Current Affairs Update – 19 Dec, 2014

• Over five crore subscribers of the EPFO will get 8.75 per
  cent interest this fiscal on their provident fund deposits – the same rate as
  the previous year.
• “Finance Ministry has ratified the decision of the
  EPFO’s Central Board of Trustees (CBT) to retain 8.75 per cent rate of interest
  for the current fiscal,” said a source.
• The rate was same in the previous year, 2013-14, when it
  was raised from 8.5 per cent in the 2012-13 fiscal.

• Japanese telecom & internet giant SoftBank Corp on 16
  December 2014 announced its third investment of 570 crore rupees in
  Housing.com.
• SoftBank will acquire around 30% stake in the property
  portal for 470 crore rupees. With this, the value of Housing.com increased to
  1550 crore rupees.
• Online real-estate ventures have seen a steady flow of
  investor money in recent months with the likes of PropTiger getting a 30
  million US dollar investment from Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp.
• The existing companies in the housing sector are 99acres,
  Magicbricks, part of the Times Group, and new-age startups like Bengaluru-based
  Commonfloor.
• Housing sector is witnessing a promising future because
  of its technology backbone and heavy focus on data and analytics.

• IT services company HTC Global Services on 19 December
  2014 acquired a US based firm CareTech Solutions Inc. Both companies are
  headquartered in Troy, Michigan.

• Madhava Reddy, president and CEO of HTC Global Services,
  will also take on the role of chairman of CareTech Solutions.
• However, Jim Giordano will continue to lead CareTech as
  president and CEO.
• CareTech will retain its brand name and will operate as a
  wholly owned subsidiary of HTC under its current leadership team.

• Established in 1990, HTC Global Services is an INC. 500
  Hall of Fame company and one of the fastest growing privately held companies in
  Michigan.
• HTC Global Services has offices in several countries and
  global delivery centres in North America, India and Malaysia to serve customers
  across the globe.
• Recently, HTC Global Services won the annual Aetna
  Supplier Award for 2014.

• Zomato has acquired Italy’s leading restaurant search
  service Cibando. Zomato has now acquired five companies globally in a short
  span of five months
• Deepinder Goyal, Founder and CEO of Zomato, said,
  “Cibando is one of the largest restaurant search services in Italy. Their
  existing traffic and user base will give us a great start as we launch Zomato
  in the country.”
• The entire Cibando team is joining Zomato and will lead
  the effort of building the business in Italy.
• This is Zomato’s fifth acquisition in recent months.
  Zomato acquired MenuMania in New Zealand, Lunchtime in Czech Republic, Obedovat
  in Slovakia, and Gastronauci in Poland recently.

• On Saturday, defence shipbuilder, Garden Reach Shipyard
  & Engineers (GRSE) will hand over to Mauritius a 1,300-tonne offshore
  patrol vessel (OPV) named “Barracuda”. This $58-million (Rs 365
  crore) vessel is the first warship ordered by a foreign country from an Indian
  shipyard.
• Meanwhile, GRSE is bidding to build two frigates for the
  Philippines Navy, for an estimated Rs 1,000 crore each. If GRSE wins that order
  – for which major global shipyards are bidding, including Navantia of Spain,
  STX of France and Korean majors, Hyundai and Daewoo – it would be the first
  time a warship designed and built in India is selected in an international
  tender.
• India has gifted several warships to smaller Indian Ocean
  countries such as Maldives, Seychelles and Mauritius. It has sold used vessels,
  such as a Sukanya-class OPV that now serves as the Sri Lankan navy’s flagship.
• GRSE is also finalising the design of a series of
  140-tonne Fast Patrol Boats for the Vietnam Navy. New Delhi has offered a line
  of credit to Vietnam for that order.

• The Lok Sabha on 18 December 2014 passed the Motor
  Vehicles (Amendment) Bill, 2014 to legalize e-rickshaws by bringing them under
  the ambit of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988.
• The Motor Vehicles (Amendment) Bill, 2014 was introduced
  in Lok Sabha on 15 December 2014. The Bill seeks to amend the Motor Vehicles
  Act, 1988.

• Under the Act, a motor vehicle or vehicle is defined as
  any mechanically propelled vehicle adapted for use upon the roads. 
• The bill does not include (i) a vehicle running upon
  fixed rails or (ii) a vehicle of a special type adapted for use only in a factory
  or in any other enclosed premises or (iii) a vehicle having less than four
  wheels fitted with engine capacity of not exceeding 25 cc.
• The Bill brings e-carts and e-rickshaws under the ambit
  of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988.  E-carts
  and e-rickshaws are defined as special purpose battery powered vehicles, having
  three wheels, and with power up to 4000 watts. 

• TVS chairman Venu Srinivasan was made Honorary Citizen of
  Busan, Korea on 18 December 2014. He was conferred with the citizenship for his
  efforts to enhance friendship and cooperation between India and Republic of
  Korea.
• He was conferred the title by Mayor of Busan Metropolitan
  City, Suh Byung-soo during the honorary citizenship ceremony held at Busan, the
  second largest city in Korea, after Seoul.
• Srinivasan, who is also Honorary Consul General of the
  Republic of Korea in Chennai, is the first Indian industrialist to be granted
  honorary citizenship.

• He is an Indian industrialist who is the Chairman and
  Managing Director of Sundaram Clayton Ltd and Chairman of TVS Motor Company,
  the third largest two wheeler manufacturer in India.
• For the year 2009-10, he served as the President of
  Confederation of Indian Industry.
• In 2010 he was conferred with Padma Shri by the President
  of India for his contributions in the field of trade and industry.

• GSLV Mark-III-X was in news recently because Indian Space
  Research Organisation (ISRO) on 18 December 2014 launched it successfully from
  Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.
• GSLV Mark-III-X is the heaviest rocket (630 tonnes) of
  India, which was launched on an experimental mission along with human Crew
  module Atmospheric Reentry Experiment (CARE). It was launched with an aim to
  check its atmospheric stability with luggage of around four tonne and to study
  re-entry characteristics of the crew module.
• In the experimental mission, the crew module separated
  itself from the rocket at an altitude of 126 km for re-entry into the earth’s
  atmosphere. Crew module, in the process of re-entry into earth’s atmosphere,
  was controlled by 3 parachutes which helped it to splash safely into the Bay of
  Bengal off Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
• Further, the crew module was successfully recovered by
  the Indian Coast Guard near Indira Point, the southernmost point of India.

• In what will become a feather in the cap for the diamond
  city – Surat, the local civic body has tied up with technology giant, Microsoft
  for bringing innovative and online solutions in civic services and make them
  more responsive, efficient and people-centric.
• Microsoft’s CityNext service will empower citizens in
  Surat with open data and digital way of accessing civic services, thereby
  making Surat a Smart City.
• Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) and Microsoft India
  will jointly transform Surat into a smart city by adopting process automation
  and technology-driven citizen services, a statement said.
• The engagement between Microsoft and SMC would involve
  citizen services across RTI, property tax payments, birth & death
  registration, grievance redressal system, vaccination alert system, application
  tracking systems, disease statistics/reports for hospitals and solid waste
  management system. Also, it would include utility services including water
  supply and sewage systems.
• Microsoft CityNext is a people-first initiative to enable
  residents and city leaders to use technology to build a foundation for sustainable
  growth and prosperity.
• The CityNext initiative has been successfully implemented
  in cities across the world including Paris, Washington DC and Auckland.

• Veteran Gandhian and freedom fighter Chunibhai Vaidya
  passed away on 19 December 2014 at Ahmedabad, Gujarat following brief illness.
  He was 97.

• Chunibhai Vaidya was born on 2 September 1918 in a small
  village in Patan district of North Gujarat.
• He began his life in activism with freedom struggle. He
  also actively participated in Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan Movement.
• Being an editor of Bhoomiputra magazine, he raised battle
  against political emergency in 1975 and faced imprisonment.
• Vaidya formed Gujarat Lok Samiti, a voluntary
  organization in 1980.
• He was felicitated with Vishva Gujarati Pratibha award by
  Vishva Gujarati Samaj.
• He wrote a book titled Assassination of Gandhi : Facts
  and Falsehood which was translated and published in eleven languages.

• The most hated man in Pakistan is a 36-year-old father of
  three and volleyball enthusiast nicknamed “Slim”.
• His real name is Umar Mansoor and the Pakistani Taliban
  say he masterminded this week’s massacre of 132 children and nine staff at a
  school in Peshawar – the deadliest militant attack in Pakistan’s history.
• A video posted on Thursday on a website used by the
  Taliban shows a man with a luxuriant chest-length beard, holding an admonishing
  finger aloft as he seeks to justify the December 16 attack. The caption identified
  him as Umar Mansoor.
• The Taliban say the attack, in which gunmen wearing
  suicide-bomb vests executed children, was retaliation for a military offensive
  carried out by the Pakistani army. They accuse the military of carrying out
  extrajudicial killings.
• The accusation is not new. Many courts have heard cases
  where men disappeared from the custody of security services. Some bodies have
  been found later, hands bound behind the back and shot in the head, or
  dismembered and stuffed into sacks.

• Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi will remain in jail for at least
  three more months with Pakistani authorities on Friday slapping stringent
  provisions under public security against the key accused in the 2008 Mumbai
  attack, a day after a court gave him bail sparking outrage in India.
• Lakhvi (54) was detained for three months under Maintenance
  of Public Order (MPO).
• Lakhvi was granted bail by Islamabad Anti-Terrorism Court
  on Thursday due to lack of evidence against him.
• The order of detention was handed over to Adiala Jail
  superintendent before Lakhvi’s counsel could show his bail order to jail
  authorities.
• The prosecution chief further said that the government
  had decided in principle to challenge the trial court’s decision in the high
  court.

• NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft, which is
  carrying out a new mission has made its first exoplanet discovery — a
  ‘super-Earth’ located 180 light-years from Earth.
• Lead researcher Andrew Vanderburg, a graduate student at
  the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
  studied publicly available data collected by the spacecraft during a test of
  the new K2 mission in February 2014.
• This led to the discovery of a planet, HIP 116454b, which
  is 2.5 times the diameter of Earth and follows a close, nine-day orbit around a
  star that is smaller and cooler than our Sun, making the planet too hot for
  life as we know it.
• HIP 116454b and its star are 180 light-years from Earth,
  toward the constellation Pisces.
• The discovery was confirmed with measurements taken by
  the HARPS-North spectrograph of the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo in the Canary
  Islands, which captured the wobble of the star caused by the planet’s gravitational
  tug as it orbits.
• HARPS-N showed that the planet weighs almost 12 times as
  much as Earth. This makes HIP 116454b a super-Earth, a class of planets that
  does not exist in our solar system.

• The US President Barack Obama on 18 December 2014 signed
  Ukraine Freedom Support Bill, 2014 passed by the US Congress. With this, the
  Bill has now become Ukraine Freedom Support Act, 2014.
• The Act authorizes more sanctions on Russia for its role
  in the Ukraine crisis.  However, it does
  not intend to impose sanctions on Russia. 
  Rather, the Act gives the administration additional authorities that
  could be utilized if any circumstance arises.
• The Act also authorizes 350 million US dollars in lethal
  and non-lethal military aid to the Ukrainian government, including anti-Tank
  weapons, munitions and surveillance drones.
• The Act also gives the administration the authority to
  impose further sanctions on Russia against Ukraine crisis, that is, Russia’s
  annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine and support for separatists in
  eastern Ukraine.
• The Act extends applicability of certain US sanctions
  involving Russia and Ukraine to non-US persons.
• However, the Act would terminate when the US President
  certifies to Congress that Russia has, among other actions, ceased undermining
  the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of
  Ukraine.

• The US Senate on 16 December 2014 unanimously passed a
  resolution recognising Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai as symbol of
  peace. Satyarthi and Malala are the joint winners of Nobel Peace Prize for the
  year 2014.
• The resolution recognised them as symbol of peace and
  advocates for ending the financial exploitation of children and for the right
  of all children to an education. They were recognised for their efforts to end
  the scourge of child slavery and advance education for all children. 
• The resolution also lauded all individuals working around
  the world to end the scourge of child slavery and to advance education for all
  children. It recognised the challenges that remain in ending the financial
  exploitation of children and providing access to an education for all children.
• The resolution was introduced by outgoing Senator Tom
  Harkin on 11 December 2014 and was the last item passed by the US Senate in the
  113th Congress.

• The United Nations (UN) on 18 December 2014 sent a team
  of international experts to help Bangladesh in cleaning up the Sundarbans oil
  spill. The team belonging to the United Nations Disaster Assessment and
  Coordination (UNDAC) was sent on a request from Bangladesh government.
• The UN team will help Bangladesh government in the ground
  work and will also conduct an assessment and advise on recovery and risk reduction
  measures. The team comprises of experts from Britain, European Union, France
  and the United States.
• Besides, the UN asked Dhaka to impose a complete ban on
  the movement of commercial vessels through the Sundarbans.
• Sundarbans, the world largest mangrove forest, was hit by
  huge oil spill after an oil-tanker carrying 350000 litres of furnace oil
  collided with another vessel in Mongla near River Shela in Bangladesh on 9
  December 2014.
• The oil spill has now spread 350 sq km inside the
  delicate protected mangrove forest area that are home to rare Irrawaddy and
  Ganges dolphins and endangered Royal Bengal Tigers.
• The accident occurred inside one of three sanctuaries set
  up for the dolphins in 2011 after studies found they are home to some 6000
  dolphins.

• Wasp Network was in news recently because the United
  States in third week of December 2014 released three Cuban spies of this
  network. These spies were released as part of announcement restoring diplomatic
  relations between the US and Cuba after more than 50 years of enmity.
• The Wasp Network is a spy ring of Cuba that included five
  members of a 14 member espionage team called La Red Avipsa.
• The Wasp Network was engaged in a wide range of
  activities, including locating vulnerable points of entry into the state of
  Florida for the importation of arms and explosives, infiltration of the US
  Southern Command, and the attempted subversion of anti-Communist organizations
  in the US.
• In 2001, five members of spies of Cuba were convicted of
  being unregistered foreign agents, and three also were found guilty of
  espionage conspiracy for failed efforts to obtain military secrets from the US
  Southern Command headquarters.

• Noted Pakistan-born poetess Imtiaz Dharker was on 17
  December 2014 awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry 2014 for her latest
  poetry collection Over the Moon.
• The award recognizes Imtiaz Dharker life’s contribution
  to poetry. It will be presented to Dharker in 2015.
• Earlier on 4 December 2014, Dharker was unanimously
  chosen for the award by the Poetry Medal Committee at Windsor. Her nomination
  was approved by the Queen of the United Kingdom.

• Dharker was born in Pakistan in 1954 but grew up a Muslim
  Calvinist in a Lahori household at Glasgow, Scotland.
• Some of her poems are included in syllabus of schools in
  the United Kingdom.
• She has so far published five books including Postcards
  from God and Purdah in 1997, I Speak for the Devil in 2001, The Terrorist at my
  Table in 2006, Leaving Fingerprints in 2009 and Over the Moon in 2014.

• United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on 17 December
  2014 renewed its authorization for humanitarian aid to Syria for 12 months
  without Syria’s government consent. The resolution, pursuant to resolution 2165
  passed in July 2014, extends the humanitarian assistance for Syrian civilians
  until 10 January 2016.

• The humanitarian aid renewed is for conflict lines and
  four border crossings in Syria from Turkey, Iraq and Jordan.
• The four border crossings namely are Al Yarubiyah on the
  Iraq border, Al-Ramtha from Jordan, Bab al-Salam and Bab al-Hawa from Turkey.
• It called on UN humanitarian aid agencies and their
  partners to scale up humanitarian deliveries into hard-to-reach and besieged
  areas, including by using, as effectively as possible, (the authorized) border
  crossings.
• It expressed grave concern over the ineffective
  implementation of its previous resolutions 2139 and 2165 and demanded increased
  aid access to civilians in hard-to-reach areas.

• The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on 18 December
  2014 adopted a resolution referring North Korea to the International Criminal
  Court (ICC) for human right abuses and for charges of crimes against humanity.
• The UNGA adopted the resolution with 116 accepted votes
  to 20 rejected votes. More than 50 countries abstained from voting. China and
  Russia voted against the resolution along with Belarus Cuba, Iran, Syria and
  Venezuela.
• The resolution also called UNGA to consider targeted
  sanctions against the Pyongyang leadership for the repression of civilians in
  North Korea.
• A UN report released in February 2014 revealed that
  civilians of North Korea faced unspeakable atrocities. It also detailed
  wide-ranging abuses in North Korea which includes deliberate starvation, forced
  labour, executions, torture, rape and the denial of reproductive rights
  enforced through punishment, forced abortion and infanticide.
• The report also revealed that North Korea didn’t
  co-operate with the report findings.
• In November 2014 UN human Rights Committee voted in
  favour of referring North Korea to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and
  also condemned human rights abuses of North Korea.

• Michael Garcia on 18 December 2014 resigned as
  Independent Chief Ethic investigator of Federation Internationale de Football
  Association (FIFA) Ethics Committee.
• He resigned from the post in protest over the handling of
  his 430-page report on awarding the bid for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to
  Russia and Qatar respectively. FIFA had earlier awarded bid to Russia and Qatar
  despite allegations of corruption.
• Garcia resigned a day after FIFA’s appeal panel rejected
  his challenge that FIFA Judge Hans-Joachim Eckert had submitted a wrong summary
  of his report and cleared Russia and Qatar as World Cup hosts.

• 2 December 2010: Russia
  and Qatar chosen to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups
• 4 October 2013: FIFA sets
  up taskforce to look into alternative dates for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar
• 1 June 2014: Surfacing
  of news that former FIFA Vice-President Mohamed bin Hammam paid 3 million
  pounds to FIFA officials for support to Qatar’s bid
• 5 September 2014: Michael
  Garcia submits report into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding process to FIFA
• 13 November 2014: 42-page
  summary of Garcia report released by FIFA clearing Russia and Qatar of
  corruption
• 13 November 2014: Garcia
  disowns the summary released and claimed it contains erroneous representations
• 16 December 2014: FIFA
  rejected Garcia appeal against FIFA Judge Eckert’s
• 17 December 2014: Garcia
  resigned as Independent Chairman of the FIFA Ethics Committee’s Investigatory
  Chamber