Daily Current affairs - July 14th, 2017 for all competitive exams
Uganda becomes the 19th African
Countries out of the 54 African nations to which India offered e-Visa Facility.
- It also becomes 163rd nation to receive e-Visa facility.
- The Home Ministry implements the e-visa scheme, and
any country is removed or added to the list on the basis of inputs from
security agencies. Recently, the government increased the window for
application under the e-visa system from 30 to 120 days. Once applied for,
the e-visa is granted within 72 hours. Conceptualised when the UPA was in
power, the e-visa facility was operationalised in 2014.
- e-Visa Facility is an online pre-authorisation which
allows visa on arrival to India without visiting the Indian Mission by the
foreign national.
- The applicant will be granted visa on the basis of
scanned documents uploaded by him.
- This facility is available at nine designated
airports and three sea ports.
DIPP signed an agreement with
Punjab government to set up TISC:
Department of Industrial
Policy and Promotion signed an Institutional agreement with the Punjab
State Council of Science and Technology in New Delhi to set up Technology
and Innovation Support Center (TISC) in Punjab.
- It would be India’s first Technology and Innovation
Support Center (TISC).
- The centre would be set up under World Intellectual
Property Organization’s (WIPO) TISC program.
- The aim of the TISC program is to set up such
centers across India in order to increase creativity and innovation among
entrepreneurs by stimulating Intellectual Property Rights system in India.
Maharashtra, first state to
have law against social boycott
Maharashtra has become the
first state to make social boycott a crime after President Pranab
Mukherjee cleared the legislation.
- The Maharashtra Prohibition of People from Social
Boycott (Prevention Prohibition and Redressal) Act prescribes a maximum
punishment of three years in jail and a fine of Rs1lakh.
- It aims to prevent atrocities carried out by
extra-judicial courts and caste panchayats.
- The Act also provides for compensation to victims.
The fines imposed on violators will be used to compensate them.
Merkel open to idea of EU
budget
German Chancellor Angela
Merkel was open to the creation of a Finance Minister and budget for the
eurozone as proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron.
PM’s task force recommends
scrapping 5-yearly job survey
The Prime Minister-appointed
task, headed by NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya has submitted its
report.
Recommendations:
- The Prime Minister-appointed task force has
recommended that traditional Employment-Unemployment Surveys carried out
by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) every five years be scrapped.
- The panel has instead suggested a new periodic
labour force survey to provide estimates of labour force, employment,
unemployment, nature of employment and industry.
- To get more frequent employment trends data, an
urban module of this survey will be updated every quarter.
The recommendation comes
amidst criticism about the lack of adequate jobs as well as a debate over jobs
cuts in the economy.
Functional mini human hearts
developed
Scientists have created
miniature functional human hearts in the lab that may be used to test safety
and efficacy of potential new drugs to treat cardiac diseases.
- Researchers from AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical
company in Sweden, grew human heart cells in the matrix of a whole rat
heart to make the mini organ.
- They delivered solutions that strip away cells from
the rat heart while preserving the lining matrix of the whole heart to
repopulate with human cells, researchers said.
- The remaining ‘scaffold’ is the framework of the
heart — consisting of collagen and other proteins.
SBI cuts charges for digital transactions
To encourage more customers
to transact digitally, State Bank of India on Thursday said it will slash
charges for National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) and Real Time Gross
Settlement (RTGS) transactions by up to 75 per cent with effect from July 15.
- The bank has also waived off charges for fund
transfer of up to Rs.1,000 done through Immediate Payment Service
(IMPS) effective July 1, 2017.
- For NEFT transactions up to Rs.10,000 initiated
on internet and mobile banking, the new charge (exclusive of Goods and
Services Tax) will be Rs.1 (Rs.2 now); for transactions between Rs.10,001
and Rs.1 lakh, the new charge will be Rs.2 (Rs.4); for
transactions between Rs. 1 lakh and Rs.2 lakh, the new charge will be Rs.3
(Rs.12); for transactions above ₹2 lakh, the new charge will be Rs.5 (Rs.20).
- For RTGS transactions initiated on internet and
mobile banking, the new charge (exclusive of GST) will be Rs.5 (Rs.20
now) for transactions between Rs.2 lakh and Rs.5 lakh, and Rs.10 (Rs.40)
for transactions over Rs.5 lakh.
No GST on old gold sold to
jewellers
According to
the Government, Sale of old gold ornaments by individuals to jewellers
won’t be subject to Goods and Services Tax (GST).
- Responding to a query in a GST Master Class on
Wednesday, tax authorities had suggested that the sale of old gold
jewellery by a consumer to a jeweller would be subject to GST at the rate
of 3% under the reverse charge mechanism of the GST law and jewellers
could claim input tax on such purchases.
USIBC plans to break free from
Chamber
The U.S. India Business
Council (USIBC), a forum of companies that seek to promote business cooperation
between the two countries, has decided to delink from the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce and function as an autonomous entity. The board of the Council made
the decision after it found the Chamber’s attempt to control its activities
unacceptable, sources familiar with the matter.
- The Chamber considers the USIBC a “programme” under
its umbrella, a view that the board of the USIBC found unacceptable.
- The board, chaired by CISCO chairman John T.
Chambers voted 29-0 for operating as an independent entity last week and
informed the Chamber. Four members were not present.
Tatas pick group chief digital
officer
Tata Sons appointed Aarthi
Subramanian, executive director at TCS, as the Tata Group’s chief digital
officer.
- Ms. Subramanian will report to N. Chandrasekaran,
executive chairman of Tata Sons, in her new role and continue to serve on
the board of TCS as a non-executive director.
Liu Xiaobo, Chinese dissident
who won Nobel Prize, dies
Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Liu Xiaobo, China’s most prominent political prisoner, died.
- Liu was only the second Nobel Peace Prize winner to
die in prison, a fact pointed to by human rights groups as an indication
of the Chinese Communist Party’s increasingly hard line against its
critics.
- The first, Carl von Ossietzky, died from tuberculosis in Germany in 1938 while serving a sentence for opposing Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.
