outside India will be equal to three times the amount of tax payable thereon,
  i.e., 90 percent of the undisclosed income or the value of the undisclosed
  asset. This is in addition to tax payable at 30%.

• A Constitution Amendment bill providing for roll out of
  long-pending GST was today referred to a Select Committee after opposition
  insisted on its legislative scrutiny of the proposed legislation in Rajya Sabha
  where the government faces the numbers crunch.
• The 21-member panel will give its report by the last day of
  the first week of the Monsoon session.
• Finance Minister Arun Jaitley moved the motion for referring
  the Bill (The Constitution One Hundred and Twenty-second Amendment Bill, 2014
  to the Select Committee.
• The Committee constitutes of Bhupender Yadav, Chandan Mitra
  and Ajay Sancheti (of BJP), Madhusudan Mistry, Mani Shankar Aiyar and
  Bhalchandra Mungekar (of Congress), Naresh Agrawal (SP), K C Tyagi (JD-U),
  Derek O’Brien (Trinamool Congress), Satish Chandra Misra (BSP), A
  Navaneethakrishnan (AIADMK), K N Balagopal (CPI-M), Dilip Kumar Tirkey (BJD), C
  M Ramesh (TDP), Praful Patel (NCP), Kanimozhi (DMK), Anil Desai (Shiv Sena),
  Naresh Gujral (SAD), Mohammad Fayaz (PDP), D Raja (CPI), Rajeev Chandrasekhar
  (Independent).
• The GST bill was approved by Lok Sabha on Wednesday last
  after a walkout by Congress.

• India Posts on 11 May 2015 launched a dedicated E-Commerce
  Centre in New Delhi to cater the e-commerce business enterprises. It was
  launched by Union Communication and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad at
  Safdarjang, New Delhi.
• This project was implemented by Department of Posts through
  Delhi Postal Circle. This processing centre will exclusively handle all the
  e-commerce business. It is capable of handling 30000 parcels (articles) per
  day.
• It will also facilitate collection of parcels from the
  e-commerce customers by processing and dispatching them within 24 hours to
  respective destination. For this purpose the centre will use quickest available
  transportation facility like flight or trains.

• The Union Ministry of Finance appointed a committee under
  the chairmanship of Justice Ajit Prakash Shah to look into the issue of Minimum
  Alternate Tax (MAT) on Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs).
• The decision was announced by the Union Finance Minister
  Arun Jaitley in the Rajya Sabha on 11 May 2015.
• The committee was appointed to resolve the contentious issue
  of MAT between the tax authorities and the foreign investors.
• As per the Finance Act, 2015 the 20 percent MAT on Capital
  Gains made by FIIs is waived off from the financial year 2015-16. However, the
  issue of imposing MAT for past years (till 2014-15) has become controversial as
  the FIIs raised objections to 68 notices (in lieu of 602 crores rupees) issued
  by the International Taxation Wing of the Income Tax Department in lieu of MAT.

• Aditya Birla Retail (ABR) which owns the ‘more’ chain of
  retail stores, has announced the acquisition of the Total Superstore business,
  the retail division of Jubilant Agri & Consumer Products (JAC). While the
  deal size was not disclosed, the all cash deal will see ABR acquire Total’s
  assets on a slump sale basis.
• These include the leasehold rights for four hypermarkets of
  Total Undertaking in Bengaluru along with movable and immovable assets, a
  warehouse, an office premise, working capital, trademarks, intellectual
  property and other rights associated with Total Undertaking. Total Superstore
  business has an aggregate retail footprint of 2.87 lakh square feet and the
  transaction is subject to approval of JAC’s parent, Jubilant Industries’
  shareholders.
• The transaction closely follows last week’s announcement
  when the Aditya Birla group announced the consolidation of all its branded
  apparel businesses under one company Aditya Birla Fashion & Retail to
  create India’s largest pure play fashion & Lifestyle company.

• The number of Asiatic lions in Gir sanctuary of Gujarat
  increased to 523, according to 2015 Lion census report released in the first
  week of May 2015. This 14th lion census registered 27 percent increase in the
  number of Asiatic lions compared to 2010 census which had registered 411
  Asiatic lions.
• As per recent census, there are 201 female lions, 109 male
  lions and 213 sub-adults as well as cubs in Gir sanctuary and in other
  protected areas in Gir Somnath, Junagadh, Amreli and Bhavnagar districts of
  Saurashtra region of Gujarat.
• 268 lions were sighted in Junagadh district and 44 lions in
  the Gir-Somnath district while 174 lions were sighted in Amreli district and 37
  lions in Bhavnagar districts.

• Hyderabad will host the four-day Indo-Global Pharma Expo and
  Summit 2015 that is scheduled to be held on 24 July 2015. The announcement was
  made by P V Appaji, Director-General of Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion
  Council of India (Pharmexcil) on 11 May 2015.
• The theme of Indo-Global Pharma Expo and Summit 2015 will be
  Innovation and Advances. The event will deliberate on a range of issues, from
  pharmaceutical technology to education, indigenous drugs and drug regulatory
  affairs, besides serving as a platform for joint ventures and project collaboration.

• The IT software major Google Inc will set up its biggest
  campus of Asia at Hyderabad by investing about Rs. 1,000 crore. The campus will
  have an office (working) space of about 2 million square feet.
• A memorandum of understanding (MoU) to this effect was
  signed between Google Inc Vice-President David Radcliffe and IT Secretary of
  Telangana at Mountain View, the headquarters of Google, in the US on Monday.
• Telangana Minister for IT K.T. Rama Rao was also present on
  the occasion. The campus will recruit about 13,000 technologists over the next
  four years.

• K Satish Reddy, the Chairman of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories
  Ltd., was appointed as the Chairman of the National Safety Council (NSC). He
  was appointed by the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment on 11 May 2015.
• As the chairman of the NSC, he will oversee its functioning
  in generating and developing initiatives on Safety, Health and Environment
  (SHE) at the national level.
• He succeeded Venu Srinivasan, the Chairman of
  Sundaram-Clayton Group, who was appointed to the post in July 2011.

• Indian-origin Priti Patel on 11 May 2015 was appointed as
  Minister of State for Employment in British Government.
• Prime Minister David Cameron promoted Priti Patel to his
  Cabinet after his surprise victory in general elections.
• As the new minister of state for employment in the
  Department of Work and Pensions, the 43-year-old will attend Cabinet as the
  senior-most Indian-origin member of the newly-elected British government.
• Priti Patel is a British Conservative Party politician who
  has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Witham constituency in Essex
  since 2010.

• Indian-born Nikesh Arora was on 11 May 2015 appointed as the
  President of Japan’s multinational telecommunications and internet company
  SoftBank Corp.
• As per the announcement made at the company’s earning
  conference, he will also be the Representative Director of SoftBank Corp.
• Before the present elevation, he had been the Vice Chairman
  of the company and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SB Group US, Inc.
  (former SoftBank Internet and Media, Inc.) since September 2014.
• He succeeds Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO of the Softbank
  Corp.

• President Pranab Mukherjee on 11 May 2015 authorized Justice
  (retd) Cyriac Joseph to act as the interim chairperson of the National Human
  Rights Commission (NHRC).
• He will act as the Chairperson of the Commission with effect
  from 13 May 2015. He will act as Chairperson until the appointment of a new
  Chairperson in the NHRC in place of Justice K.G. Balakrishnan. Currently,
  Justice Cyriac Joseph is a Member of NHRC.
• Former NHRC chairperson K.G. Balakrishnan had completed his
  tenure on 11 May 2015. He was the sixth NHRC chairman and the longest serving
  one.
• Justice Balakrishnan had joined as NHRC chairperson in June
  2010 after his retirement as the Chief Justice of India.

• Kolkata-born writer Neel Mukherjee’s The Lives of Others has
  won the UK’s Encore Award for the best second novel.
• The 10,000 pounds prize, first awarded in 1990, fills a
  niche in the catalogue of literary prizes by celebrating the achievement of
  outstanding second novels, often neglected in comparison to the attention given
  to promising first books.
• Mukherjee’s first novel A Life Apart was published in 2010.
  The Lives of Others was shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize and the Costa
  Novel Award.
• Published by Random House India, The Lives of Others was
  chosen ahead of the likes of Getting Colder by Amanda Coe; Reasons She Goes to
  the Woods by Deborah Kay Davies; Rebecca Hunt’s Everland; Her by Harriet Lane;
  and The Way Inn by Will Wiles.

• An Indian-American Professor at the University of North
  Carolina in US has won a USD 12,500 award for excellence in teaching.
• Chemistry professor Sivanadane Mandjiny was named UNC
  Pembroke’s recipient of the UNC Board of Governors 2015 Award for Excellence in
  Teaching.
• Annually, the Board of Governors names one professor at each
  of the 17 UNC campuses to receive the award.
• The award winners will collect a commemorative bronze
  medallion and a USD 12,500 cash prize.
• Mandjiny joined the faculty in the Department of Chemistry
  and Physics in 1996 as a teaching associate and earned tenure in 2006. He
  became department chair in 2011 and continues in that role today.

• Two Japanese destroyers and one of the Philippines’ newest
  warships began historic naval exercises in the flashpoint South China Sea
  today, showcasing a deepening alliance aimed at countering a rising China.
• The day-long war games, the first bilateral naval exercises
  between the former World War II enemies, took place less than 300 kilometres
  (186 miles) from a Philippine-claimed shoal now under Chinese control.
• Philippine authorities insisted the exercises were merely
  focused on building military capabilities, but security analysts said they were
  clearly a signal to China over bitter maritime territorial disputes.

• Englishman Lee Alan Johnson has been roped in as the head
  coach of India’s U-19 football team, the All India Football Federation (AIFF)
  said today.
• Besides managing the U-19 team, 34-year-old Johnson will
  also act as the head scout for the national side and will also perform the role
  of assistant coach of the senior team.
• Before taking up the India job, Johnson was working as the
  technical director of the Football Federation of Rwanda where he was also the
  head coach of the U-17 national team.
• Johnson was also an FA Learning Tutor for The Football
  Association besides being the academy coach at Crystal Palace Football Club and
  Chelsea Football Club.

• Veteran Hollywood actress Elizabeth Wilson passed away on 9
  May 2015 following age-related illness at New Haven, Connecticut. She was 94.
  Wilson is survived by her sister Mary Muir Wilson and several nieces and
  nephews.
• Elizabeth Wilson was famously known for her memorable film
  role as the mother of Dustin Hoffman’s character, Benjamin Braddock, in Mike
  Nichols’ 1967 film The Graduate. She made her Broadway debut in 1953 in Picnic.
• After seeing the fame of Wilson’s role in The Graduate, Mike
  Nichols casted her in his various films including Catch-22 (1970), The Day of
  the Dolphin (1973) and Regarding Henry (1991) and on Broadway in his 1973
  revival of Uncle Vanya.

Regards

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