Current Affairs June 24 2016

INDIAN AFFAIRS

Union Government launched India’s first pilot programme to run two wheelers on Compressed Natural Gas in New Delhi
Union Government initiated a programme to run two wheelers on Compressed Natural Gas in New Delhi to give options to reduce pollution on pilot basis.
Launched by: Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar
Venue: New Delhi
Implemented by: Indraprastha Gas Limited (IGL)
The Test programme was launched with 50 Compressed Natural Gas retrofitted two wheelers. Of these, the first set of 10 CNG retrofitted two wheelers was started at the IGL Filling station at CGO Complex in New Delhi.

Railway minister flags off Danapur-Saharsa Janhit Express
i. Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu flagged off a new train service between Danapur and Saharsa in Bihar over video-conferencing in New Delhi targeting to connect every region of the country with the rail network.
ii. The Minister also announced the extension of three train services in Bihar and Jharkhand.
♦ Jaynagar-Saharsa Janki Express was extended up to Katihar.
♦ Patna-Murliganj Koshi Express was extended up to Purnea Court.
♦ Jasidih-Chandan passenger train was extended up to Banka.
iii. It is the first passenger train to run on the newly constructed Chandan-Banka line.

Union Government approved setting up of District Level Advisory and Monitoring Committees
i. Urban Development Ministry approved the setting up of District Level Advisory and Monitoring Committees to promote people centric planning and execution of new urban development schemes.
ii. These committees will comprise of elected representatives, thus giving Members of Parliament (MP) and Members of Legislative Assembly (MLA) a say in the implementation of the urban development schemes such as HRIDAY, AMRUT, SBM, etc.
iii. The Chairperson of the Committee will be senior most Member of Parliament appointed by the State/UT and District Collector or Municipal Commissioner of metropolitan cities will be the Member Secretary.

MoU singed between RD Ministry & ISRO for geo-tagging assets
i.  A MoU was signed between the Rural Development Ministry and ISRO, Department ofSpace for geo-tagging the assets created under MGNREGA in each gram panchayat.
ii. The move comes government seeking for online recording and monitoring of assets to check leakages and for effective mapping of terrain for future developmental works. 
iii. Upon the MGNREGA over 30 lakh assets are formed yearly across the country and the Ministry has decided that through convergence with other schemes, the geo-tagging of such assets will be done on a mission mode.

Centre to make Assam as petroleum hub for South Eastern countries
i. Union government is planning to make the Assam as a hydrocarbon hub to meet petroleum requirements of Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and other Southeast Asian countries by 2030.
ii. This fiscal centre would raise Rs 6,000 crore through public sector oil companies in Assam’s petroleum sector in the current fiscal that would be primarily invested in exploration and production and increasing pipeline network.
iii. This will be a part of the total Rs 80,000 crore investment to take the oil and gas production in Assam to 9.4 million metric tonnes by 2030 as part of Centre’s ambitious plan to make Assam the petroleum hub of Southeast Asia.

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

Britain votes to exit EU in historic referendum
United Kingdom voters have polled to exit from the European Union in a historic referendum.
Effects:
♦ UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced the resignation as he is actively campaigned for the membership in EU
♦ According to S&P Dow Jones Indices, Global markets lost $2.08 trillion
♦ Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the U.K.’s sovereign debt rating from stable to negative.
♦ More than 400,000 Britain people have signed a petition to exit from the EU.

Nagpur inks sister city pact with Jinan in China
i. Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) and Jinan inked the agreement to be sister cities that allows for exchange of ideas and technology in the fields of education, sports, youth affairs, urban planning among other areas.
ii. The agreement valid for five years and can be extended by another five years. The pact is also a part of an agreement signed between the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Peoples Republic of China in May 2013.

India, Switzerland ink MoU to enhance cooperation in skill development
i. India and Switzerland have signed an agreement to establish formal cooperation in the fields of skills development and vocational and professional education and training.
ii. The MoU was inked between State Secretary Mauro Dell‘ Ambrogio and Union Minister for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Rajiv Pratap Rudy in Winterthur that aims to promote Swiss vocational and professional education and training internationally.
iii. Upon this pact both sides will complement the existing commitment to professional skills development and vocational and professional education and training.
Switzerland 
♦ Capital: Bern
♦ Currency: Swiss franc
♦ President: Johann Schneider-Ammann

BANKING & FINANCE

Government amended Income Tax rules to end uncertainty over General Anti-Avoidance Rules
Union Government has decided to amend the Income Tax Rules to end the improbability over the General Anti Avoidance rules as it is expected to start with effective from 01.04.16
About General Anti Avoidance Rules:
An Anti-Tax avoidance regulation of India
Focused at transactions made particularly to avoid taxes
Introduced by: Pranab Mukherjee, then Finance Minister during 2012
Initiated during: 2012 Budget Session.
During the 2015 Budget session, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced that its implementation will be delayed by 2017.

RBI releases framework on payments systems
i. India’s Central bank has released Payment and Settlement Systems in India: Vision-2018 document aims at building best of class payment and settlement systems fora Cash –Less India and ensuring access of mobile banking services to even basic phone users.
ii. The Vision document focusing on the ways of developing the infrastructure and regulations in the country to reduce cash transactions and increase use of technology.
iii. The document of RBI reads that service providers will befortified to use technology to deliver innovative easy to use mobile grounded payment solutions in an interoperable environment without compromising on security.
iv. The Policy document also aims in leveraging on 5Cs – Coverage, Convenience, Confidence, Convergence, Cost that focuses on responsive regulation, robust infrastructure, effective supervision and customer centricity.

BUSINESS

Cygni Energy is first firm to benefit from Start-Up India
i. Hyderabad headquartered Cygni Energy becomes first startup toavail benefits under Start-up India Action Planoffered by the government after it met the requiredcriteria of being an innovative business.
ii. The company works in the renewable energy sector and was founded a year ago is the only company that is set to get the benefit since the plan was announced in January.
iii. Cygni Energy is applying for patent under the fast-track mode meant for startups for its inverterless solar energy technology.

AWARDS & RECOGNITIONS

IIT-Kanpur professor Sanjay Mittal awarded 2015 GD Birla Award
i. Prestigious G. D. Birla Award for Scientific Research for 2015 has been bestowed to Prof.Sanjay Mittal from the Department of Aerospace Engineering, IIT, Kanpur.
ii. He has been honored for his contributions in the area of Bluff Body Flows flows past blunt bodies associated with large unsteady separation and leading to large fluid forces.
G D Birla Award:
♦ The Award is given for Scientific Research was instituted in 1991 by the K. K. Birla Foundation in honour of the Indian philanthropist Ghanshyam Das Birla. This is the 25 Th edition of the honor.

APPOINTMENTS & RESIGNS

Nokia appoints Sanjay Malik as India head
i. Nokia India appointed Sanjay Malik as the head of Indian market, effective August 1, He succeeds Sandeep Girotra, who has been heading Indian market since 201. Malik joinedNokia back in 2000.
ii. Malik will lead customer operations, drive the business growth strategy and superior customer engagement services. He will be based in Gurgaon.
iii. Malik is currently Head of Network Implementation (NI) at Nokia Global Servicesand is credited with efficiently driving growth and delivering strong performance.

Kumble appointed India’s head coach for one year
i. The BCCI appointed former Spinner Anil Kumble as the new Head Coach of Indian Cricket Team. The decision was announced in the annual conclave in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh.
ii. His tenure would be for One year. He was among 57 candidates who applied for the position advertised by the BCCI. He has earlier mentored two IPL Sides namely Mumbai Indians and Royal challengers.
iii. Kumble was appointed Chairman of the ICC Cricket Committee in 2012, a position he still holds. He was awarded Padma Shri and also received Arjuna Award. His Cricket career spanning over 18 years.

Aveek Sarkar resigns as Chief Editor of ABP Group of Publications
i. Aveek Sarkar resigned as the Editor-in-Chief of Ananda Bazaar Patrika (ABP) and The Telegraph. On the other hand, he is set to continue as the chairman of the group.
ii. Anirban Bhattacharya was appointed as the Editor of the Ananda Bazaar Patrika and R Rajagopalan was named as the Editor of The Telegraph.
iii. Aveek Sarkar will  be work as an advisory role as Editor (Emeritus) and Vice Chairman of the company.  He assumed the post of Editor of the Ananda Bazar Patrika in 1983 after death of his father Ashok Sarkar.

ENVIRONMENT

Swachhta Mission to be implemented in 10 prominent wildlife sanctuaries, Tiger reserves and National Parks
Union Ministry of Environment and Forests has decided to implement Swachhta Mission in 10 significant Wildlife Sanctuaries, Tiger reserves and National Parks and make visitors to use Jute bag
Focus: Keeping the Wildlife Sanctuaries, Tiger reserves and National Parks pollution-free and Ensure cleanliness & Waste Management.
The ten places recognised for Swachh Bharat mission
National Parks:
♦ Gir National Park, Gujarat
Wildlife Sanctuary:
♦ Coringa Wildlife Sanctuary, Andhra Pradesh
♦ Flamingo Sanctuary, Maharashtra
Tiger Reserve:
♦ Kanha Tiger Reserve, Madhya Pradesh
♦ Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve, Maharshtra
♦ Nagarhole Tiger Reserve, Karnataka
♦ Periyar Tiger Reserve, Kerala
♦ Sariska Tiger Reserve, Rajasthan
♦ Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, Tamil Nadu
♦ Jim Corbett Tiger Reserve, Uttarakhand

Darjeeling zoo to receive snow leopard from London’s Dudley Zoological Gardens
i. The Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park (PNHZP) in West Bengal’s Darjeeling will get a two-year-old male snow leopard named Makalu from Dudley Zoological Gardens (DZG) in Britain.
ii. The leopard will be brought to Darjeeling zoo for a global conservation breeding programme. Which is listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
iii. The leopard, named Makalu who gets his name from the world’s fifth highest peakrising to 8,463 metres on the south-east side of the Everest.

SPORTS

Vikas Krishan settles for bronze medal in AIBA qualifiers
i. Indian boxer Vikas Krishan (75kg) settled for a bronze medal in the InternationalBoxing Association’s (AIBA) World Qualifying Tournament in Baku Azerbaijan.
ii. During his quarterfinal contest against Korea’s Lee Dongyun he was ruled out of the semifinal clash owing to a cut on his forehead. However the Indian won 3-0 to make the semifinal and assured himself of an Olympic quota berth.
iii. With this India will present with three Indian boxersVikas and Manoj, Shiva Thapa (56kg) that have qualified for the Olympic Games.

General Awareness: Insurance part 2 (very imp) for UIIC AO

IRDA – Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority

IRDA is a statutory body which regulates the Insurance Industry in India. It was set up in 2000 and was initially known as Insurance Regulatory Authority and subsequently renamed as Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority. The main objective of setting up IRDA was to promote market efficiency and ensure consumer protection.

It was constituted by a Parliament of India act called Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority Act, 1999 and duly passed by the Government of India. 

The Headquarters of IRDA is located at Hyderabad and the members of IRDA are appointed by Government of India.

Composition of Authority of IRDA

The Authority is a ten member team of 

• A Chairman and every other whole-time member – 5 years (Maximum age is 60 years). 
• Five whole-time members (Maximum age is 62 years).
• Four part-time members (not more than 5 years)

The current Chairman of IRDA is Mr.T.S.Vijayan.

Duties and Responsibilities of IRDA

• To regulate, promote and ensure orderly growth of the insurance business and re-insurance business.
• To issue a certificate of registration and powers to renew, modify, withdraw, suspend or cancel the registration.
• Protection of the interests of the policy holders.
• To specify qualifications, code of conduct and practical training for intermediaries.
• To specify the code of conduct for surveyors and loss assessors.
• To promote the efficiency in the conduct of insurance business.
• To promote and regulate the organizations connected with the insurance and re-insurance business.
• Levying fees and other charges for carrying out the purposes of this Act.
• To conduct enquiries and investigations for insurers, intermediaries, insurance intermediaries and other organizations connected with the insurance business.
• To control and regulate the rates, advantages, terms and conditions that may be offered by insurers.
• To specify the form and manner in which books of account shall be maintained.
• To regulate the investment of funds by insurance companies.
  To regulate the maintenance of margin of solvency.
• Adjudication of disputes between insurers and intermediaries and supervising the functioning of the Tariff Advisory Committee.
• To specify the percentage of premium income of the insurer to finance schemes.
• To specify the percentage of life insurance business and general insurance business to be undertaken by the insurer in the rural or social sector.

Functions of IRDA

• Ensure orderly growth of Insurance industry.
• Protection of interest of policy holders.
• Issue consumer protection guidelines to insurance companies.
• Grant, modify, and suspend license for insurance companies.
• Lay down procedure for accounting policies to be adopted by the Insurance companies.
• Inspect and audit of Insurance companies and other related agencies.
• Regulation of capital adequacy, solvency, and prudential requirements of Insurance business.
• Regulation of product development and their pricing including free pricing of products.
• Promote and regular self regulating organizations in the insurance industry.
• Re-insurance limit monitoring.
• Monitor investments.
• Vetting of accounting standards, transparency requirements, in reporting.
• Ensure the health of the industry by preventing sickness through appropriate action.
• Publish information about the industry.
• Prescribe qualification and training needs of agent.
• Monitor the charges for various services by Insurance companies.
• Regulating intermediaries like;
  Agents, Brokers, Surveyors, TPA Health services.

Computer Note for SBI clerk/UIIC/SBI PO and all other exams

The most important and neglected subject of every major exam. Last year many students were not able to qualify the final cut off because of this subject. This shows how important each and every subject is. So here we are providing basic computer notes which are very important for every banking exam

DATA REPRESENTATION - 

Memory Units:

4 bit = 1 nibble

8 bit = 1 byte

1024 B = 1 KB (Kilo Byte)

1024 KB = 1 MB (Mega Byte)

1024 MB = 1 GB (Giga Byte)

1024 GB = 1 TB (Tera Byte)

1024 TB = 1 PB (Peta Byte)

1024 PB = 1 XB (Exa Byte)

1024 XB = 1 ZB (Zeta Byte)

1024 ZB = 1 YB (Yota Byte)

bit < Byte < KB < MB < GB < TB < PB < XB < ZB < YB

• bit (b)
• Byte (B)

Mbps – mega bits per sec.

MBps – mega Bytes per sec.

• The information you put into the computer is called Data
• Information of a computer is stored as Digital Data
• A number system defines a set of values that is used to represent Quantity
• In which number system, the modern computers are operated?

Binary Number System

• Name the most significant bit, which represent 1 and 0 for a positive number and negative number, respectively.

Sign Bit

• Which coding scheme represents data in a binary form in the computer system? ASCII, EBCDIC and Unicode are the most commonly used codes under this scheme.

Binary Coding Scheme

• EBCDIC is a 8-Bit code with 256 different representations of characters. It is mainly used in mainframe computers.
• EBCDIC stands for Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code
• In the Hexadecimal Number System each number represents a power of 16. To represent the decimal numbers, this system uses numbers from 0 to 9 and characters from A to F to represent numbers 10-15, respectively. It is commonly used as a shortcut notation for groups of four binary digits
• BCD is a method that represents the decimal digits with the help of binary digits. It takes advantage that one decimal numeral can be represented by 4-bit pattern. BCD stands for Binary Coded Decimal
• This coding system is used to represent the interval storage area of the computers. In this system, every character is represented by a combination of bits. Binary Coding System
• The Base or Radix of the decimal number system is 10
• The arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) performed on the binary numbers is called Binary Arithmetic
• What is the standard code the computer industry created to represent characters? American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII)
• ASCII is a code used for standardizing the storage and transfer of information amongst various computing devices.
• It is required for representing more than 64 characters. At present, the mostly used coding systems are ASCII and EBCDIC
• Which code is also known as Reflected Code? Gray Code
• The 7-bit ASCII code is widely used for Two (0 or 1)
• In the binary language, each letter of the alphabet, each number and each special character is made up of a unique combination of Eight Bits.

GENERATIONS OF COMPUTER

• Which was the first general purpose computer, designed to handle both numeric and textual information? Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC) (1951)

First Generation (1940-1956) Vacuum Tubes:

• The first computers used vacuum tubes for circuitry and magnetic drums for memory, and were often enormous, taking up entire rooms.
• The UNIVAC and ENIAC computers are examples of first-generation computing devices. 
• In first generation of computer, this operating system allowed only one program to run at a time and a number of input jobs are grouped for processing. It is known as Batch Processing.

Second Generation (1956-1963) Transistors:

• Transistors replaced vacuum tubes and ushered in the second generation of computers.

Third Generation (1964-1971) Integrated Circuits:

• The development of the integrated circuit was the hallmark of the third generation of computers. Transistors were miniaturized and placed on silicon chips, called semiconductors, which drastically increased the speed and efficiency of computers.

Fourth Generation (1971-Present) Microprocessors:

• The microprocessor brought the fourth generation of computers, as thousands of integrated circuits were built onto a single silicon chip.
• What in the first generation filled an entire room could now fit in the palm of the hand
• Fourth generation computers also saw the development of GUIs, the mouse and handheld devices

Fifth Generation (Present and Beyond) Artificial Intelligence:

• Fifth generation computing devices, based on artificial intelligence, are still in development, though there are some applications, such as voice recognition, that are being used today.
• In 1981 IBM introduced its first computer for the home user, and in 1984 Apple introduced the Macintosh.