WBCS Current Affairs 10/08/2014 to 15/08/2014

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1. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has allowed Banks to set a limit on free ATM transactions customers can do at ATMs of rival lenders. Now customers of a bank can make only three free transactions per month from the ATMs of rival banks. The banks are also allowed to set a limit on the number of free transactions at their own ATMs at five. The central bank has also permitted banks to charge up to Rs 20 for every transaction beyond the limit.

2. As per a study conducted by Greenpeace India, pesticides have been detected in leading brands of tea sold in India, both national and international. These include pesticides that the WHO has categorized as both highly and moderately hazardous.It was found that DDT (Di-chloro Di-phenyl Tri-chloro ethane) was present in almost 67% of the tea samples, even though it is no longer registered for use in agriculture.

3. The Andhra Pradesh government has decided to make Vijayawada an ad hoc capital of the state until the required infrastructure and other projects for the new capital are completed.

4. Justice R Banumathi has become the first woman judge from Tamil Nadu to be elevated to the Supreme Court.

5. It will now be a punishable offence to ban entry of a person clad in Dhoti from entering public places in Tamil Nadu.

6. Former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Bimal Jalan has been appointed as head of the Expenditure Management Commission, which will study various aspects of expenditure reforms to be undertaken by the government. The panel will submit its interim report before the 2015-16 Budget and its final report before the 2016-17 Budget.

7. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has approved the use of drug ZMapp to combat Ebola spread as the death count surged.The drug uses a novel method of passive immunization to treat Ebola disease by inserting genetically altered Ebola protein into tobacco leaves. However, it has been tested only on monkeys so far and it was to be tested on human volunteers in 2015. The abrupt outbreak of Ebola hastened the development.

8. The renowned and one of the last exponents of ‘Burra Katha’ Daroji Eramma (84) passed away.“Burra” means ‘tambura’, a musical string instrument with a hollow shell. “Katha” is Sanskrit equivalent of ‘story’. Burra means a skull in Telugu. The shell resembles a human skull. It is made of baked clay or dried pumpkin, or of brass and copper.

9. President Mr. Pranab Mukherjee presented the Outstanding Parliamentarian Awards to Arun Jaitley, Dr Karan Singh and Sharad Yadav for the year 2010, 2011 and 2012 respectively. The awards were conferred upon them for their priceless contribution in discharge of their parliamentary duties.

10. The International Mathematical Union (IMU) awarded mathematicians of Indian-and Iranian-origin with the 2014 Fields Medal, also considered as the “Nobel Prize of Mathematics“.
Persons of India Origin (PIOs) Manjul Bhargava bagged the Fields Medal 2014 while Subhash Khot won the Rolf Nevanlinna Prize conferred by the IMU at International Congress of Mathematicians 2014 held in Seoul, South Korea.
Manjul Bhargava
He is an Indian Canadian-American mathematician. He is a Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University and is known primarily for his contributions to number theory.
Notable Contribution: He has been awarded the Fields Medal for “developing powerful new methods in the geometry of numbers, which he applied to count rings of small rank and to bound the average rank of elliptic curves.” His work is based both on a profound understanding of the representations of arithmetic groups and a unique mix of algebraic and analytic expertise.
Awards and Honors:
Bhargava was awarded with the Merten Hasse Prize of the Mathematical Association of America (2003), the SASTRA Ramanujan Prize (2005), the Cole Prize in Number Theory of the American Mathematical Society (2008) and the Infosys Prize (2012). He was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2013.
The Rolf Nevanlinna Prize:
The prize is awarded once every 4 years at the International Congress of Mathematicians in recognition to the outstanding contributions in Mathematical Aspects of Information Sciences including all mathematical aspects of computer science, including complexity theory, logic of programming languages, analysis of algorithms, cryptography, computer vision, pattern recognition, information processing and modelling of intelligence as well as scientific computing and numerical analysis.

11. ‘Vistara’ has been announced as the brand name of the Tata-SIA joint venture Airlines. Vistara is derived from the Sanskrit word, which means ‘limitless expanse’.​

12. Member of India’s first Lok Sabha Reshamlal Jangde (90) passed away.
Following were the First Lok Sabha officers and other important members:-
Speaker: Ganesh Vasudev Mavlankar (May 8, 1952- Feb 27, 1956), M. A. Ayyangar (Mar 8, 1956-May 10, 1957)
Deputy Speaker: M. A. Ayyangar (May 30, 1952-Mar 20, 1956), Sardar Hukam Singh (Mar 20, 1956-Apr 4, 1957)
Secretary-General: M. N. Kaul (Apr 17, 1952-Apr 4, 1957)
Leader of the House: Jawaharlal Nehru (Apr 17, 1952-Apr 4, 1957)
Leader of the Opposition: A. K. Gopalan

13. India’s northern state of Himachal Pradesh has been selected as venue to host Paragliding World Cup 2015. This will be the first para-gliding World Cup to be hosted in India. The tournament will be organized under the auspices of Para-gliding World Cup Association, France.

14. India’s women archers’ team led by Deepika Kumari won the recurve team gold after defeating Mexico 6-0 in the final as India returned with 5 medals in the Archery World Cup Stage IV in Wroclaw, Poland.

15.Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated two hydel power projects in Leh and Kargil in Jammu & Kashmir.
First he inaugurated the 45 MW Nimoo Bazgo project in Leh district and then dedicated to the nation the 44 MW Chutak hydro-electric project in Kargil district. He also laid foundation stone for the first power transmission line from Leh to Kargil and Kargil to Srinagar.
The 45 MW Nimoo-Bazgo hydel project is a run-of- the-river hydroelectricity project to tap the potential of Indus River in the state. The project is expected to produce 239 million units of energy.

16. A high level committee has been constituted by the Uttarakhand government with a view to conduct a detailed survey of the industries using silica dust in the state. The panel would conduct its study and submit its report within 2 months.
The health examination of those working in industries using silica dust would be carried out to find out if they are suffering from silicosis or other respiratory diseases caused due to coming in contact of silicia dust. If a worker is found suffering from any respiratory disease or silicosis then he would be provided treatment and, rehabilitation facilities, for which Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of the districts have been appointed as the nodal officer.

17.Workers at a brick kiln at Chandayan village, 38 km from Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh, accidentally found a human skeleton, a few pieces of terracotta pottery and a copper crown with carnelian beads attached to the skull.
Beads of carnelian, a semi-precious stone, are generally linked with the Harappan civilization.However, a crown has never been discovered at any of the Indus Valley civilization sites.
However, the Archaeological Survey of India has not confirmed the find’s association with Harappan age as it has not conducted a thorough survey of the area.

18. With a view to introduce an ‘anytime anywhere payment system’, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued draft guidelines for the implementation of Bharat Bill Payment System (BPPS).
The draft mentions the requirements and the basic framework of operating the BBPS, and stipulates the eligibility criteria, standards for settlement model and customer grievance redressal, roles and responsibilities and scope for entities seeking to be part of BBPS.

19. With a view to amend the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act, 2000, the Union cabinet approved the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Bill, 2014. The bill is expected to be introduced in the Monsoon session of Parliament.
The bill will place minors above the age of 16, accused of heinous crimes like rape and murder, in the adults’ category. The current JJ Act, 2000 treats any person below the age of 18 as juvenile. With the new Bill, Juvenile Justice Board will be empowered to decide whether a minor would be tried in a regular court or sent to a correctional centre. However, as per the provision of the bill, if a minor is sent to regular court, he would not be awarded life or death sentence if found guilty. At present, the maximum punishment under the JJ Act is 3 years confinement at correctional centres.

20. A book ‘Strictly Personal, Manmohan and Gursharan’ penned by Daman Singh was released. It tells the untold story of Manmohan Singh, India’s 14th PM, and his wife Gursharan.

21. NASA has announced that it will launch a new mission to Mars in 2020 named as Mars 2020 Rover mission. The mission will endeavor to find out the potential habitability of the Mars environment, and directly search for signs of prehistoric Martian life. This attempt if successful will facilitate future manned missions.

22. The European Space Agency’s (ESA) spacecraft ‘Rosetta’ became the first spacecraft to intercept and go into orbit around a comet. It is now in position to help researchers to begin with their investigations into how the Solar System came into being.
ESA scientists brought Rosetta to within 100km of the comet – a 3km by 5km rock called 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko – and put it in a stable orbit by reducing its speed with its thrusters.

23. As per Hold Security – a US firm with expertise in spotting breaches, a Russian group of hackers dubbed ‘CyberVor’ has stolen 1.2 billion usernames and passwords belonging to more than 500 million email addresses.