Current Affairs Update – 16-17 Jan, 2015

• Reserve Bank of India on 15 January 2015 issued final
  guidelines for banks to act as insurance brokers.
• Earlier, the banks were allowed to undertake insurance
  business as agents of insurance companies on fee basis with an aim to increase
  insurance penetration in the country. The banks were allowed to look forward
  for participation in insurance business in accordance to Union Government’s
  notification in which it allowed banks to do business of insurance under
  Section 6(1)(o) of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949.
• Banks were allowed to undertake referral business through
  their network of branches on 29 October 2002.

• Banks setting up a subsidiary or joint venture (JV) for
  undertaking insurance business with risk participation: they will not be allowed
  to undertake insurance business with risk participation departmentally and may
  do so only through a subsidiary/JV set up for the purpose. These banks can
  approach RBI to set JV or subsidiary for undertaking insurance business with
  risk participation, if in case they satisfy the eligibility criteria as on 31
  March 2014.

• The net worth of the bank should not be less than 1000
  crore rupees
• The CRAR of the bank should not be less than 10 percent
• The level of net non-performing assets should be not more
  than 3 percent
• The bank should have made a net profit for the last three
  continuous years
• The track record of the performance of the subsidiaries,
  if any, of the concerned bank should be satisfactory

Banks undertaking insurance broking/corporate agency
through a subsidiary or joint venture: they require prior approval of RBI for
setting up a subsidiary or JV. Those banks may approach RBI for approval for
setting up the subsidiary or JV if in case they satisfy the eligibility criteria
as on 31 March 2014. 

• The net worth of the bank should not be less than 500
  crore rupees after investing in the equity of such company
• The CRAR of the bank should not be less than 10 percent
• The level of net non-performing assets should be not more
  than 3 percent
• The bank should have made a net profit for the last three
  continuous years
• The track record of the performance of the subsidiaries,
  if any, of the concerned bank should be satisfactory

• Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment on 16
  January 2015 launched two schemes to support the Scheduled Castes (SC). These
  schemes are Venture Capital Fund for Scheduled Castes and Green Business
  scheme.
• The scheme was launched by Thaawar Chand Gehlot, Union
  Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment.
• The Venture Capital Fund for Scheduled Castes scheme was
  launched with an initial capital of 200 crore rupees. Under the scheme,
  financial assistance of 15 Crore rupees for a period of 6 years will be
  provided to 30 SC entrepreneurs in a year.
• It is launched to promote entrepreneurship amongst the
  Scheduled castes who are oriented towards innovation and growth technologies.
• Under Green Business Scheme, loan for unit cost up to 1
  lakh rupees at concessional rate of interest will be provided to Scheduled Castes
  for activities such as e-rickshaw, Solar Pump and Solar energy powered
  implements, poly house etc.

• Japan committed to provide an Overseas Development
  Assistance (ODA) loan of 2620 crore rupees (50 billion Yen) to India. The
  notification related to this was released by the Union Ministry of Finance on
  16 January 2015.
• The loan amount will support infrastructure projects that
  will be implemented in public-private partnership mode.
• The loan will be provided by Japan International Commerce
  Agency to the India Infrastructure Finance Company (IIFC) to support
  infrastructure projects built on public-private partnership mode.
• The commitment to provide the ODA loan was part of pledge
  made by Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during the Prime Minister Narendra
  Modi’s five-day visit to Japan. Modi visited Japan in August – September 2014.

• Baba Ramdev was appointed as state brand ambassador of
  Haryana Government. Minister of Sports and Health of Haryana, Anil Vij
  announced the decision on 15 January 2015.
• The appointment was a part of government of Haryana’s
  ambitious plans to promote yoga and ayurveda in Haryana state.
• Krishna Ayurvedic college of Haryana will be developed
  into an Ayurvedic University whereas a yogic centre of international standards
  will be built in Panchkula.

• After a 32-year wait, the first indigenously-built Tejas
  Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) was today handed over by Defence Minister Manohar
  Parrikar to the Indian Air Force, a red letter day for Indian defence and
  aerospace sector.
• The handover signals the start of the process of
  induction of the fighters, a 4.5th generation aircraft, being built at home
  which has cost the exchequer nearly Rs 8,000 crore.
• The entire project by the DRDO and Hindustan Aeronautics
  Limited (HAL), including the final induction in the Air Force and Navy, is
  estimated to cost over Rs 30,000 crore.
• The LCA, which will replace the ageing MiG21s, is
  significant for its lighter weight and greater agility and manoeuvrability.
• This version of the aircraft lacks the latest electronic
  warfare suite, which was integrated into one of the LCAs two weeks ago, mid-air
  refuelling and long-range missiles capabilities, among other things that the
  FOC-configuration aircraft will have.
• The IOC-I was granted to the aircraft, being built by
  HAL, in January 2011.

• Renowned Indian RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agrawal was
  on 15 January 2015 conferred with the Giraffe Hero award 2015 by a US-based NGO
  The Giraffe Heroes Project. The award will be presented to him on 22 January
  2015.
• Agrawal was awarded for his bravery in utilising the
  Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005 for public good despite innumerable
  challenges. Agrawal also holds the Guinness record of filing highest number of
  published letters to the editors.
• His RTI applications has delivered some important orders
  in India like declaration of assets by Supreme Court judges, bringing political
  parties under the RTI act among others.

• Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh handed over the first
  set of Resident Identity Card (RIC) readers to Navy Chief Admiral R K Dhowan
  and Coast Guard Director General Vice-Admiral A G Thapliyal on 14 January 2015.
• These RIC readers will be used by maritime security
  agencies to check identity cards of the residents of coastal area issued under
  RIC Scheme.
• As per RIC Scheme under the National Population
  Registrar, government had issued these identity cards to more than 65 lakh
  residents of coastal villages. Apart from this, the Union government is also
  preparing the National Population Registrar (NPR) in 3331 coastal villages
  under the said scheme.

• Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) on 16 January 2015 was
  selected for the National Award for e-Governance for the best district-level
  initiative in Citizen-Centric Service Delivery through ICT. 
• The Department of Administrative Reforms, Ministry of
  Personnel and Prime Minister Office has selected e-Panchayat of Jammu and
  Kashmir for the award.
•  J & K for the
  first time will be awarded since the institution of awards in 1997. The award
  will be presented by Ministry of Personnel at National Conference on
  e-governance to be held in Gujarat from 30 January to 31 January 2015.

• The Red Sari, an unauthorized biography of Congress Party
  President Sonia Gandhi, was released by Roli Books in India on 16 January 2015.
  The book has been written by Spanish author Javier Moro.
• The book describes about how Sonia Gandhi’s courage,
  honesty, and dedication have made her a leader in the eyes of one-sixth of
  humanity that is from her idyllic childhood to her passionate love affair, and
  from her days as a docile daughter-in-law to her current status of being the
  only Indian politician to have refused Prime Ministership.
• This book also examines the lives of the famous
  Nehru-Gandhi family set against the backdrop of the Bangladesh War, the
  Emergency, Operation Blue Star, and other events that have shaped modern Indian
  history.

• Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) Chairman R.K. Tyagi
  was on 16 January 2015 conferred with the JGBS-Top Rankers’ Excellence Award
  for CEO of the year 2014.
• Tyagi played a key role in 2014 being a successful year
  for HAL through series of initiatives. The year was dedicated for Integrity,
  Customer Focus and Quality (ICQ). 
• The award has been instituted by Jindal Global Business
  School (JGBS) and Top Rankers’ Management Consultants.
• JGBS is part of O P Jindal Global University, Delhi
  whereas Top Rankers’ Management Consultants is a Delhi based executive search
  company which provides recruitment and HR solutions to various organizations.

• Nine Censor Board members have put in their papers protesting
  what they claimed was the “cavalier and dismissive manner” in which the Board
  is treated by the government.
• The members said the events that led to the Chairperson
  Leela Samson resigning from her position were merely the “proverbial last
  straw”.
• Samson, who headed the statutory body under the
  Information and Broadcasting Ministry, resigned amid controversy surrounding
  the clearance of controversial film “Messenger of God” featuring Dera Saccha
  Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh.
• In a letter, the nine members – Arundhati Nag, Ira
  Bhaskar, Lora Prabhu, Pankaj Sharma, Rajeev Masand, Sekharbabu Kancherla, Shaji
  Karun, Shubhra Gupta and T.G Thyagarajan have submitted their resignation from
  the Censor Board.
• The members said that since the time that they first
  joined the Board, they had been seeking critical changes, which were imperative
  if the functioning of the CBFC has to be reformed.

• K. Tamilmani, Chief Controller of Aeronautics Cluster in
  the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), is likely to become
  the interim head of the organisation, succeeding Avinash Chander, who was asked
  to step down after the government suddenly ended his contractual term.
• Dr. Tamilmani, the senior-most of the seven cluster heads
  in the DRDO, is the Director of the Centre for Military Airworthiness and Certification
  (CEMILAC), Bangalore.
• Government sources indicated on Friday that a proposal to
  de-link the position of Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister from the
  Director-General, DRDO, was under consideration as part of a major overhaul of
  the organisation, which has faced criticism on account of time and huge cost
  overruns in key defence projects. Currently, the DRDO chief acts as the
  Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister.

• China will launch the construction of at least five new
  nuclear reactors with a total capacity of more than 5 Gigawatts in 2015. The
  decision was announced by the Deputy Secretary General of Nuclear Society of
  China, Shen Lixin on 15 January 2015.
• At Present, China has 22 nuclear reactors in operation
  and 26 under construction. China launched the construction of five nuclear
  reactors in 2014 and had planned to keep up the pace of construction of nuclear
  reactors in 2015.
• According to the World Nuclear Association, four new
  reactors started operating in Fujian, Liaoning and Guangdong provinces of China
  in 2014.
• In 2012, State Council of China outlined the current
  nuclear reactor construction goals and approved the 12th Five-year Plan for
  Nuclear Safety and Radioactive Pollution Prevention and Vision for 2020. It is
  aimed to triple China’s atomic energy capacity to at least 58 gigawatts by
  2020.

• Nepali Congress leader Deep Kumar Upadhyay was on 16
  January 2015 appointed as Nepal’s ambassador to India. The post was lying
  vacant since 2011.
• The decision to appoint Deep Kumar Upadhyay was taken at
  the cabinet meeting headed by Nepal’s Prime Minister Sushil Kumar Koirala. He
  is a Central Working Committee member of the Nepali Congress party.
• Earlier, Upadhyay has served as an assistant finance
  minister of Nepal. However, he does not have experience in foreign affairs as
  he had never served any diplomatic position earlier.
• The post was lying vacant for more than 3 years when the
  Maoist-led government called back its ambassador to India Rukma Shukshere Rana
  in August 2011. She was called back after she was found serving as the Managing
  Director of Indian joint venture Dabur Nepal.

• The year 2014 was ranked as the Earth’s hottest year
  since 1880 as per the two separate analyses done by National Aeronautics and
  Space Administration (NASA) scientists and National Oceanic and Atmospheric
  Administration (NOAA) scientists. The findings of NASA and NOAA were released
  on 16 January 2015.
• Both NASA and NOAA conducted independent analyses based
  on satellite and ground readings, but they arrived at similar conclusions.
• The global average temperature for 2014 was roughly
  1.24°F (or 0.69°C) warmer than the 20th-century average that included record
  heat in the western United States, Europe, Australia, and much of the Pacific Ocean.

• The US President Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister David
  Cameron announced cooperative measures in combating cyber threats. Both the
  countries announced the measures during the bilateral summit between the two
  countries held in Washington DC, US on 16 January 2015.
• The measures include better threat information sharing
  and the creation of a new joint cyber task force.
• The measure on better threat information sharing will
  bring together Internet security experts from the Government Communications
  Headquarters (GCHQ) and Security Service MI5 of the UK and the National
  Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the US.
• On the other hand, the formation of a joint cyber task
  force will have a physical presence in both the countries.

• Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe warned on Saturday
  that the world would suffer an “immeasurable loss’’ if terrorism spreads in
  West Asia and pledged about $200 million in non-military assistance for countries
  battling Islamic State.
• The threat of Islamist militancy has come into sharp
  focus outside West Asia after gunmen killed 17 people in three days of violence
  in Paris that began on January 7 with an attack on the offices of a newspaper
  that had published satirical images of the Prophet Mohammad.
• Islamic State controls large parts of OPEC oil producer
  Iraq and neighbouring Syria has declared a caliphate and wants to redraw the
  map of a region vital for Japan’s energy needs.
• In addition to the $2.2-billion in assistance Japan
  pledged for West Asia two years ago, Abe said his government would provide
  another $2.5 billion in non-military assistance in fields such as humanitarian
  assistance and infrastructure.
• Abe’s tour will also include Jordan, Palestinian territories,
  Lebanon and Turkey.
• Japan will provide Egypt with $360 million in loans for
  projects, including an airport and a power grid in a country suffering from an
  energy crisis, Abe said.

• Stephen Constantine was appointed as the head coach of
  Indian men’s football team on 16 January 2015. He will supervise both the senior
  and under-23 football teams.
• Constantine of England replaced Wim Koevermans of
  Netherlands, who resigned in October 2014 after India faced a 3-2 defeat
  against Palestine in a friendly match. It is expected that he will take charge
  of the team by first week of February 2015.
• This is the second time that 52-year-old Constantine has
  been appointed as the coach of Indian football team. He served as India’s coach
  from 2002 to 2005, during which the team achieved its best-ever ranking of 109.
  During that tenure India won the LG Cup in Vietnam and finished runners-up in
  the Afro-Asian Games.
• Current world ranking of the Indian football team is 171.

• Ukrainian Grandmaster Andrey Baryshpolets won the 13th
  Parsvanth International Grandmasters Chess Tournament on 16 January 2015. He
  defeated Deepan Chakkravarthy of India in the 10th and final round of the
  Tournament that was held in New Delhi.
• Baryshpolets went home richer by winning 300000 rupees in
  the 3000000 rupees prize money festival. Baryshpolets was followed by Ivan
  Popov of Russia who finished second and Alberto David of Italy who finished
  third. All the three got 8 points each.
• Apart from this, the C category of the Tournament was won
  by Vardan Nagpal who won a cash prize of 1.25 lakhs rupees for his efforts. The
  second place in this section was won by Rishabh Jain who won 100000 rupees.

• Sania Mirza and her partner Bethanie Mattek-Sands of the
  US on 16 January 2015 won the women’s doubles title of the Sydney International
  Tennis Tournament.
• The unseeded Indo-American pair defeated top-seeded
  Americans Abigail Spears and Raquel Kops-Jones 6-3, 6-3 in the summit clash
  played in Sydney. With this win, the duo earned 470 ranking points each and
  split 39000 US Dollar as prize money.
• This was the fifth WTA title for Sania and Bethanie
  together, while it was the first title of the season for Sania. This was 23rd
  career title for Sania.

• Australian captain Mark Knowles and midfielder of the
  Netherland Ellen Hoog on 15 January 2015 were named as the International Hockey
  Federation (FIH) Player of the Year 2014 in men and women category,
  respectively.

• Goalkeepers-of-the-year (Men): Jaap Stockmann of the
  Netherlands
• Goalkeepers-of-the-year (Women): Joyce Sombroek of the
  Netherlands
• Rising-stars-of-the-year (Men): Gonzalo Peillat of
  Argentina
• Rising-stars-of-the-year (Women): Florencia Habif of
  Argentina
• Women’s Coach-of-the-year: Argentine Max Caldas, Coach of
  the Netherlands team
• Men’s Coach-of-the-year: Australian Ric Charlesworth,
  Coach of Australia team

• Petra Kvitova of Czech Republic on 16 January 2015 won
  the women’s single title of Sydney International Tennis tournament. She won the
  title defeating Karolina Pliskova of Czech Republic 7-6, 7-6 in the final.
• This is the 15th career title won by former Wimbledon Champion
  and World No 4 Kvitova. She won the Wimbledon Championship twice in 2011 and
  2014 respectively.
• Pliskova, on the other hand, finished her 2014 season
  with more aces than any other player apart from Serena Williams of the US. With
  this win she was ranked 22 and this is the first she was in the top 20.
• The Sydney International also called Apia International
  Sydney is a tune-up event before Australian Open, the first Grand Slam
  tournament on the tennis calendar.