Current Affairs Update – 3rd March, 2016

Hello and welcome to ExamPundit. Here are the Important Current Affairs of 3rd March, 2016.

• Financial messaging services
  provider SWIFT launched its services in India on Thursday, bringing with it a
  unified messaging protocol that can link banks, financial intermediaries,
  regulators, and stock exchanges and clearing agencies through one suit that can
  secure transactions by keeping records in a dematerialised form.
• While the service does not
  facilitate transactions per se, it generate encrypted messages for every
  transactions made, thereby minimising chances of fraud and easy reconciliation
  of accounts.
• Newly formed Bandhan Bank, IDFC
  Bank and Tata Consultancy Services were among 13 clients that signed for the
  services on the first day.
• SWIFT India is a joint venture
  between SWIFT SCRL and nine Indian banks — State Bank of India, Bank of
  Baroda, Punjab National Bank, Bank of India, Canara Bank, Axis Bank, HDFC Bank,
  ICICI Bank, and Union Bank of India. The entity will be regulated by the
  Reserve Bank of India and the data centre will be located in India, which is a
  departure from SWIFT’s usual practice.

• An MoU was signed between the
  Indian Army and IndusInd Bank related to the defence salary package today.
• The signing ceremony was chaired
  by Lt. General Rakesh Sharma, Adjutant General and was attended by top
  dignitaries of IndusInd Bank headed by Anil M. Rao, Head-General Banking
  Operations, IndusInd Bank.
• The first MoU between IndusInd
  Bank and the Indian Army was signed in 2011 and was valid for a period of three
  years.
• The revised MoU is tailor made to
  suit the requirements of serving soldiers. Number of additional facilities have
  been incorporated in the revised MoU after concerted efforts.
• The army is hoping that this MoU
  will benefit a large number of serving soldiers who are having their accounts
  with IndusInd Bank and also provide them an opportunity to access modern
  banking facilities.

• The Department of Posts is
  gaining ground as a popular e-commerce delivery platform with more online
  retailers tying up with it to deliver parcels. From March, post offices will
  start delivering orders of major players like Flipkart and Naaptol too.
• At present, the department has
  tied up with 143 e-commerce players, the major one being Amazon, for delivery
  of articles in Tamil Nadu. Of these, nearly 100 are from Chennai.
• Nearly 5,500 products ordered
  online either through prepaid or cash-on-delivery modes are being delivered
  daily.

• In a move that will enable Indian
  businesses to use Facebook as an e-commerce platform, the world’s largest
  social media company has tied up with an India payment gateway CitrusPay for
  cards and net banking transactions.
• At present, the CitrusPay gateway
  allows Facebook users to make payments for games.
• But those in the financial tech
  sector said that this could be the first step to enable full-blown e-commerce
  within Facebook. The company is already moving into the e-commerce space
  internationally by allowing retailers to open ‘shops’ in the form of Facebook
  pages.
• The company is also building fund
  transfer functionality into Facebook Messenger. Clicking on the purchase button
  on games opens up CitrusPay’s local gateway.

• Praxair Inc has acquired NOxBOX
  Ltd, a company that specialises in the manufacture of inhaled gas delivery and
  monitoring instruments for the medical market, from UK-based Bedfont Scientific
  Limited, an existing Praxair supplier.
• NOxBOX Ltd, which will remain
  headquartered in the UK, provides a range of medical devices for in-hospital
  use as currently authorised by local regulation. One such device, the NOxBOXi
  delivery system, which is currently sold in many countries, provides
  intelligent nitric oxide delivery with precise real-time monitoring of nitric
  oxide, nitrogen dioxide and oxygen through a touch screen with step-by-step
  guided interface to enable ease of use.

• The Cabinet Committee on Economic
  Affairs (CCEA) on 2 March 2016 gave its approval for winding up of National
  Manufacturing Competitiveness Council (NMCC) with immediate effect. The Council
  was winded up as it has fulfilled the mandate for which it was constituted.
• Dr. V Krishnamurthy, the former
  Chairman of the Council resigned from the post on 28 May 2014. Ajay Shankar,
  IAS (Retd.) demitted office as Member-Secretary of the Council upon expiry of his
  tenure on 22 November 2014.
• In the absence of a Chairman and
  no fresh constitution, the NMCC had become non-functional.

• Delhi on 29 February 2016 became
  the first state in the country to launch the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine
  as a public health programme for school children.
• The HPV vaccine protects people
  against the group of 150-odd HPVs, some of which can cause cervical cancer.

• As part of the programme, girls
  studying in Class VI in government schools will be targeted in the first year.
  This will be completed in the current academic year over two phases.
• The programme will target 1-1.5
  lakh girls in the first phase.

• India and the US will
  collaborative for research on cancer and traditional medicine to pave the way
  for potential breakthroughs.
• As a part of this initiative, the
  first US-India Workshop on Traditional Medicine is being held in New Delhi from
  March 3-4, 2016.
• Representatives from the US
  Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Global Affairs (OGA),
  the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Cancer Institute (NCI), and US
  academic institutions will interact with their counterparts from the Ministry
  of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH), and
  Indian research institutes and universities, in New Delhi during the workshop.
• The Workshop is being organised
  under the auspices of the first US-India Health Dialogue held in September,
  2015 in Washington. This effort underscores the discussions between the US
  President and the Indian Prime Minister to encourage bilateral dialogue on
  traditional medicine.

• Google is donating $1 million to
  fight the spread of the Zika virus and offering engineers and data scientists
  help to determine where it will hit next.
• Zika has become an epidemic in
  Latin America and the Caribbean since last fall. The virus is mainly spread
  through mosquito bites and has been potentially linked to birth defects.
• Google said in a blog post that
  it is in a good position to assist since its mission is to help people find
  information, and it has experience analyzing large sets of data. The company
  has seen a more than 3,000 per cent increase in global search interest in Zika
  since November.
• Google operates a group of
  businesses, including a dominant Internet search engine, under the holding
  company Alphabet Inc. Google brought in an operating profit of $6.8 billion in
  last year’s fourth quarter.

• World Wildlife Day was observed
  on 3 March 2016 across the world. 2016 theme is “The future of wildlife is in
  our hands”, with African and Asian elephants being the main focus of global
  campaigns.
• World Wildlife Day is an
  opportunity to celebrate the many beautiful and varied forms of wild fauna and
  flora and to raise awareness of the multitude of benefits that conservation
  provides to people. The Day reminds us of the urgent need to step up the fight
  against wildlife crime, which has wide-ranging economic, environmental and social
  impacts.

• Whitfield Diffie and Martin
  Hellman on 1 March 2016 were honoured with the Association for Computing
  Machinery’s 2015 A.M. Turing Award.
• Diffie and Hellman were given the
  award for their fundamental contributions to modern cryptography. Their
  groundbreaking 1976 paper, New Directions in Cryptography, introduced the ideas
  of public-key cryptography and digital signatures, which are the foundation for
  most regularly-used security protocols on the internet at present.

• Eminent poet Dr Bhagwati Lal Vyas
  was chosen for the 2015 Bihari Puraskar on 2 March 2016. He was chosen for the
  award for his anthology of Rajasthani poems ‘Katha Sun Aawe Hai Sabad’.
• A recipient of Sahitya Akademi
  Award, Dr Vyas through his poetry has highlighted the increasing tendencies of
  commercialization and degradation of human values.

• Multi Commodity Exchange of India
  Ltd (MCX), the country’s largest commodity exchange, on 29 February 2016
  appointed Mrugank Paranjape as its Managing Director (MD) and Chief Executive
  Office (CEO).
• The appointment of Paranjape is
  valid for a period of three years, subject to prior approval from SEBI.
• Since May 2014, the exchange was
  functioning without an MD. P K Singhal was handling the affairs of the exchange
  as joint MD.

• Book titled “Who was Shivaji?”
  authored by Govind Pansare came in news in first week of March 2016. It came in
  news because of Shiv Jayanti, the birth anniversary of Chhatrapati Shivaji
  Maharaj, which was celebrated across Maharashtra on 19 February 2016.
• Introduction of the book was
  written by Anirudh Deshpande and Afterword was written by Prabhat Patnaik.

• Forbes list of World Billionaires
  2016 was released on 1 March 2016. In its 30th annual guide to the world’s
  richest, Forbes found 1810 billionaires in 2016 compared to 1826 in 2015.
• Bill Gates remained as the
  richest person in the world with a net worth of 75 billion US dollars. He has
  been No. 1 for 3 years in a row and topped the list 17 out of 22 years.
• Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg and
  Head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos made their first appearance in the top ten of
  Forbes’ annual ranking of the world’s wealthiest.
• The 31-year-old Zuckerberg added
  11.2 billion US dollars in this year and moved up to No. 6 from 16.
• Mukesh Ambani followed by Dilip
  Shanghvi were top 2 billionaires in India.

• Former New Zealand captain Martin
  Crowe died due to cancer on 3 March 2016 in Auckland. He was 53.
• The ex-Black Caps batsman had been
  suffering from lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system.
• Auckland-born Crowe is widely
  regarded as one of New Zealand’s best ever batsman, having scored 17 centuries
  and 5444 runs in 77 tests at an average of 45.36.

• Tony Warren, creator of
  television’s longest-running soap opera Coronation Street, passed away on 1
  March 2016 after a short illness. He was 79.
• Warren created the ITV soap in
  1960 based in the fictional district of Weatherfield in Greater Manchester.

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