Current Affairs Update – 2nd February, 2016

Hello and welcome to ExamPundit. Here are the important Current Affairs of 2nd February, 2016. These are important for the upcoming LIC AAO 2016 Exam.

• RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan on
  Tuesday left the key policy rate unchanged but indicated at accommodative
  stance saying with “inflation moving closer to the target” there would be more
  room for rate cut to support growth.
• He also said that if the Budget
  makes enough structural reforms to boost growth, the central bank could chip in
  with cheaper money to boost growth.
• The repo or short term lending
  rate remains unchanged at 6.75 per cent and the reverse repo rate at 7.75 per
  cent.

• Repo rate unchanged at 6.75 per
  cent
• Cash reserve ratio or CRR
  unchanged at 4 per cent
• Marginal standing facility rate
  and Bank Rate at 7.75 per cent
• Policy to remain accommodative if
  fiscal side helps
• Reforms in Budget to create space
  for rate cut
• Expects FY17 inflation at around
  5 per cent
• Indian economy is being viewed as
  a beacon of stability
• Pegs FY16 growth at 7.4 pc;
  FY17’s at 7.6 pc;
• RBI to create a special ecosystem
  for startup funding
• Prospects for the rabi harvest
  are improving slowly
• First bi-monthly monetary policy
  for 2016-17 on April 5.

• The Reserve Bank on Tuesday said
  it will take steps to help improve the ‘ease of doing business’ in the country
  and contribute to an ecosystem that is conducive for the growth of start-up
  businesses.
• The move is aimed at supporting
  the government’s ‘Start-up India’ initiative.
• Last month, Prime Minister
  Narendra Modi unveiled a slew of incentives to boost start-up businesses,
  offering them a tax holiday and inspector raj-free regime for three years,
  capital gains tax exemption and Rs 10,000 crore corpus to fund them.
• He also announced a
  self-certification scheme in respect of nine labour and environment laws and
  said there will be no inspection during the first three years of launch of the
  venture.
• Also, a liberalised patent regime
  is being brought to help start-up businesses register patents, for which the
  fee will be slashed by 80 per cent.
• India, which has the
  third-largest number of start-ups globally, will also support the ventures by
  removing the criteria of experience and turnover for bagging government
  procurement contracts.

• Alphabet now comes before Apple
  atop the list of the world’s most valuable companies.
• The shift occurred in Monday’s
  extended trading after Alphabet, Google’s new parent company, released a
  fourth-quarter earnings report that highlighted the robust growth of the
  digital ad market. Apple Inc.’s iPhone, meanwhile, is suffering its first
  downturn since it debuted eight years ago.
• Alphabet Inc. earned $4.9 billion
  on revenue of $21.3 billion in the fourth quarter. If not for employee stock
  expenses and certain other items, Alphabet said it would have earned $8.67 per
  share. That figure easily topped the average estimate of $8.10 per share among
  analysts surveyed by FactSet.
• The report provided the most
  detailed breakdown yet on the profits pouring in from Google’s dominant search
  engine and ad network. (Google reorganized itself under Alphabet last October.)
  Investors pushed up Alphabet stock $35.73, or 4.6 percent, to $806.50 in
  extended trading.

• The World Bank Board on 29
  January 2016 approved a 35 million US dollars credit for the Citizen Access to
  Responsive Services Project. The Project will improve access to selected public
  services for the people of Madhya Pradesh (MP) and particularly those belonging
  to deprived groups.
• The World Bank’s concessionary
  lending arm, the International Development Association (IDA) will lend the
  amount with a maturity of 25 years, including a 5 year grace period.

• The Companies Law Committee
  submitted its report to the union government on 1 February 2016. It was
  constituted in June 2015 for examining and making recommendations on the issues
  arising out of implementation of the Companies Act, 2013.
• It was chaired by Tapan Ray
  Secretary, Ministry of Corporate Affairs and consist 8 members and one member
  convener.
• The Committee had extensive
  consultations with stakeholders before making its recommendations. It consulted
  all Industry Chambers, Professional Institutes, law firms, financial sector and
  other regulators. Six broad based groups were set up to review the suggestions
  received during the public consultation, each group being convened by a member
  of the Committee and consisting of subject-matter experts.

• Tamil Nadu Cadre IPS officer
  Archana Ramasundram on 1 February 2016 was appointed as the Director General of
  the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) that guards India’s frontiers with Nepal and
  Bhutan.
• With this appointment,
  Ramasundram became the first woman to head a paramilitary force. 58-year-old
  Ramasundram is currently the Director of National Crime Records Bureau.
• An order issued by Department of
  Personnel and Training (DoPT) said that she has been appointed to the post till
  the date of her superannuation, that is, 30 September 2017.

• Online furniture retailer Urban
  Ladder has appointed Sanjay Gupta as its Chief Marketing Officer.
• Sanjay brings in twelve years of
  experience in branding and marketing, and has been instrumental in building
  brands in the consumer goods industry.
• Sanjay will lead the company’s
  marketing strategies, including branding, creative & content and digital
  and product marketing.
• Sanjay was previously with
  Accenture, Purple Squirrel Consulting and Marico Ltd.

• Ashish Kumar Goel, an IRSS
  (Indian Railway Stores Service) cadre of the 1979 batch, has taken charge as
  the General Manager of Eastern Railway. He assumed charge on February 1. He is
  also the General Manager of South Eastern Railway.
• Goel, a Mechanical Engineer from
  Regional Engineering College, Allahabad, joined the Indian Railways as
  Materials Manager. He has also completed an Advance Diploma in Public
  Administration.
• He was involved in the successful
  implementation of an e-procurement and e-auction project for the Indian
  Railways and finalisation of the Marhowra and Madhepura Loco Manufacturing
  Projects as Addl. Member, Railway Stores.

• An Indian national Saroj Kumar
  Jha was in news as he was appointed as the Senior Director for the Fragility,
  Conflict and Violence Group at the World Bank on 1 February 2016.
• He was appointed to provide
  strategic leadership to address the challenge of fragility, conflict and
  violence, working across the Bank Group and in close collaboration with
  partnes.
• The WB President Jim Young Kim
  assigned him the new role.

• A five-judge Constitution Bench
  of the Supreme Court will hear curative petitions seeking re-examination of its
  verdict criminalising sexual activity between same sex consenting adults under
  section 377 of IPC.
• A three-judge bench comprising
  Chief Justice T S Thakur and Justices A R Dave and J S Khehar said that since
  important issues concerning the Constitution were involved in the matter, it
  would be appropriate to refer the issue to a five-judge Constitution bench.
• The bench said that the larger
  bench would be constituted in the future.
• The bench was told there were
  eight curative petitions seeking re-examination of the order on the review
  petition and the December 11, 2013 judgement by which the Delhi High Court
  verdict de-criminalising section 377 (unnatural sexual offences) of the IPC was
  set aside.

• India and Brunei signed three
  agreements for cooperation in the areas of health, defence, and youth and
  sports affairs on Tuesday, the second day of Vice President Hamid Ansari’s
  visit to this southeast Asian nation.
• The three MoUs (memoranda of
  understanding) signed today (Tuesday) which the honourable vice president was
  witness to are the MoUs on health cooperation, defence cooperation and
  cooperation in youth and sports affairs.
• The MoU on health seeks to
  establish cooperation in the field of health by pooling technical, scientific,
  financial and human resources and to upgrade the health care, medical
  education, research between the two countries.
• The MoU on defence is aimed at
  enhancing defence cooperation between India and Brunei in various fields.
• The MoU on youth and sports
  affairs is aimed at providing a framework for exchanges of sports persons and
  sports teams, to facilitate the exchange of expertise in coaching, sports
  talent identification, sports management and administration, and exchange of
  information in the field of youth Affairs.

• Bajaj Auto on Monday unveiled a
  150-cc bike named ‘V’ that contains metal sourced from India’s first aircraft
  carrier, INS Vikrant.
• The motorcycle, targeted at the commuter
  segment, is expected to be priced a little over Rs. 60,000.
• INS Vikrant was commissioned as
  the first aircraft carrier of Indian Navy in 1961. After years of distinguished
  service, it was decommissioned in January 1997 and served as a museum till
  2012. In November 2014, the aircraft carrier was dismantled and sold as scrap
  metal.

• The Himachal Pradesh Government
  in the first week of February 2016 decided to spend 15 crore rupees on Swachh
  Bharat Mission in tribal district of Kinnaur.
• The funds will be utilized on
  capacity building and organizing of workshops for awareness. Under the Mission,
  target has been also fixed to involve all the schools, government institutions
  and villages.
• Under the Mission, the first
  instalment of four crore fifty lakh rupees has been received by the district
  authorities.

• World Health Organisation (WHO)
  on 1 February 2016 declared Public Health Emergency of International Concern
  over the explosive spread of the mosquito-borne Zika virus, which is linked to birth
  defects in the Americas.
• The UN health agency convened an
  emergency meeting of independent experts in Geneva to assess the outbreak of
  the virus. The meeting was convened after noting a suspicious link between
  Zika’s arrival in Brazil in 2015 and a surge in the number of babies born with
  abnormally small heads.
• This was the first meeting of the
  Emergency Committee (EC) convened by the Director-General under the
  International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR 2005).

• The Human Fertilisation and
  Embryology Authority (HFEA) of United Kingdom on 1 February 2016 granted
  license to the Francis Crick Institute to use new gene editing techniques on
  human embryos.
• Under the license, the institute
  will be allowed to genetically modify human embryos for research purposes in
  order to better understand infertility and miscarriage issues.
• With this issuance of license,
  the UK became one of the first countries in the world to give authorization for
  experimentation on human embryos. Earlier, China allowed similar research on a
  limited scale.

• Bollywood actress Priyanka
  Chopra, who has made a successful international debut with American show
  “Quantico”, is set to join Hollywood A-listers to present at the
  upcoming 88th Academy Awards.
• Her name comes in the second
  slate of presenters that includes Steve Carell, Quincy Jones, Byung-hun Lee,
  Jared Leto Julianne Moore, Olivia Munn, Margot Robbie, Jason Segel Andy Serkis,
  JK Simmons, Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon.
• She becomes the sole
  representative of India at this year’s Oscar ceremony. The country’s official
  entry in the best foreign film category for the Oscars 2016, Court, could not
  make it to the final five.
• The Academy Awards are scheduled
  to take place on February 28, 2016, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood,
  California.
• A Padma Shri awardee, Priyanka’s
  first international feat came with her best actress in a new TV series win at
  this year’s People’s Choice Awards for “Quantico”. She is the first
  Bollywood personality to be feted with the honour.

• The World Wetlands Day was
  observed on 2 February 2016 across the globe to mark the adoption of the
  Convention on Wetlands in the city of Ramsar in Iran in 1971.
• The theme of World Wetlands Day
  this year is Wetlands for our Future – Sustainable Livelihoods. It highlights
  the value of wetlands in securing local livelihoods through activities as
  fishing, rice farming, tourism, and water provision.
• The day is observed on the same
  day every year to promote, create awareness and ensure positive and affirmative
  action for conservation of wetlands.
• This year the World Wetlands Day
  is being celebrated by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate
  Change in collaboration with the West Bengal Government at Sunderbans.

• A noted Dravidian ideologist, P
  Annamalai, died near here today. He was 78.
• Father of ‘Minnambalam’ internet
  Tamil magazine editor A Kamaraj, Annamalai passed away at Perambalur, about 270
  Kms from here.
• His funeral will be held later in
  the day, a statement by Minnambalam said.
• The employees of the organisation
  condoled his death, it added.

Regards

Team ExamPundit

Sponsored

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});