Current Affairs Update – 16th March, 2016

Hello and welcome to ExamPundit. Here are the important Current Affairs of 16th March, 2016.

• Country’s largest lender State
  Bank of India will extend vehicle loans to driver-partners of Uber, the
  on-demand transport aggregation company.
• All these loans are collateral
  free and carry a very competitive interest rate and will get covered under the
  Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana.
• The loans will be sanctioned
  instantly using an inbuilt digital offering.
• This new product will enable
  thousands of skilled drivers to overcome liquidity crunch and excess
  documentation requirements, to become an entrepreneur, SBI said in statement.
• Access to quick and easy finance
  will provide necessary push to the growth of SME segment. The boom of on-demand
  transportation business will also provide impetus to the MSME sector.

• Union Government on 15 March 2016
  imposed anti-dumping duty of up to 44.7 percent on import of plastic-processing
  machines for five years. It will be implemented on the imports from Chinese
  Taipei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
• The duty will be levied on all
  kinds of plastic-processing or injection-moulding machines, also known as
  injection presses.

• Anti-dumping duty of 27.98
  percent has been imposed on plastic-processing machines imported from Chinese
  Taipei.
• Safeguard duty of 44.74 percent
  and 30.85 percent has been imposed for the same products imported from Malaysia
  and the Philippines.
• Imports from Vietnam will attract
  a levy of 23.15 percent.

• Hindustan Aeronautics Limited
  (HAL) and Pawan Hans Limited (PHL) signed an MoU to set up a joint venture at
  Rohini in Delhi to carry-out the maintenance work related to all types of
  helicopters and address the needs of defence and civil markets in India and
  other countries at India Aviation-2016 on Wednesday.
• Union Civil Aviation Minister
  Ashok Gajapathi Raju and Secretary, Ministry of Civil Aviation Rajiv Nayan
  Choubey and CMDs of HAL and PHL T Svarna Raju, and B P Sharma respectively were
  present on the occasion.
• According to the minister, both
  the companies will form a joint working team and conduct detailed studies, work
  on business plan, time line and other required documents for the success of the
  venture.
• HAL has been manufacturing and
  overhauling its Cheetah/Chetak and Dhruv helicopters besides providing support
  for Speaking helicopter.The PHL is the largest civil helicopter operator in the
  country.

• Pune-based Maharashtra Institute
  of Technology (MIT) in the second week of March 2016 set up India’s first
  education technology accelerator called Edugild. The accelerator will be the
  first one in the country to focus only on the education sector.
• The programme, in its first year,
  received applications from 300 entrepreneurs focused on the education sector
  from all over the country. Of these, four companies were selected by Edugild
  for its accelerator programme.

• Classboat: It helps students to
  find and select classes in the city.
• Instafeez: It is a Bengaluru
  based start-up which has developed a payment solution. Their services also
  provide a seamless fee reconciliation platform.
• Simulanis: It is a Delhi-based
  start-up that uses 3D gaming and augmented reality based tools for engineering
  learning.
• Gradopedia: It is a start-up
  dedicated for graduates to experience simulated job profiles of their
  aspirations and then make a wise choice of the career paths to pursue.

• Career Guidance Counselling
  Centres were launched on 14 March 2016 in Delhi-NCR. The centres were set-up to
  provide dedicated career services to young women seeking employment in the region.
• The career counselling centres
  are set up as part of a collaboration between United Nations Development
  Programme (UNDP), the IKEA Foundation, Xyntéo, and the India Development
  Foundation.
• The aim of these centres is to
  impact the lives of women in India through training, entrepreneurial skill
  development and employment.
• The Counselling Centres, which is
  first of its kind for women, is built on the findings of a United Nations
  Development Programme (UNDP) commissioned study.

• 7th meeting of the Governing
  Board of the Indo-German Science and Technology Centre (IGSTC) was held on 15
  March 2016 in New Delhi. The meeting was chaired by the Union Science &
  Technology and Earth Sciences Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan.
• During the meeting, Dr. Vardhan
  highlighted the achievements and progress of IGSTC in accelerating the
  bilateral Science & Technology collaboration.

• India is investing approximately
  14 million euro for the construction of an India focussed beam line and access
  to the synchrotron facility at PETRA-III in DESY at Hamburg, which will be
  ready for inauguration later in 2016.
• India is also an equity share
  holder with investment of 36 million euro in the construction of the
  international Facility for Antiproton-Ion Research (FAIR) at Darmstadt.

• World Kidney Day (WKD) was
  observed globally on 10 March 2016 with the theme Kidney Disease &
  Children. Act Early to Prevent It!
• The theme was taken up to inform
  parents, caregivers, young patients, policy makers and the general public of
  the importance of identifying and treating childhood kidney diseases.
• The World Kidney Day is annually
  observed on the second Thursday in March.

• The World Consumer Rights Day
  (WCRD) 2016 was observed on 15 March 2016. The day was celebrated by the
  Consumers International (CI) across the world with the theme Antibiotics off
  the Menu.
• The theme was taken up to ensure
  that fast food companies make a global commitment to stop the sale of meat
  raised with the routine use of antibiotics important to human medicine.

• India-based software engineer
  Abdulqadir Rashik on 15 March 2016 won the Unite Ideas #LinksSDGs Data
  Visualization Challenge. 
• Rashik, entrepreneur and founder
  of India-based Miavy Systems, was awarded the Challenge’s top prize for his
  submission Links to Sustainable Cities, an interactive visualization that
  identifies and maps the links between Sustainable Development Goal 11,
  Sustainable Cities and Communities, and the other 16 Goals.
• The project was a collaboration
  between the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ Division
  for Sustainable Development and the Office of Information and Communications
  Technology. 

• Priyanka Kakodkar and Raksha
  Kumar on 15 March 2016 were named as joint winners of the 2015-16 Chameli Devi
  Jain Award. They were awarded for their work that clubs social concern and
  compassion with pioneering reportage and analytical skills.
• Kakodkar’s reports, which
  targeted on the acute farming crisis in Maharashtra, were published on the
  front page of The Times of India in the year 2015. More than 50 of her reports
  were published in a year by the paper.
• Independent journalist Raksha
  Kumar won the honour as her reports focused on the perilous features of the
  Union Government’s proposal to amend the Land Acquisition Act, the Forest
  Rights Act and the Coal Act.

• Denmark overtook Switzerland as
  the world’s happiest place, according to a report on Wednesday that urged
  nations regardless of wealth to tackle inequality and protect the environment.
• The report, prepared by the
  Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) and the Earth Institute at
  Columbia University, showed Syria, Afghanistan and eight sub-Saharan countries
  as the 10 least happy places on earth to live.
• The top 10 this year were
  Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Canada, Netherlands, New
  Zealand, Australia, and Sweden. Denmark was in third place last year, behind
  Switzerland and Iceland.
• The bottom 10 were Madagascar,
  Tanzania, Liberia, Guinea, Rwanda, Benin, Afghanistan, Togo, Syria and Burundi.
• The United States came in at 13,
  the United Kingdom at 23, France at 32, and Italy at 50.

• The United Nations Development
  Programme (UNDP) on 15 March 2016 suspended Maria Sharapova as a goodwill
  ambassador.
• The five-time grand slam winner
  who became a goodwill ambassador in February 2007 was suspended after she
  tested positive for the banned substance meldonium at 2016 Australian Open.
• The New York based UNDP in a
  statement said that it was suspending Sharapova, who worked as a goodwill
  Ambassador, until the outcome of the investigation into her case is known.

• Hollywood actress Ashley Judd has
  been appointed a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA).
• In a press conference, the
  “Divergent” and “Double Jeopardy” actress said she was honoured to be an
  advocate for women’s rights.
• Other celebrity UN Ambassadors
  include: David Beckham, Emma Watson, and Angelina Jolie.

• Gandhi: An Illustrated Biography
  authored by Pramod Kapoor was in news in the second week of March 2016.  It is a biography of Mahatma Gandhi who
  played a key role in Indian independence movement.
• The book is an intimate study
  into the evolution of a mischievous, fun-loving boy, into the Mahatma. It also
  seeks to decode Gandhi for modern generation.
• The chronological text and
  accompanying photographs in the book bring out Gandhi’s unique complexities –
  his failures and successes, the intimate relations he shared with his
  contemporaries, and the difficult one he shared with his own family.

Regards

Team ExamPundit

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