Daily Current affairs - January 12th, 2018 for all competitive exams
National Youth Day (Yuva
Diwas) is celebrated in India every year on 12th of January.
- It is celebrated to commemorate the birthday of
Swami Vivekananda, maker of the modern India.
- The Theme of the Festival is 'Sankalp Se
Siddhi'.
- Culture Minister Dr Mahesh Sharma will be the
guest of honour on the occasion.
It was first declared by the Government
of India in the year 1984 to celebrate the birthday of Swami Vivekananda as
the National Youth Day.
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Election Commission panel to
suggest changes to RP Act
Election Commission has
constituted a 14-member committee to suggest changes to Section 126 of the
Representation of the People Act in view of social media expansion.
- The Act prohibits poll campaign in the last 48 hours
of voting.
- The Committee chaired by Senior Deputy Election
Commissioner Umesh Sinha will study the impact of social media during the
silence period and suggest modifications to the election law and model
code of conduct.
Section 126 of the Representation of
the People Act:
No person shall—
(a) convene, hold, attend, join
or address any public meeting or procession in connection with an election;
or
(b) display to the public any
election matter by means of cinematograph, television or other similar
apparatus;
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West Bengal government
launching water ATMs in city, districts
West Bengal state government
has launched a water ATM project to provide bacteria-free drinking water in
schools.
- The government is setting up water ATMs in the city
and suburbs and the machines are made in Germany.
Punjab rolls out e-Raktkosh
web portal in all 45 government blood banks
Punjab has rolled out
e-Raktkosh web portal in all the 45 government blood banks.
- The web portal provides the guidelines and
streamlines the workflow of blood blanks and storage centres across the
nation and interconnects all blood banks with a single network.
- In the next phase all 59 private blood banks of the
state will be linked with the e-Raktkosh application software.
India, Bhutan jointly unveils
‘Special logo’
Golden Jubilee of the
establishment of formal diplomatic relations between India and Bhutan is being
celebrated.
- To mark the launch of the Golden Jubilee
celebrations, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Minister of
Foreign Affairs of Bhutan Damcho Dorji jointly unveiled the ‘Special logo’
for the Golden Jubilee Celebrations in New Delhi and Thimphu through
video-conference.
Bhutan
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Capital
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Thimphu
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Currency
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Indian rupee, Bhutanese ngultrum
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King
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Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck
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5th Bilateral Meeting between
India and Malaysia Held in New Delhi
The 5th Bilateral
Technical Meeting on cooperation in the field of Traditional Systems of
Medicine between Govt. of India and Malaysia was held in New Delhi.
The Meeting had discussed
the following agenda:-
- Establishment of Ayurveda Chair in University
of UTAR, Malaysia,
- Professional training in Panchakarma therapy for
Malaysian experts in India,
- The evaluation of safety and efficacy of combination
Ayurvedic/ traditional products for clinical trials.
- Safety evaluation of Ayurvedic products based on
Good Laboratory Practices (GLP)
- Bilateral MoU between National Medicinal Plants
Board (NMPB), Ministry of AYUSH and Malaysia for Cooperation in the field
of Medicinal Plants.
Malaysia
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Capital
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Kuala Lumpur
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Currency
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Malaysian ringgit
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President
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Najib Razak
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World’s largest solar thermal
plant to be built in South Australia
The world’s largest
solar-thermal power plant has been given development approval by the South
Australian government.
- Construction on the 150-megawatt Aurora plant, to be
built by utility-scale solar power company SolarReserve, will begin in
2018 at an estimated cost of $509 million.
- The facility will power 90,000 homes with eight
hours of full load storage.
China Becomes Nepal’s 2nd
Internet Service Provider
China became Nepal’s second
internet service provider, breaking India’s monopoly in providing internet
access to Nepal.
- The Hong Kong and Beijing based China Telecom
Global (CTG) has teamed up with Nepal Telecom to provide alternate
cyber-connectivity to Nepal. CTG was formed in 2012.
China
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Capital
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Beijing
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Currency
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Renminbi
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President
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Xi Jinping
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Kazakhstan beats Iraq to be
OPEC’s biggest oil over-producer
Kazakhstan has overtaken
Iraq as the biggest over-producer in the pact between Organisation of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies to curb oil output.
- Kazakhstan’s output in November and December last
year was about 130,000 barrels a day above the target agreed with OPEC.
- Notably, Kazakhstan had pledged to pump 20,000 barrels
a day less under the pact.
Kazakhstan
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Capital
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Astana
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Currency
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Kazakhstani tenge
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President
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Nursultan Nazarbayev
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UN Environment and WHO Agreed
to Major Collaboration on Environmental Health Risks
UN Environment and
the World Health Organization have agreed a new, wide-ranging
collaboration to accelerate action to curb environmental health risks that
cause an estimated 12.6 million deaths a year.
- Erik Solheim, head of UN Environment,
and Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,Director-General of WHO, signed an
agreement to step up joint actions to combat air pollution, climate change
and antimicrobial resistance, water quality, and food and nutrition
issues, in Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya.
ISRO Launches Its 100th Satellite
Space agency ISRO has successfully sent up a rocket carrying India’s 100th
satellite along with 30 others, four months after failed launch. The Polar
Satellite Launch Vehicle or PSLV lifted off from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.
- The PSLV-C40 placed 31 satellites, originating from
seven countries. This is the 42nd flight of the PSLV. The 30 other
satellites onboard include two other satellites from India and 28
satellites from six countries — Canada, Finland, France, Korea, the United
Kingdom and the United States.
- The Cartosat-2 satellite, the third in the series,
was deployed to relay high resolution scene specific spot imageries. The
images will be useful for cartographic applications, urban and rural
applications, coastal land use and regulation, road network monitoring,
water distribution, creation of land use maps and change detection to
bring out geographical Land Information Systems and Geographical
Information System applications.
This is ISRO’s first launch in 2018 and it is also the first after the
unsuccessful mission of IRNSS-1H in August last year.
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China successfully sent twin satellites to enable BeiDou
China has sent twin satellites into space on a single carrier rocket, as
part of efforts to enable its BeiDou system to provide navigation and
positioning services to countries along the Belt and Road by the end of 2018.
- This is the first launch of the BeiDou satellites in
2018. The twin satellites are coded the 26th and 27th satellites in the
BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS).
- The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System is a Chinese
satellite navigation system. BeiDou has been described as a potential
navigation satellite system to overtake GPS in global usage, and is
expected to be more accurate than the GPS once it is fully completed. The
current third generation of BeiDou claims to reach millimeter-level
accuracy (with post-processing), which is ten times more accurate than the
finest level of GPS.
List of Global Navigation Satellite Systems:
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Scientists planning to launch SPARCS
Scientists are planning to launch a small telescope into the Earth’s orbit
that will monitor the flares and sunspots of small stars to assess how
habitable the environment is for planets orbiting them. The spacecraft is known
as the Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat, or SPARCS.
- SPARCS is a new NASA-funded space telescope and will
be launched in 2021. The mission, including spacecraft design, integration
and resulting science, is led by Arizona State University’s School of
Earth and Space Exploration (SESE).
The stars that SPARCS will focus on are small, dim, and cool by
comparison to the Sun. Having less than half the Sun’s size and temperature,
they shine with barely one per cent its brightness.
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IndusInd Bank to Introduce
India’s First Battery-Powered Interactive Payment Card
IndusInd Bank and Dynamics
Inc. at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) announced plans
to introduce the first battery-powered, interactive payment cards to the
Indian market in 2018.
- The new IndusInd Bank card from Dynamics has
multiple buttons that let the consumers use a single card to pay in
multiple ways.
IndusInd Bank
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Capital
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Mumbai
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Tagline
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We Make You Feel Richer
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CEO
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Ramesh Sobti
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Bank of Baroda to sell
Nainital Bank
Bank of Baroda to sell its
subsidiary Nainital Bank as part of its capital raising exercise.
- Uttaranchal-based bank was established by freedom
fighter Govind Ballabh Pant in 1922 and acquired by BoB in 1975.
- According to reports, BoB has sought permission from
the RBI to sell stake in Nainital Bank, which is 99% owned by the
third-largest public sector lender.
- Nainital Bank had a total business of Rs 8,049
crore, an increase of 26% over the previous year.
Bank of Baroda
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Capital
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Vadodara
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Tagline
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India's International
Bank
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CEO
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P S Jayakumar
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Narendra Modi named Number 3
world leader, ahead of Trump, Putin
Gallup International in its
annual survey — Opinion of Global Leaders conducted across 50 nations —rated PM
Modi among world’s top three leaders.
- The top spot went to French
President Emmanuel Macron (net score 21), followed by German chancellor
Angela Merkel (net score of 20). PM Modi is ranked at number three (net
score 8).
- The ranking puts PM Modi ahead of
the likes of US President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping,
Russian President Vladimir Putin, UK’s PM Theresa May and Israel’s
Benjamin Netanyahu.
- The survey shows that Modi is a
popular leader in the Indian subcontinent with 69% of respondents in
Afghanistan and 51% in Bangladesh holding a favourable view towards him.
Indu Malhotra set to script
history
Senior advocate Indu
Malhotra is set to make history as the first woman lawyer to be directly
appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court.
- Ms. Malhotra will be the seventh
woman judge in the Supreme Court, since it was established 67 years ago,
if her appointment goes through.
- In 2007, she became the second
woman to be designated as a senior advocate by the Supreme Court only
after the legendary Justice Leila Seth, who was given the honour in 1977.
- At present, Justice R Banumathi is
the lone woman judge in the apex court. In 1989, Justice M Fathima Beevi
became the first woman to be appointed as a judge of the apex court.
- Thereafter, Justice Sujata V
Manohar, Justice Ruma Pal, Justice Gyan Sudha Misra and Justice Ranjana
Prakash Desai made it to the top court as judges.
Julian Assange gets Ecuador
citizenship
WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange was “naturalised” as an Ecuadorean on December 12.
- Britain had earlier refused a
request by Ecuador for Assange to be given diplomatic status.
- Assange has been living in the
Ecuadorean embassy in London where he was granted asylum in 2012 to avoid
extradition to Sweden over rape allegations.
- Ecuador’s foreign
minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa confirmed Assange’s citizenship
request at a press conference in Quito.
Suzlon’s Tanti named IWTMA chairman
Suzlon Energy founder and
chairman Tulsi Tanti has been appointed chairman of the Indian Wind Turbine
Manufacturers Association, effective January 11.
- With cumulative wind installations
of over 32 GW, the industry is ahead of the 30 GW target set by government
until FY17
V J Mathew Appointed Maritime
Board Chairman
V J Mathew was
appointed Maritime Board Chairman. The decision in this regard was
taken by the Kerala cabinet.
- Mathew is the legal consultant of
Vizhinjam International container terminal company and Indian Maritime
Association Co-President.
