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Current affairs : January 8, 2017 for all competitive exams

Budget session of Parliament to begin from January 31st, 2017

The Budget session of Parliament convened to start from January 31, a day before the Union Budget is likely to be presented. 
President Pranab Mukherjee has summoned the RajyaSabha to meet on January 31, 2017. A similar notification is also expected from the LokSabha secretariat.
  • The practice of separate railway Budget presentation is being scrapped from this year. 
  • The railway estimates will be part of the Union Budget. 
  • Railway budget separated from Union budget in the year of 1924 on the recommendations of Ackworth Committee report submitted in 1921.

PM Modi& Portuguese PM Antonio Costa inaugurate PBD Convention at Bengaluru
Prime Minister NarendraModi and his Portuguese counterpart Dr Antonio Costa has inaugurated the main convention of PravasiBhartiya Divas this morning (08th January 2017) in Bengaluru.


  • In his key note address at the 14th PravasiBhartiya Divas celebrations, Mr. Modi said, the Indian diaspora represents the best of Indian culture, ethos and values. Indians abroad are valued not just for their strength in numbers.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi  inaugurate Vibrant Gujarat Global Trade Show
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be on a two-day visit to Gujarat from 9 january 2017, he will inaugurate the 8th edition of 'Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors Summit 2017' along with series of other programs.
  • The four-day 'Vibrant Summit Summit will be inaugurated  at Mahatma Mandir in Gandhinagar. 

Bihar to form human chain for prohibition

Bihar government is gearing up to organise the world’s longest human chain on January 21 to create awareness of the benefits of prohibition. The space agency ISRO has been approached by the State government to capture satellite images of the human chain.
  • The ambitious human chain will span a distance of 11,000 km with over two crore people joining their hands across the State.
  • Earlier, it was decided that the human chain would cover 5,000 km but the government revised the length to 11,000 km.

India, Portugal sign defence agreement
India and Portugal on Saturday entered into a defence agreement  on the occasion of Pravasi Bharatiya Divas.
  • The agreement came following Portugal’s support to India’s multilateral plans in various technology regimes including Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) where India secured membership in 2016. 
  • Apart from the agreements on defence, visa-free travel for diplomats and marine research, both sides also issued a separate declaration for cooperation in third country. 

China setting up highest altitude telescopes close to LAC
China is setting up the world’s highest altitude gravitational wave telescopes in a Tibet prefecture close to the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with India, with a budget of $18.8 million.
  • Construction has started for the first telescope, code-named Ngari No. 1, 30 km south of Shiquanhe Town in Ngari Prefecture
  • The telescope aims to detect the faintest of echoes resonating from the universe, which may reveal more about the Big Bang theory.

Donald Trump names Dan Coats as new national intelligence director
US President-elect Donald Trump has named Dan Coats as his National Intelligence Director. 
  • The Indiana ex-senator formerly served on the Senate Intelligence Committee. 
  • Mr Coats would provide unwavering leadership and spearhead his administration's ceaseless vigilance against those who seek to do them harm. 

Ex-Pak army chief Raheel Sharif appointed head of Islamic anti-terror alliance
Former Pakistan Army chief Raheel Sharif has been made the head of a 39-nation military coalition formed by Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism- Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT).
  • The Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT) was created by Saudi Arabia in December 2015 to combat the Islamic State and other groups.
  • Currently, it has 39 members, including Turkey and Malaysia. It is based at a command centre in Riyadh.



Indian companies optimistic of economic recovery in 2017
Indian businesses are optimistic about an economic recovery in 2017, according to the latest Grant Thornton International Business Report (IBR) survey.
  • India ranked second on the optimism index during the third quarter (July-September 2016) and has taken a further leap to first position this quarter with 88 per cent of the respondents voting for it.
  • The findings are based on a global business survey conducted quarterly.
  • The recent survey had 2,600 businesses in 36 economies.

Indian-American engineer bags Oscar for technical achievement
Indian-American Parag Havaldar, a computer engineer from IIT-Kharagpur, is part of the Academy Awards’ list of winners for Technical achievement.
  • Mr. Havaldar is being honoured for the development of expression-based facial performance-capture technology at Sony Pictures Imageworks.
  • The awards will be be handed out on February 11 in Beverly Hills, ahead of the main Oscar ceremony to held on February 26.

Sania wins Brisbane women's doubles title but loses No.1 rank
Indian tennis ace SaniaMirza picked up her first title of the season, combining with American BethanieMattek-Sands to lift the Brisbane International women's doubles title. 
  • The top-seeded Indo-American duo triumphed 6-2 6-3 against the second-seeded Russian team of Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina in the final. 
  • The trophy, however, ended Sania's 91-week reign as the world No.1 doubles player in the WTA rankings. That position was taken over by her partner Bethanie.

Djokovic wins Qatar Open tennis title
Novak Djokovic has won the Qatar Open tennis title. In an epic final in Doha, the Serbian defeated Andy Murray of UK by 6-3 5-7 6-4. 
  • Djokovic missed out on three match points and had to repel a roaring Murray comeback before ending the Briton's 28-match, five-tournament winning streak. 

Shirke to represent MCA
Ajay Shirke was on Friday appointed the Maharashtra Cricket Association (MCA) representative for BCCI meetings.
  • While the Supreme Court order on Jan 2 bars Shirke — along with several other State and BCCI officials — from holding any post in the BCCI.
  • He will not hold any post but only put forth the association’s view to the BCCI.

David Meltzer, Beat Poet and Musician, Dies at Age 79
David Meltzer, a Beat poet and musician who appeared in an influential anthology in his early 20s and went on to complete more than 50 books, has died. 
  • Meltzer had begun writing as a child and attracted wider attention when he was featured along with such acclaimed contemporaries as Allen Ginsberg and John Ashbery in The New American Poetry 1945-1960. 



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