Click here to Download Weekly PDF (6th July to 11th July 2015)
National:
1. Book 37 Bridges and Other Stories authored by a noted Pakistani author Aamer Hussein book is a new collection of his stories. The book was released on 15 March 2015.
The author through the book highlights the matter of identity with respect to both the Hindu and Muslim. Further, the book identifies itself with Hussein’s identity who is a British citizen born to a Pakistani father and an Indian mother both of whom later settled in Britain.
2. President Pranab Mukherjee inaugurated Nakshatra Vatika at his official Rashtrapati Nilayam Gardens in Bolarum, Secunderabad.
The vatika (garden) has plants representing planets, zodiac signs and stars. The layout of ‘Nakshatra Vatika’ has been developed in various geometrical combinations corresponding to the Sree Chakra of Vedic astrology on a 0.91 acre plot.
3. Tata Value Homes has announced a first-of-its-kind online property exhibition open to an invite-only audience. Covering 11 projects across seven cities, registration for the exhibition, which is from July 13 to July 15, is currently live on the Tata Value Homes website.
Only customers with a valid invite code can browse and buy in this exhibition, but these customers’ invitations will also be extended to their friends and family.
4. The government on Tuesday hiked the minimum wage for workers by Rs 23 to Rs 160 a day. The increased wages will be applicable from July 1.
5. UNESCO names 24 new world heritage sites and these are-
Blue and John Crow Mountains (Jamaica).
Tusi sites (China),
Christiansfeld, a Moravian Church Settlement (Denmark).
Par Force Hunting Landscape in North Zealand (Denmark).
Climats, terroirs of Burgundy (France).
Champagne Hillsides, Houses and Cellars (France).
Speicherstadt and Kontorhaus District with Chilehaus (Germany).
Susa (Iran).
Cultural Landscape of Maymand (Iran).
Necropolis of Beth She’arim—a Landmark of Jewish Revival (Israel).
Arab-Norman Palermo and the Cathedral Churches of Cefalú and Monreale (Italy)
Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel,
Shipbuilding and Coal Mining (Japan).
Baptism Site “Bethany Beyond the Jordan” (Al-Maghtas) (Jordan).
Baekje Historic Areas (South Korea)
Aqueduct of Padre Tembleque Hydraulic System (Mexico)
Great Burkhan Khaldun Mountain and its surrounding sacred landscape (Mongolia)
Rjukan-Notodden Industrial Heritage Site (Norway)
Rock Art in the Hail Region (Saudi Arabia).
Singapore Botanical Gardens (Singapore).
Ephesus (Turkey).
Diyarbakir Fortress and Hevsel Gardens Cultural Landscape (Turkey).
Fray Bentos Cultural-Industrial Landscape (Uruguay).
The Forth Bridge (United Kingdom).
San Antonio Missions (United States).
6. Union home ministry has declared entire Nagaland state as a ‘disturbed area’ for one year period with an immediate effect.
7. Prime Minister Narendra Modi proposed a 10 point initiative named as ‘Dus Kadam: 10 Steps for the Future’ to boost cooperation within the members of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
He proposed the initiative while addressing the 7th BRICS summit in Ufa, Russia.
8. Operation Smile, a unique initiative of Ghaziabad Police to track missing children, was in news in second week of July 2015. It came in news after Uttarakhand police under the operation was able to trace at least 44 missing children from various parts of the state within a week.
9. The World Bank released the State of Safety Nets 2015 report. It aggregated spending on social safety net programs and beneficiaries in 157 countries, economies and territories and presented a comparative analysis of those programmes.
As per the report, only 1/3rd of the world’s poor are covered by safety nets program with largest gaps in Sub-saharan Africa and South Asia.
10. Jaipur Literature Festival is heading to Boulder in the US this September for three days of books, ideas, performance art, dialogue and debate on contemporary issues.
Over 100 authors, thinkers, poets and performers have been lined up to participate in the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival at Boulder in Colorado beginning on September 18, organizers said today.
11. India has been accorded full membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at its Ufa summit held in Russia. Technically, India will become the member of SCO by 2016 after completion of certain procedures. This membership will help India to work with the 6 members grouping to enhance connectivity, combat terror and create an environment for boosting trade by easing barriers.
International:
1. India and Kazakhstan launched the first exploratory drilling at Satpayev oil block owned by India’s ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL) and Kazakhstan company KazMunaiGaz.
Satpayev oil block is an offshore field located in the Northern Caspian Sea. It has potential reserves estimated at 1.8 billion barrels crude oil and natural gas.
2. Japan’s Meiji-era (1868-1912) industrial revolution sites have received World Cultural Heritage status from United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
3. India and Uzbekistan have inked pacts to boost cooperation between their foreign offices and in the field of culture and tourism.
4. India and Kazakhstan signed five agreements during the two-day visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Kazakhstan.
List of Agreements signed
Agreement on Transfer of Sentenced Persons.
Agreement on Defence and Military – Technical Cooperation.
Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Cooperation on Physical Cultural and Sports.
MoU on Technical Cooperation in the field of Railways.
Long term contract between Department of Atomic Energy, India and KazAtomProm for sale and purchase of natural uranium concentrates.
5. The powerful Typhoon Linfa has hit the southern China after it made landfall on southern province of Guangdong. Typhoon Linfa has hit the southern province by bringing winds of up to 126 km/hr along with heavy rain.
However after it had made landfall, the typhoon has lost strength rapidly after it passed near Hong Kong due to weakened low pressure area.
Typhoon Linfa is the first of two large storms Chan-Hom and Nangka which are going to hit China.
The third storm, Nangka is the most powerful among them and has reached supertyphoon strength with winds of 250 km/hr.
But it has strong presence far out in the Pacific Ocean and not expected to hit any land with high strength.
Sports:
1. IBC is India’s first national governing body and was launched with an aim to promote professional boxing and tap the unexplored potential of professional boxing in India.
2. Indian shot-putter Inderjit Singh came up with a best throw of 20.27 meter in the final attempt to win the Gold medal of men’s shot put event at the World University Games in Gwangju, South Korea.
With this, he created history to become the first Indian to win a gold medal at the World University Games.
3. World Boxing Organization (WBO) has stripped of the Welterweight World title 2015 won by Floyd Mayweather in May 2015.
Awards & Recognition:
1. World Bank has ranked the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Gurantee Act (MGNREGA) as the world’s largest public works program.
2. Pune’s prestigious Fergusson College, has been accorded the special heritage status by the University Grants Commission (UGC).
With the status, UGC will provide financial assistance for its upkeep. Now the college is among the 19 institutions in the country to get the heritage status.
3. The Film Society of Jodhpur was conferred with the Pritiman Sarkar Award 2014-15 for the consequent fourth time for being the best film society in Northern Region in raising awareness and film appreciation.
Mergers & Acquisition:
1. Healthcare firm Practo has acquired Mumbai based Genii, a technology services start-up focused on product design and development.
With this acquisition, Genii’s founders Varun Vohra and Aditya Anand and their 11 member team will join Bengaluru based Practo.
2. Wipro will acquire global strategic design firm Designit for 85 million euros (about Rs 595 crore), a move aimed at strengthening the digital services business of the country’s third largest software services company.
Appointments:
1. Eminent Ecologist Kamal Bawa has been elected as Fellow to the London based prestigious Royal Society. He was chosen in recognition of his pioneering contributions in the field of conservation science.
2. Sistema Shyam Tele Services (SSTL) that provides telecom services under the MTS brand today announced two senior leadership appointments with Bijender Yadav being named the chief technology officer (CTO) and Ashok Singh being named the chief operating officer (COO) of Kolkata and West Bengal circles.
3. The government has appointed Sriram Kalyanaraman as the next housing finance sector regulator. He is the first person from private sector to be appointed as head of a public sector financial institution.
4. Bharti Enterprises appointed Rahul Bhatnagar as its new Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer.
5. China has nominated its former finance Minister Jin Liqun as the Presidential candidate for $100 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
6. Professor Lord Kamlesh Patel has become the first British Asian to be appointed as Director of England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).
7. Union government has appointed Sriram Kalyanaraman as the Managing Director (MD) and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of National Housing Bank (NHB) for a period of five years.
8. Ashok Kumar Lahiri, former Chief Economic Adviser to the Union Government, was appointed as the Chairman of the bank. While, Chandra Shekhar Ghosh, Founder of Bandhan Financial Services Ltd, was appointed as the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Bandhan bank.
9. Reddit appointed its Co-founder Steve Huffman as CEO after when interim CEO Ellen Pao resigned from the company.
Economics:
1. Union Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) and Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers (MCF) signed MoUs to address the Industry’s need of Skilled Manpower.
These MoUs will enhance strategic tie between both parties to scale up skill development and entrepreneurship initiatives in the country. It will also collectively address the incremental human resource requirement in the Petrochemicals, Fertilizers and Pharmaceutical industry.
2. India and United States have signed inter-governmental agreement to implement the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). It was signed by Revenue Secretary Shaktikanta Das and US Ambassador to India Richard Verma in New Delhi. The agreement will promote transparency on tax matters and curb offshore tax evasion by exchange of information between the two countries.
3. Vadodara district of Gujarat and China’s Xinjinag province has inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the development of twin cities.
It was signed between Vadodara Municipal Corporation and Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjinag Uygur Autonomous Region in Mumbai.
The MoU aims to enhance
Infrastructure growth and development between the two regions.
Mutual cooperation in economic, technological, scientific and cultural strengths between both cities.
People-to-people exchanges fostering greater mutual understanding.
The PPI-MTS will enhance commuter convenience and will also facilitate the migration to electronic payments in line with the country’s vision of moving to a less-cash society.
4. Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) signed framework agreements for equity investments in infrastructure projects in BRICS countries. The agreement was signed at the BRICS summit in Ufa.
5. The central banks of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) on 7 July 2015 signed Mutual Assistance Agreement (MAA) aimed at operationalizing the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) of 100 billion US dollars.
MAA is an operating agreement on mutual support specifying the procedures to be followed by the central banks of BRICS countries as part of the CRA and defines their rights and obligations.
6. Telangana government and International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) inked MoU to promote IT-based information for farmers. The MoU seeks to provide Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-based knowledge sharing platforms and other agricultural innovation initiatives to farmers in order to improve their productivity.
7. The Reserve Bank of India today fixed the reference rate of rupee at 63.5690 against the US dollar and at 69.9323 for the euro as against 63.3749 and 69.9659, respectively.
8. Country’s second largest IT services firm Infosys has signed a multi-million euro deal with Deutsche Bank.
Under the terms of the multi-year agreement, Infosys will provide services like development, application maintenance, digital and mobility, package implementation and testing services across the Deutsche Bank Group.
Science & Technology:
1. The National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) launched a mobile application named Pashu Poshan that will boost dairy farmers’ income by raising milk yield and cutting feed cost. The app will recommend a balanced diet for cows and buffaloes.
2. Scientists belonging to the University of Leicester and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine on 7 July 2015 published a research article that revealed the central role of Protein kinase (PfPKG) in regulating biochemical pathways in P falciparum parasite.
As per the scientists, the discovery would help in developing future anti-malarial drugs that are precisely designed to kill the parasite but with limited toxicity, hence, making them safe enough to be used by children and pregnant women.
3. HDFC Bank, the country’s second largest private sector bank, launched Watch Banking application for Apple Watch.
With this, HDFC became the first bank in India to offer the service of Watch Banking. In order to avail this service, customer will not be required to download a separate app but they just need to activate it from an upgraded version of HDFC Bank’s mobile banking app itself.
4. Union Minister for Communication and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad on 6 July 2015 launched four world-class broadband products developed by the C-DOT in New Delhi. (C-DOT stands for Centre for Development of Telematics)
They are- Long Distance Wi-Fi, Solar powered Wi-Fi, Suteerva and Next Generation Network (NGN).
Long Distance Wi-Fi and Solar powered Wi-Fi address the connectivity problem of rural areas, hilly terrain, highways, dense vegetation, tunnels etc.
5. The scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created aQuantum Dot (QD) Spectrometer which is small enough to fit inside a smartphone camera. Spectrometers are the instruments that measure the properties of light.
6. eMudhra Limited, a leading certifying firm in the country for digital signatures, today launched eSign services.
eSign is an online electronic signature service which can facilitate an Aadhaar holder to digitally sign a document within seconds. The signatures generated by eSign are legally valid and secure under the Information Technology Act, 2000.
7. A new mobile ticketing app will now facilitate hassle free travel for 75 lakh daily suburban railway commuters.
The app will be initially available on Android and Windows smartphones but will soon be extended to other platforms such as iOS.
8. Uttarakhand became first Indian state to install a system to detect earthquakes and disseminate warnings.
The first system has been installed in its capital Dehradun which will issue warnings 1-40 seconds before earthquakes of magnitude 5 or more occur.
The system is designed and manufactured by Italian firm, Space Dynamics which already has installed it in Japan, Italy and US.
Features of earthquake early warning -
The system is incorporated with sensors which are capable to detect P (Primary) and S (Secondary) waves generated during an earthquake.
It is capable to detect the harmless P wave, which travels faster than the S wave for advance warning.
The system has the earliest detection among those currently in use worldwide
9. Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka has set a Guinness World Record for spending longest time in space with a total of 804 days as on July 2015.
With this he broke the previous record of 803 days, nine hours and 41 minutes set by Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev (now retired) across six missions from 1998 to 2005.
10. WowTables, the culinary restaurants reservations platform, has launched its mobile application in India.
With a following of 50,000 members, WowTables is looking to expand and cater to a wider audience with their easy to use mobile application which can be downloaded for Android and iOS phones.
WowTables seeks to ensure a smooth, convenient and a faster mode of interaction with our ever-growing database of members. It is all about ensuring that you’ve had the best food experience – right from making a reservation among the best restaurants, to our carefully put together menus and food properties – all available on the go.
10. Indian Space Research Organization (Isro)’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket PSLV-C28 carrying five British satellites was launched successfully from the space station here on Friday at 9:58 pm. It took only 19 minutes from the time the rocket was blasted off to place the satellites into the orbit.
11. Indigenously developed supersonic surface-to-air Akash Missile has been inducted in Indian Air Force (IAF).
The Akash missile was inducted by Union Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar at a function held at Maharajpur Airbase in Gwalior after he handed over the symbolic key of Akash defence system (ADS) to Air chief Marshal Arup Raha.
12. A new species of tiny butterfly species called Banded Tit (Hypolycaena Narada) discovered in the green forests of the Changlang district in Arunachal Pradesh.
The discovery of Banded Tit was announced by Dr. Yogesh, State Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Wildlife and Biodiversity, in Itanagar.
13. Former President of India Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam launched the Rashtriya Avishkar Abhiyan (RAA) in New Delhi. The abhiyan aims to inculcate a spirit of inquiry, creativity and love for Science and Mathematics in school children.
14. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on 9 July 2015 selected four astronauts to provide crew transportation services to and from the International Space Station.
Astronauts and test pilots Robert Behnken, Eric Boe, Douglas Hurley and Sunita Williams will work with The Boeing Company and SpaceX to develop crew transportation systems and provide crew transportation services to and from the International Space Station (ISS).
Important Dates:
1. World Population Day was observed on 11 July 2015 with theme Vulnerable Populations in Emergencies.
The theme focuses on the record number of people displaced by crises – some 60 million according to the latest UN figures.
Death:
1. Notable Urdu poet, critic and orator Bashar Navaaz passed away in Aurangabad, Maharashtra. He was 80 years old. He was known as an Indo Pak shayar as his gazals are popular in India as well as Pakistan.
2. Jerome Charles Weintraub, the legendary producer who produced Ocean’s Eleven, died in a Santa Barbara hospital, California. He was 77.
3. Prince Saud al-Faisal, former foreign minister of Saudi Arabia passed away in United States. He was 75.
4. Legendary Egyptian actor Omar Sharif passed away due to a heart attack in Cairo. He was 83.