Current Affairs Today 15th March 2019 | Current Affairs News

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Daily Current Affairs PDF of 15th March 2019

CURRENT AFFAIRS: DAYS

World Consumer Rights Day

• World Consumer Rights Day is celebrated every year on 15 March as part of an initiative by Consumer International
• The day is celebrated every year, to celebrate consumer rights and build a world where everyone has access to safe and sustainable products and services.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: NATIONAL

New Delhi, Islamabad agree to work on operationalizing Kartapur corridor

• India and Pakistan have agreed to work expeditiously on operationalizing the Kartapur corridor.
• The corridor will facilitate Indian pilgrims to visit the holy shrine of Gurdwara Darbar Sahib at Kartarpur in Pakistan
• The agreement was reached during the first meeting between the representatives of the two countries held at Attari in Punjab
• The Indian delegation was led by Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Home Affairs, S C L Das while Pakistan delegation was led by Director General for South Asia and SAARC Dr. Mohammad Faisal.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: STATE

12 States in India have banned Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS)

• The Central Drug Regulator has directed all drug controllers in states and Union territories to not allow the manufacture, sale, import and advertisement of Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems, including e-cigarettes and flavoured hookah
• Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS), including e-cigarettes, heat-not-burn devices, vape, e-sheesha, e-nicotine flavoured hookah, and the like products have not yet been approved under the Drugs and Cosmetics Act 1940
• The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology proposed an amendment to the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules 2018 to ban the advertisement of e-cigarettes.
• This commitment is to protect the health of children, adolescents and women of reproductive age, 36 countries around the world and 12 states in India have banned the sale of e-cigarettes due to its health harms.
• In India, Punjab, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Jharkhand have taken steps to ban the use of ENDS.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: BANKING AND FINANCE

RBI categorises IDBI as private bank

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has re-categorised IDBI Bank as a private sector lender.
• This comes after LIC acquired a 51% stake in the bank on January 21, becoming its majority shareholder. IDBI Bank has been under the RBI’s Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) framework which bans it from activities including corporate lending and branch expansion.
• The bank’s gross non-performing assets (NPAs) shot up to 29.67 per cent of gross advances as at December 31, 2018 against 24.72 per cent in the year-ago period.

RBI identifies SBI, ICICI and HDFC Bank as Domestic Systemically Important Banks (D-SIBs)

• The Reserve Bank of India has released the list of Domestic Systemically Important Banks (D-SIBs).
• The Reserve Bank had issued the Framework for dealing with D-SIBs in July 22, 2014.
• Domestic Systemically Important Banks are those banks which if fails would have a significant impact on the economy. RBI has a various set of criteria to add a bank to this list. The basic condition is that a bank size should be more than 2% of Indian GDP.
• The D-SIBs banks are classified into 5 buckets. Bucket 1, Bucket 2, Bucket 3, Bucket 4 and Bucket 5. With Bucket 5 being the most important followed by rest in decreasing order.
• State Bank of India is in Bucket 3, while HDFC and ICICI Bank both are in Bucket 1. Rest all buckets are empty. These three banks are in the D-SIBs list since Sep 04, 2017. No new bank has been added after the revised list is released on March 14, 2019

Paytm Payments Bank launches mobile banking app

• Paytm Payments Bank launches mobile banking app
• The new app has been introduced exclusively for its bank’s customers to provide wide range of banking services in a phased manner.
• The purpose of new app is to segregate its operations from the existing app which caters to customers of several group entities. However, PPB customers will continue to serve its customers on its older app should its customers desire so. Both apps will co-exist.
• The mobile app will enable customers to check their balances, raise request for physical debits cards, access digital debit cards, etc., with 24×7 help and support.

Bank of India raises Rs. 660 crore by selling shares to employees

• State-owned Bank of India (BoI) has raised Rs. 660.80 crore by issuing shares to employees under Employee Share Purchase Scheme (ESPS).
• The bank issued 6,25,52,188 shares of Rs 10 each to eligible employees.
• It offered a discount of 24.28 percent on the applicable price to the employees and about 94.70 percent of total employees participated in the scheme,
• These shares are issued with a lock-in period of one year

RBI to infuse fresh liquidity worth $5 billion into the system

• The Reserve Bank of India announced to infuse long term liquidity worth $5 billion into the system through Foreign Exchange swap arrangement with banks for 3 years.
• The swap is in the nature of a simple Buy/Sell foreign exchange swap with the RBI. A bank can sell U.S. dollars to the RBI and simultaneously agree to buy the same amount of U.S. dollars at the end of the three year.
• Under the swap auction, minimum bid size would be USD 25 million and in multiples of USD 1 million thereafter, the eligible participants are allowed to submit multiple bids. However, the aggregate amount of bids submitted by single eligible entity should not exceed the notified amount of auction.
• Authorised Dealers (ADs) – category-1 banks will be the eligible entities to participate in the auction.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: AWARDS AND HONOURS

6 Indians in WEF’s Young Global Leaders 2019 List

The World Economic Forum has recognized six Indians in its 2019 list of the Forum of Young Global Leaders.

• Nara Lokesh – Andhra Pradesh IT minister
• Poonam Mahajan – BJP MP
• Manu Kumar Jain – Xiaomi India head
• Phanindra Sama – Telangana government’s Chief Innovation Officer
• Piyush Tewari – Founder of SaveLife Foundation
• Sucharita Mukherjee – Kaleidofin’s co-Founder

The 2019 list features 127 of the world’s ‘most promising social activists, business leaders, public servants, artists and technologists’ under the age of 40.

Indian social entrepreneur Padmanaban Gopalan wins Commonwealth award

• A social entrepreneur from Tamil Nadu bagged the Commonwealth Youth Award for the Asian region from among hundreds of nominations for his technology-based food rescue organisation.
• His initiative runs a geo-mapping platform, which allows users to drop food at located “hunger spots” and has so far recovered over 650,000 meals across 14 cities. The platform has been used by over 12,000 volunteers
• Padmanaban Gopalan, founder of No Food Waste, was named the winner of the award worth 3,000 pounds at a ceremony at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London for his work towards achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of Zero Hunger with his innovative system of recovering excess food to distribute to those in need.
• From the four, one overall winner received the title of the 2019 Commonwealth Young Person of the Year – Nigeria’s Oluwaseun Ayodeji Osowobi – who received a total grant prize of 5,000 pounds 

CURRENT AFFAIRS: APPOINTMENTS AND RESIGNATION

M R Kumar appointed as LIC Chairman

• M R Kumar appointed as the new Chairman of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC). He will hold the post of the LIC Chairman for five years.
• Prior to this elevation, Kumar was Zonal Manager (In-Charge) of North Zone, Delhi.
• T C Suseel Kumar and Vipin Anand have been appointed as Managing Directors of the LIC for five years.
• Suseel Kumar is Zonal Manager (in-charge), LIC South Central Zone. Anand is Zonal Manager (in-charge), Western Zone
• LIC’s executive board comprises of one chairman and four managing directors
• Before Kumar, Hemant Bhargava was the interim Chairman of LIC since the retirement of V.K. Sharma the then Chairman on December 31, 2018.

SC appoints PS Narasimha as mediator to resolve disputes of admin in BCCI

• The Supreme Court appointed senior advocate P S Narasimha as mediator for resolving various disputes related to cricket administration in the country.
• Narasimha isassisting the apex court as an amicus curiae in the BCCI matter
• Earlier The apex court appointed its former judge Justice Jain, as the first court-appointed ombudsman for BCCI
• Narasimha also to look into the dispute relating to release of funds by the court appointed committee of administrators to various cricket associations.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

DRDO Successfully tested MP-ATGM 

• The indigenously developed, low weight, fire and forget‘Man Portable Anti-Tank Guided Missile’ (MPATGM)was successfully test fired by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in the ranges of Rajasthan desert.
• The missile is incorporated with advanced features including state-of-the-art Imaging Infrared Radar (IIR) Seeker with integrated avionics,
• This was the second successful testing of the missile. The first test was conducted on March 13, 2019.
• It was developed by Defence Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL), Hyderabad with support from other DRDO laboratories.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: MOU

GoDaddy partners with ICC as official sponsor for Cricket World Cup 2019

• Website hosting company GoDaddy announced its partnership with International Cricket Council (ICC) as official sponsor for the upcoming men’s cricket World Cup.
• The 2019World Cup will be held in the UK from May 30 to July 14.
• This time they are engaging with ICC for men’s World Cup 2019 which is expected to reach out to around 700 million people in India and 1.5 billion people globally,” GoDaddy India MD and Vice President Nikhil Arora.
• Under the partnership, GoDaddy will get visibility on ground, perimeter of the boundary, side screen, placards during the matches
• MS Dhoni was brand ambassador of GoDaddy

CURRENT AFFAIRS: DEFENCE

Indo-Bangladesh joint military exercise Sampriti – 2019 concluded

• Exercise Sampriti-VIII, a joint Indo-Bangladesh military exercise which witnessed participation of a company group of 9^thBattalion the Rajputana Rifles from the Indian Army and the Company of 36 East Bengal Battalion, Bangladesh Army concluded at Tangail, Bangladesh
• The exercise was the 8th edition in the Sampriti series, which started in 2009. Exercise Sampriti strengthens and broadens interoperability and cooperation between the Indian and Bangladesh Armies.
• Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Riva Ganguly Das was the chief guest of closing ceremony 

CURRENT AFFAIRS: RANKS

India ranks 16th in terms of highest number of impacted species in hotspots

• India was ranked 16th in the world in terms of highest number of impacted species in biodiversity-rich zones (hotspots) due to human actions
• In India, 35 species affected on an average in in biodiversity-rich zones.
• On average number of species impacted in South Western Ghats montane rainforests is 60 and in Himalayan subtropical broadleaf forests it is 53.
• Malaysia ranks first among the countries with the highest number of impacted species (125).
• A recent study published in PLOS Biology an international journal dedicated to biological science.
• Southeast Asian tropical forests — including India’s biodiversity-rich Western Ghats, Himalaya and north-east — also fall in this category.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: SPORTS

Karnataka defeat Maharashtra to clinch maiden Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy

• Karnataka defeated Maharashtra to win their maiden Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy at the Holkar Cricket Stadium in Indore
• Chasing a target of 156 runs, Mayank Agarwal (85*) took charge of Karnataka’s innings after the fall of opener Belur Sharath. Karnataka won the match by 8 wickets and 9 balls to spare.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: OBITUARY

‘Jagadguru’ Maate Mahadevi passed away

• First woman Lingayat ‘jagadguru’ and Basava Dharma Peetha President, Maate Mahadevi passed away aged 73 at Manipal hospital in Bengaluru.
• Mahadevi took part in the protests held for separate religion and grant of minority religious status for Lingayats in Karnataka last month. She was reportedly suffering from kidney and lung disease.

Former Minister Y.S. Vivekananda Reddy passed away

• Former Member of Parliament and State minister Y.S. Vivekananda Reddy passed away
• He was the younger brother of former Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, popularly known as YSR
• Reddy was elected as an MLA from Pulivendula constituency in 1989 and 1994.
• He was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Kadapa constituency in 1999 and 2004 and to the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council in 2009.
• He had served as the agriculture minister under N Kiran Kumar Reddy in the then united Andhra Pradesh.

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