Current Affairs Update – 15th March, 2016

Hello and welcome to ExamPundit. Here are the important Current Affairs of 15th March, 2016.

• ICICI Bank, country’s largest
  private sector lender, has launched a mobile solution that allows customers to
  make payments with their linked cards to its ‘pockets’ offering by just tapping
  the mobile phone.
• Rajiv Sabharwal, Executive
  Director, ICICI Bank said this is one step ahead of the tap-and-pay solution that
  the bank has been offering.
• “Near Field Communication
  enabled cards was introduced earlier but this is a step ahead. With this, you
  don’t need to have your card with you at the time of making a payment as long
  as the card is linked to Pockets,” he said.
• Pockets, is a digital banking
  service offered by ICICI Bank which has had about 3.3 million downloads so far.
• NFC employs radio transmission to
  ascertain contact when the cards are tapped or waved near a terminal. However,
  apart from NFC the bank is also using Host Card Emulation (HCE) technology for
  this offering.
• The HCE technology creates
  ‘virtual’ cards for ‘physical’ credit or debit cards (Visa/MasterCard) of the
  Bank, as selected by the customer.
• This virtual card will reside in
  the bank’s secure cloud server. By using the virtual cards, an ICICI Bank
  customer can initiate electronic payments from NFC enabled smartphones by just
  waving his/her phone near a contactless merchant terminal.

• India Post in the second week of
  March 2016 selected Deloitte to advise it on setting up a payments bank. An
  agreement between the two was signed on 14 March 2016.
• The Public Investment Board (PIB)
  has already approved the 800-crore rupees proposal of India Post. The proposal
  will be sent to the Union Cabinet within two weeks for final approval.
• India Post payments bank will
  largely target unbanked and under-banked customers in rural, semi-rural and
  remote areas, with a focus on providing simple deposit products and money
  remittance services.
• The pilot for the payments bank
  is set to start from January 2017 and the full-fledged operations may start by
  March 2017.
• The Reserve Bank of India had
  granted payments bank permit to India Post, which is already into providing
  financial services and has 1.55 lakh branches across the country.

• Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL)
  has been chosen to develop, manufacture and maintain the Russian KAMOV Ka-226T
  helicopters for the Indian armed forces.
• “HAL has been identified in view
  of its capabilities in the field of design, development, manufacture and
  maintenance of aircraft,” Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said in a written
  reply to the Rajya Sabha.
• The manufacturing unit will be
  coming up at Tumakuru near Bengaluru primarily to take up manufacture and MRO
  activities for indigenously designed and developed light utility helicopter and
  other helicopters, he said.
• “The plan for setting up of the
  facility existed even before the finalization of manufacture of Kamov 226T
  helicopters,” Parrikar said.
• The Defence Acquisition Council
  (DAC) had approved the purchase and joint production Ka-226T light multirole
  helicopters last year.
• However, the deal was officially
  announced during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Moscow in last
  December.

• Infosys Foundation has signed a
  memorandum of understanding (MoU) with NGO Sahakara Mitra Samstha to enhance
  livelihood of the farming community in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
• The philanthropic arm of Infosys
  has pledged Rs 5 crore to the NGO, also known as Center for Collective
  Development (CCD), to work on increasing revenue and profits of farmers and
  create awareness about sustainable agricultural practices by adopting efficient
  business models.
• CCD will also aim to build
  sustainable farmer co-operative societies and facilitate pooling, processing as
  well as the sale of produce in two districts of Andhra Pradesh (Anantapur and
  Chittoor) and one district in Telangana (Adilabad), a company statement said.
• It will also work towards
  bringing in new co-operatives from different areas to strengthen the federation
  activities of its association, set up new processing units and enable the
  creation of a district level forum where farmers can voice their issues, the statement
  added.

• The Ministry of Tourism,
  Government of India signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the
  Ecotourism Society of India (ESOI) to take its commitments to Responsible and
  Sustainable tourism to the next level. In accordance, Shri Suman Billa, Joint
  Secretary, M/o Tourism and Mr. Steve Borgia, Honorary President, Ecotourism
  Society of India signed the MOU in the presence of Shri Vinod Zutshi, Secretary,
  Ministry of Tourism.
• The Ministry of Tourism and the
  Ecotourism Society of India started the process a couple of years ago when they
  formulated & published the STCI (Sustainable Tourism Criteria for India)
  and carried it to the grass root level through series of advocacy workshops.
  Through this MOU, it is expected that sustainable tourism and Responsible
  Tourism will take the forefront and achieve the commitments of the Ministry’s
  action plan.
• The Ecotourism Society of India
  (ESOI) was established in 2008 at the behest of the Ministry of Tourism (MOT)
  as a non-profit organization to promote environmentally responsible and
  sustainable practices in the tourism industry across the country.

• Parytak Mitra Programme was in
  news on 14 March 2016. It came in news after the information on the same was
  provided in the Lok Sabha by the Minister of State for Culture and Tourism (I/C)
  Dr. Mahesh Sharma.
• The programme was launched by
  Union Ministry of Tourism on 12 January 2016 (National Youth Day) to inculcate
  appropriate tourism traits and knowledge amongst the trainees to enable them to
  act/work as Tourist Facilitators (Prayatak Mitra).
• College going student including
  those enrolled with the NCC & NSS in the age group of 18 – 28 years. The
  age will be reckoned on the last date prescribed for application for admission.
• The programme seeks to improve
  the sectoral service standards, which is one of the pre-requisites for attracting
  tourists in larger numbers.

• To inculcate appropriate tourism
  traits and knowledge amongst the trainees to enable them to act/work as Tourist
  Facilitators (Prayatak Mitra).
• To expect the young men and women
  so trained to act as catalyst / resource persons in turn for similar effort.

• Odisha Cabinet on 14 March 2016
  approved a proposal to constitute a State Food Commission (SFC) as per the
  National Food Security Act (NFSA) 2013. It will monitor and evaluate the
  implementation of the NFSA Act and advice for its effective implementation to
  the State government.
• The Commission will have five
  members and one member secretary including a chairperson. The chairperson will
  hold the rank of chief secretary, while members and member secretary will be in
  the ranks of principal secretary and joint secretary respectively. The tenure
  of the members will be three years.

• Pope Francis on 15 March 2016
  announced that Mother Teresa will be made a saint of the Roman Catholic Church
  at a ceremony on 4 September 2016.
• The pope cleared the way for
  sainthood to Mother Teresa, who was famed for her lifetime of service to the
  poor, establishing shelters for homeless, orphanages, soup kitchens and clinics
  around the world.
• The Vatican credited her with the
  2008 cure of a Brazilian man who had been suffering from brain tumors.
• The first step toward making her
  a saint took place in 2002 when Mother Teresa was credited with the healing of
  a Bengali woman who suffered from tuberculosis and cancer.

• Supreme Court of China on 13
  March 2016 announced to create its own international maritime judicial centre.
  The centre will be established to handle territorial disputes and protect
  China’s sovereignty, maritime rights and other core interests at sea.
• The announcement of the centre
  was made by the Chief Justice Zhou Qiang during the ongoing annual meeting of
  China’s parliament. This centre would help China to become a maritime power.
• Details of the location, kind of
  cases it would have jurisdiction over were not provided.

• The Government of Malawi and
  UNICEF on 14 March 2016 successfully tested the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  (UAVs or drones) to explore cost effective ways of reducing waiting times for
  HIV testing of infants.
• As part of the test, simulated
  blood samples were transported from a community health centre to the Kamuzu
  Central Hospital laboratory that is located at a distance of 10 kilometers.
• Though drones were used in the
  past for surveillance and assessments of disaster, this is the first known use
  of UAVs in Africa for improvement of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)
  services.

• The 59th Session of Commission on
  Narcotic Drugs (CND) was inaugurated on 14 March 2016 in Austria’s capital
  Vienna.
• The 9-day long session seeks to
  promote a comprehensive understanding of the world drug problem and evolve
  appropriate strategies to deal with it.
• Around 1500 delegates
  representing Member States, inter-governmental organizations, and civil society
  will be participating in the session.
• During the session, the
  Commission will discuss 10 draft resolutions and hold 74 side events and over
  25 exhibitions.

• Mauritania on 14 March 2016
  became the second African country to ratify the 2014 Protocol to the Forced
  Labour Convention 1930.
• Prior to Mauritania, Niger
  (Africa), Norway (Europe) and the United Kingdom (Europe) ratified the
  protocol.
• The protocol requires States to
  take effective measures for prevention of forced labour, protection of victims
  and ensuring their access to justice and compensation.

• The 60th Session of Commission on
  the Status of Women was inaugurated on 14 March 2016. The 11-day long session
  will take place at the United Nations headquarters in New York, the USA.
• During the session, the
  Commission will discuss on its priority theme – Women’s empowerment and its link
  to sustainable development.
• In addition, it will evaluate
  progress in the implementation of the agreed conclusions from the fifty-seventh
  session (2013) on ‘The elimination and prevention of all forms of violence
  against women and girls’.

• Venezuela President Nicolas
  Maduro on 14 March 2016 declared a two-month extension on emergency powers
  meant to help shore up the country’s crippled economy.
• The declaration will bestow more
  time on the government of President Nicolas Maduro to intervene in the market,
  boost productivity and redress a flagging financial sector.
• It will also allow the government
  to take more anti-crisis measures to reduce fiscal moratorium and to tap up
  funds from the 2015 budget to address short-term social needs.

• Myanmar’s Parliament on 15 March
  2016 elected Htin Kyaw as the first civilian president to lead the country
  after 53 years of military rule. Army took power in a 1962 coup.
• He is a close aide and adviser of
  Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of National League for Democracy (NLD) party.
• He was elected with 360 of the
  total 652 votes casted while, military-nominated Myint Swe received 213 votes
  and stood second followed by the other NLD candidate, Henry Van Thio, who got
  79 votes.
• They will serve as first
  vice-president and second vice-president respectively.

• Delhi on 13 March 2016 won the
  20th edition of the Lloyd Business Today Pro-Am of Champions golf tournament.
• The final of this event was
  played at the Jack Nicklaus designed Classic Golf Resort in Gurgaon.
• Delhi, comprising of Bharat
  Dhawan (Mazars), Avesh Bhatnagar (M/S Bhatnagar Agencies), Ravi Khanna
  (Kwikforms Structurals) and Saurabh Sood (GATX,) prevailed with a combined
  score of 105 points in the event where India’s top corporate decision makers
  and leading golfing professionals played together.
• The Mumbai team, comprising of
  Subrat Mohanty, Pramod Bhambani, Jayen Ramesh Shah and Paras Shah, ended as
  runners-up with 101 points.

• United Kingdom Anti-Doping (UKAD)
  on 14 March 2016 was granted a role of organising a worldwide fight against
  performance-enhancing drugs in the run-up to 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.
• It was appointed as the
  secretariat for an International Olympic Committee anti-doping taskforce which
  will seek to standardise testing procedures.
• The announcement came with Russia
  still banned by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF)
  and on course to be excluded from the Olympics following a report into mass
  doping violations.

• The Booker prize-winning British
  author and renowned art historian Anita Brookner died on 10 March 2016. She was
  87.
• Brookner, who won the Booker in
  1984 for her novel Hotel du Lac, was a bestselling author and wrote more than
  25 novels.
• Brookner, who in 1967 became the
  first female to be named a Slade professor of art at Cambridge University, was
  known for her style and stories centering on the theme of middle-class
  loneliness, often featuring female protagonists.

Regards

Team ExamPundit

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