Current Affairs Daily Updates: 22nd March 2017

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Current Affairs Daily Updates: 22nd March 2017
APPOINTMENTS
V Hangkhalian sworn-in as Protem Speaker of Manipur Legislative Assembly
  • Senior BJP legislator V. Hangkhalian was sworn-in as Protem Speaker of the 11th Manipur Legislative Assembly.
  • He was administered oath of office by State Governor Najma Heptulla at the Raj Bhawan. Later Protem Speaker jointly administered oath to newly elected MLAs at the state assembly hall.
Madhabi Puri Buch Appointed As Sebi Whole­Time Member
  • Madhabi Puri Buch has been appointed as a Full­Time Member of Mumbai based Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) for a period of three years by the Personnel Ministry on March 21, 2017.
  • Puri currently working at the New Development Bank, China. She is founder­ director of Agora Advisory Pvt Ltd iii.
  • She will get a consolidated salary of Rs 3.75 lakh per month.
Ghanshyam Singh appointed as Member-Traction Railway Board
  • Ghanshyam Singh was appointed as new Member (Traction) Railway Board and ex officio Secretary to the Government of India.
  • Singh is an officer of Indian Railway Service of Electrical Engineering (IRSEE) of 1979 batch. He is also a Gold Medalist in B.E. in Electrical Engineering from Allahabad University.
Ankur Khanna appointed as Chief Financial Officer of ICC
  • Ankur Khanna was appointed as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the International Cricket Council (ICC).
  • Khanna will join the ICC by the end of March 2017. He will relocate to the ICC headquarters in Dubai. Presently, he is serving Air Asia India as the CFO, the post he has held for the last twelve months.
  • Prior to Air Asia India, Khanna worked in senior roles at Air France, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and ITC, an associate company of British American Tobacco.
AWARDS AND HONOURS
President Pranab Mukherjee presents KCK International Award for excellence in print Journalism
  • President Pranab Mukherjee on 20 March 2017 presented the KCK International Award for excellence in Print Journalism. The awards were organized by Rajasthan Patrika in New Delhi.
  • The award for the year 2014 was conferred upon Wanjohi Kabukuru's team for the story How East Africa Lost Its Innocence that was published in New African magazine, London.
  • The award for the year 2015 was awarded to Rakesh Sharma and his team for an investigative news series Sexual Harassment in Nari Niketan, published in Amar Ujala.
  • The award carries the cash prize of USD 11000.
Major Rohit Suri awarded Kirti Chakra for PoK Surgical Strikes
  • Major Rohit Suri, the leader of the army team that carried out surgical strike in PoK in 2016, was presented the Kirti Chakra by President Pranab Mukherjee during the military investiture ceremony held in the Durbar Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhavan on March 20, 2017.
  • Major Rohit Suri belongs to the Parachute Regiment. Besides, another member of the surgical strikes team Naib Subedar Vijay Kumar was conferred the Shaurya Chakra for his daredevilry in killing two terrorists in the operation despite coming under fire.
  • Corporal Gursevak Singh of Indian Air Force was posthumously conferred the Saurya Chakra for putting up a valiant fight against terrorists who had attacked the frontline Pathankot air base in January 2016.
President of India presents Gallantry Awards
  • The President of India, Pranab Mukherjee presented the Gallantry Awards and Distinguished Service Decorations at a Defence Investiture Ceremony held at Rashtrapati Bhavan on 20 March 2017.
  • The prestigious ceremony saw in attendance prominent dignitaries including Indian Vice President Mohammad Hamid Ansari, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Union Minister for Defence.
IMPORTANT DAYS OBSERVED
International Day of Forests 2017 observed globally
  • The International Day of Forests 2017 was observed globally with the theme ' Forests and energy'.
  • The Day aims to raise awareness of the importance of all types of woodlands and trees and celebrate the ways in which forests sustain and protect us.
  • This year theme highlights the importance of wood energy in improving the lives of people, powering sustainable development and mitigating climate change.
  • The Day was proclaimed through the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly on 21 December 2012.
World Water Day observed with theme Why Wastewater?
  • The World Water Day (WWD) was observed globally on 22 March 2017 with theme Why Wastewater? The year’s theme for the world water day focuses on wastewater and ways to reduce and reuse as over 80 per cent of all the wastewater.
  • The theme highlights that wastewater flows from homes, cities, industry and agriculture to nature. This free or untreated flow helps in polluting the environment leading to loss of valuable nutrients and other recoverable materials.
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
China to take part in Brahmaputra festival
  • China is going to participate in the five-day Brahmaputra river festival titled Namami Brahmaputra organised Assam Government.
  • The event is described as the “biggest river festival of India”. Various other countries such as Vietnam and Singapore are also attending.
  • The Brahmaputra is 2,900 km long International River originating in south western Tibet, China.
  • Of its total length, 918 km flows in India, 1625 km in China and 337 km in Bangladesh.
Indian Cities Among Cheapest Global Cities to Live In: EIU Report
  • According to the 2017 Worldwide Cost of Living Index released by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) on March 21, 2017, four Indian cities are among the cheapest cities to live in globally.
  • As per the report, Singapore was the most expensive city to live among 133 for the fourth consecutive year while Almaty in Kazakhstan was the cheapest city in the world, placed at the bottom of the list at 133
    • Almaty (Kazakhstan) -38
    • Lagos (Nigeria) -39
    • Bangaluru (India)-42
2nd India-­UAE Conference On Globalisation Held In Dubai
  • The second India ­ UAE conference on globalisation, organised by All India Management Association (AIMA) was held in Dubai to promote cooperation between the two countries.
  • Theme: “Resetting Globalisation: Collaborating in a Fast Changing World.”
  • UAE’s Cabinet Member and Minister of Culture and Knowledge Development Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan and India’s ambassador to the UAE Navdeep Singh Suri are participated in the conference.
NATIONAL AFFAIRS
Ram Vilas Paswan: Strict punishment for misleading advertisements
  • The union government announced that it would be taking an action against misleading advertisements endorsed by the celebrities.
  • The announcement was made by the Union Consumer Affairs, Food and Public distribution minister Ram Vilas Paswan during the question hour of the Lok Sabha.
  • He revealed that a new Consumer Protection Act was in the making and it had, in fact, been circulated to the cabinet. The new law would include strict provisions to deal with entities that put out misleading advertisements.
  • He also informed the upper house about the formation of an inter-ministerial monitoring committee in 2014 to monitor the redressal of complaints received on the portal GAMA (Grievances Against Misleading Advertisements).
Process of filling vacancies of HC judges on war footing: Supreme Court
  • Chief Justice of India JS Khehar said that the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) for appointments to the higher judiciary has been cleared. The MoP was cleared by the Supreme Court Collegium.
  • With this clearance, the process of filling the vacancies in High Courts is proceeding on a war footing.
  • The chief justice gave the information about clearance of the MoP while heading a three-judge Bench which was disposing of a number of PILs seeking to fill with vacancies for reducing the huge pendency of cases.
Assam Government approves recommendation of 7th Pay Commission
  • The Assam government has approved the recommendation of the Seventh Pay Commission constituted for over 4 lakh employees.
  • The state government cabinet on Friday approved to release the first six months arrears of revision pay scale to the state government employees before April 14 next.
  • The implementation will make state exchequer bear an additional burden of over three thousand crore rupees in the next financial year.
BIRAC’s 5th Foundation Day Celebrated on March 20­21, 2017
  • The Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) has celebrated it’s fifth foundation day on March 20­21, 2017 with the theme “BIRAC@5: Impacting the Biotech Ecosystem”.
  • Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Minister for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences was the Chief Guest of 2017 foundation day while Y S Chowdary Minister of State for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences was the Guest of Honour.
  • The foundation day celebration was followed by Grand Challenges India Meeting 2017 which was organized by the BIRAC – PMU of DBT – BMGF and Wellcome Trust.
  • BIRAC was incorporated on 20 March, 2012 as a non­profit Public Sector Enterprise under the aegis of Department of Biotechnology (DBT)
5th Rashtriya Sanskriti Mahotsav being organized in North East Region
  • The Fifth Rashtriya Sanskriti Mahotsav (RSM) – 2017 will be organized in North Eastern Region of India from 23 March to 31 March 2017 by the Union Ministry of Culture.
  • The festival will be inaugurated at Parade Ground, Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh on 23 March 2017 and will extend to other North Eastern states including Dimapur (Nagaland), Majuli (Assam), Imphal (Manipur), Aizawl (Mizoram), Gangtok (Sikkim), Shillong (Meghalaya and Khowai (Tripura).
  • The nine days cultural extravaganza will be inaugurated by Governor of Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh Padmanabha Balakrishna.
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AFFAIRS
NASA to send its next-gen clock to Space to guide space crafts and astronauts
  • The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has made a key advance in future human space exploration by developing the world’s first next-generation atomic clock for deep space missions.
  • The clock has been developed by engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. Called Deep Space Atomic Clock, it is expected to aid future manned deep space exploration missions by helping in the navigation of space crafts.
  • This clock will be smaller, lighter and its magnitudes are expected to be more precise than any atomic clock flown in space before.
  • The JPL engineers in February 2017 monitored the integration of the clock on to the Surrey Orbital Test Bed spacecraft, which will take it into the orbit later in 2017.
ISRO commissions world’s third-largest hypersonic wind tunnel
  • The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) created history by commissioning the world’s third-largest hypersonic wind tunnel at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. 
  • In this regard, ISRO chairman A S Kiran Kumar commissioned two facilities – a 1-m Hypersonic Wind Tunnel and a 1-m Shock Tunnel.
  • These facilities are the third largest in terms of size and simulation capability in the world next only to the ones in the United States (US) and Russia.
  • They have been indigenously designed, developed and made in India with the support of Indian Industries. Few critical technologies of these tunnels which are under embargo were also indigenously developed.
  • These facilities together are quite complex with 500 valves, 2 km of pipelines, 41 electric motors, 35 pumps, 320 instruments and 10 km of cables. These tunnels have wide spectrum of simulation capabilities in terms of Mach number, Reynolds number and re-entry velocities.
SPORTS AFFAIRS
Ravindra Jadeja grabs top spot in ICC Test bowler rankings
  • India’s ace bowler Ravindra Jadeja in third week of March 2017 grabbed the top spot in the list of the Test bowlers.
  • The top spot came after the left-handed spinner bagged a total of nine wickets in the recently concluded match between India and Australia in Ranchi, Jharkhand.