Current Affairs Questions & Answers - Nov 07, 2015

ANSWER: Rebooting India: Realising a Billion Aspirations

Explanation:
The book which was released in November 2015 talks about the demographic dividend of the nation and is expected to be the youngest nation in the world by 2020 with 800 million of the people being of working age. Nilekani and Shah have also examined how contradictions and gaps can distort progress and every body in the nation must realise their aspirations to bring about advancement. Rebooting India identified numerous initiatives where citizen friendly, high tech public institutions can deliver low cost solutions. Nilekani is CEO and co-founder of Infosys Technologies and was also founding chairman of UIDAI (Aadhaar). Viral Shah has also worked to design the subsidy and payment’s platform of the government using Adhaar and is co-inventor of programming language Julia apart from having founded Fourth Lion Technologies.

ANSWER: V. Sivaramakrishnan

Explanation:
He was appointed on 5th November 2015 and has also been given regional responsibilities including Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. He will also join the Asia Education Divisional board of the company. He follows Ranjan Kaul who retired in November 2015 after working for a decade and a half with OUP. Siva has worked with Maniple Global Education Services, Proctor and Gamble and Ford Motor Company before this

ANSWER: Rene Girard

Explanation:
French intellectual and thinker Rene Girard known as the new Darwin passed away on 4th November 2015 after prolonged illness. In the year 2005, he was christened the New Darwin of human sciences by Michael Serres following his election to L’academie francaise. He was also emeritus professor at Stanford University’s French and Italian department for more than 30 years. He has authored over 30 books.

ANSWER: 2

Explanation:
Indian data centre infrastructure market will reach USD 2 billion in 2016 marking a 5.2% increase over 2015, according to research firm Gartner. Within the Indian IT infrastructure market, server revenue is pegged at USD 698 million in 2015 marking a 5.3% increase from 2015. The biggest segment with revenue will continue to be Enterprise networking with revenue expected to reach USD 963 million in the year 2016. This segment is the most rapidly growing market with forecast expected to rise 5.9% in 2016. A growing focus on mobility and big data activities in the country has prompted the rise of software defined networking. Storage market will reach USD 307 million in 2016, which marks a 3% rise from 2015.

ANSWER: Non NET fellowships

Explanation:
MHRD has reiterated that Central Government has instructed the UGC to continue non NET fellowships and formed a committee under G. Barua, former IIT Guwahati director to examine this issue. Mandate of the committee is to ensure benefits of non NET fellowships reach larger number of universities. MHRD has also said that the aim is to expand such fellowships rather than discontinuing them.

ANSWER: Samia Hassan Suluhu

Explanation:
Same Hassan Suluhu, the first female Vice President of Tanzania has been sworn into office alongside John Pombe Magufuli at the swearing-in ceremony held in the country’s economic capital Dar es Salaam on 5th November 2015. The ruling CCM party candidate, Magufuli has won the presidential elections of Tanzania on 29th October 2015 with 58.46 percent of the votes. In 2000, Suluhu had been selected as special seat member for the House of Reps at Zanzibar. In the year 2014, she drafted Tanzania’s new constitution as Vice Chairperson of the CA.

ANSWER: 18

Explanation:
The minimum legal age was previously 14 (for girls) and 16(for boys). The unicameral congress voted 87 to 15 for approving the change urged by children’s rights group to eliminate child trafficking and teen pregnancies. UNICEF has estimated that close to 4000 marriages in a year involve girls aged 15 to 19 years and around 4700 of them aged between 10 to 14 years get pregnant each year.

ANSWER: Cotard’s Syndrome

Explanation:
Also called “Walking Corpse Syndrome”, this disorder is a condition where patients have the belief system that they are dead and/or do not exist. Any evidence to the contrary is explained away by them. This disorder has been recognised as a disease of human health under ICD though it has not been classified under DSM-V. French neurologist Jules Cotard discovered the first such case in 1800s.

ANSWER: Both of the above

Explanation:
Guinness an Irish stout company has announced that towards the close of 2016, beet will no longer contain trace amounts of fish bladder, once an integral part of the process of filtration. The new solution uses a state of the art filtration system for the process involving the 256 year old product.

ANSWER: Belgium

Explanation:
Government of India has given approval for cooperation with Belgium in the field of new and renewable energy technologies. Union Cabinet chaired by PM Narendra Modi has approved an MoU between Indian and Belgian government authorities at both federal and regional levels. The MoU seeks to lay the ground for cooperative institutional relationship for promoting technical bilateral cooperation on new and renewable energy issues. The agreement is based on mutual benefit, equality, and reciprocal relations. Areas of cooperation include marine energy, geothermal genre, smart grids and biomass as well as solar energy.

ANSWER: Turkmenistan

Explanation:
Government has approved the amendment for the Double Taxation Avoidance Convention with Turkmenistan. The amendment to the DTAC has been approved by the Cabinet with regard to taxes on income and capital via a Protocol, as per the official release. Protocol makes provisions for globally accepted standards for effective information on tax issues including bank information and data without domestic tax interest. Information sharing between Turkmenistan and India has also been approved with the authorisation of the Competent Authority of the former country and vice versa. As per the statement, the protocol also provides for Limitation of Benefits article to prevent misuse of the convention.

ANSWER: CPCB

Explanation:
Union environment ministry as decided to establish a control room with CPCB for monitoring everyday activities of state agencies for combating air pollution in NCR and New Delhi. A decision was also taken to issue notices to state pollution control boards under section 18 of the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981. These notices will hold local bodies responsible for not acting against air pollution in their respective jurisdiction. The members at the meeting also discussed deterioration of air quality in Delhi due to burning of crop residue by Punjab and Haryana farmers.

ANSWER: 11 medals

Explanation:
Indian chess players won 11 medals- 5 gold, 3 silver and 3 bronze- at the World Youth Chess Championships at Greece. Gold medals were won by M. Mahalakshmi, R. Vaishali, Rakshit Ravi and Bharath Subramaniyam while Nihal Sarin managed a silver. Other silver medallists were Dev Shah and V. Varshini. Bronze medals were bagged by Vatinka Agrawal, Saina Salonika and Divya Deshmukh.

ANSWER: One Rate, One South

Explanation:
TSP Vodafone has launched a scheme entitled “One Rate, One South” targeting prepaid customers in 5 south Indian states namely TN, AP, Telangana, Karnataka and Kerala. The pack is available at 13,600 outlets as well as 57 exclusive and 268 mini stores. New pack offers facilities for outgoing local mobile calls while roaming is charged at 1 paise per second in S. India. Vodafone has approximately 35 million prepaid customers within this region. Close to 12% of 14 million prepaid customers in TN have paid roaming charges so that they can remain connected. Vodafone is aiming to ensure their access to every convenience during festive occasions.

ANSWER: Golan Telecom

Explanation:
Israel’s largest mobile phone provider, Cellcom has made the agreement for acquiring upstart rival Golan Telecom for USD 300.9 million. Golan is owned by Xavier Niel and Michael Golan and is one of the 4 network operators in Israel apart from Cellcom. It has initiated operations in 2012 introducing affordable prices and has close to 900,000 customers.

ANSWER: Internet banking

Explanation:
RBI on 5th November 2015 issued revised and uniform guidelines on internet banking for licensed cooperative banks such as UCBs, DCBs and StCBs. Guidelines are for View Only and Transactions facility. RBI has provided more privileges to UCBs through the revised guidelines.