GK & Current Affairs March 2016

On 8th March 2016 Sri Lankan Cricket Board (SLCB) constituted a new National Cricket Selection Panel headed by former cricketer Arvinda de Silva. 
•    Members of the panel are Kumar Sangakkara (retired from international cricket recently), Romesh Kaluwitharana, Lalith Kaluperuma and Ranjith Madurasinghe.
•    The panel will succeed the Kapila Wijegunawardena-headed selection committee which was appointed in April 2015. 
•    Wijegunawardena selection panel was sacked by Sri Lankan board ahead of the 2016 ICC World T20, 
•    T20 World cup has started from 8th March 2016 in India.
•    Wijegunawardena selection panel was sacked in the wake of the national team’s poor performances in the just-concluded Asia Cup in Bangladesh and the preceding bilateral series in India. 
•    In January 2016, Sri Lanka had also lost its No 1 ICC Twenty20 ranking after they lost to New Zealand.
•    Board also announced that Angelo Mathews will be the captain and Dinesh Chandimal the Vice Captain of the team for the T-20 Cricket World Cup.

President of India and the Supreme Commander of Indian Armed Forces Pranab Mukherjee on 4 March 2016 presented President’s Standard to 119 Helicopter Unit (HU) and President’s Colours to 28 Equipment Depot (ED) of the Indian Air Force. 

•    The awards were given away at Air Force Station in Jamnagar, Gujarat.  
•    Indian Air Force's operational squadrons become eligible for award of Presidential Standard after completion of 18 years of service to the Nation. 
•    The selection is based on the unit's performance and achievements during peace as well as hostilities. 
•    The honour is an acknowledgement of the meritorious service rendered by the units.
•    The helicopter Unit has recently saw the induction of new acquired most modern fixed wing aircraft Mi-17 V5. 
•    The Unit, also known as ‘the Stallions’, was among the first to fly Mi-8 choppers.
•    It took part in several challenging missions after being raised exactly 44 years ago. 
•    Apart from this, the President also released a commemorative postage stamp at the presentation of the Standard to 119 Helicopter Unit and Colours to 28 Equipment Depot of Indian Air Force.

US novelist Pat Conroy, who wrote several acclaimed novels and memoirs, died on 4 March 2016 in Beaufort, South Carolina. 
•    He was 70. 
•    He was suffering from pancreatic cancer. 
•    Two of his novels, The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini, were made into Oscar-nominated films. 
•    He is recognized as a leading figure of late-20th century Southern literature.
•    Donald Patrick Conroy was born on Oct. 26, 1945, in Atlanta had written numerous books. Some of his works includes
•    Prince of Tides 
•    Water is Wide 
•    The Great Santini
•    The Lords of Discipline
•    My Losing Season (memoir)
•    The Boo 
•    Beach Music
•    The Pat Conroy Cookbook: Recipes and Stories of My Life
•    My Reading Life 
•    The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son
•    Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing up Global (contributing author)
•    South of Broad

Renowned Dogri poetess and writer Padma Sachdev was 6 March 2016 was awarded Krutitava Smagra Samman for the year 2015.
•    The award was given by Bharatiya's Bhasha Parishad in Kolkata for her outstanding contribution in literature and great service to Dogri Language.
•    She was presented with the award by the West Bengal Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi. 
•    The Award carries an amount of one lakh rupees, a shawl and citation.
•    She writes both in her mother tongue Dogri and the national language Hindi
•    She has to her credit six collections of Dogri poetry, eight books of Hindi prose including two novels.
•    She also writes an occasional article in Hindi for newspapers and journals.
•    She won the Sahitya Akademi Award at the young age of thirty for her first collection of Dogri poetry title Mere Kavita, Mere Geet (1969)
•    She also has won Soviet Land Nehru Award, Hindi Academy Puraskar, U.P. Hindi Academy Pruaskar, Raja Ram Mohan Roy Puraskar, Joshua Poetry Award, and the Jammu & Kashmir Government’s Robe of Honour.
•    She is the writer of following Dogri poetry
•    Meri Kavita, Mere Geet (1969)
•    Tawi Te Chanhaan (1976)
•    Nehriyan Galiyan (1982)
•    Pota Pota Nimbal (1987)
•    Uttarbaihni (1992)
•    Tainthiyaan (1999)

Raymond Samuel Tomlinson, the inventor of E-mail and the man who picked @symbol for addresses, passed away in Washington on 6 March 2016. 
•    He was 74.
•    He was an American computer scientist who became a cult figure for his invention in 1971 of a program for APRANET
•    APRANET, was the internet predecessor that allowed people to send person to person messages to other computer users on other servers.
•    He was working at Bolt Beranek and Newman – now Raytheon BBN Technologies – when he made his email breakthrough
•    In 2000, he received the George R. Stibitz Computer Pioneer Award from the American Computer Museum. 
•    He also received Webby Award from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Science. 
•    He also won Innovation award from Discover magazine, and the Eduard-Rhein Cultural Award.
•    In 2012, Tomlinson was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame by the Internet Society.
•    He was born on 23 April 1941 in Amsterdam in New York, Unites States (US).

Indian cricket team led by Mahendra Singh Dhoni won the Asia Cup for the record sixth time. 2016 Asia Cup was played from 24 February to 6 March 2016.
•    To win the trophy, India defeated Bangladesh by eight wickets in the final played at Sher-e-Bangla National Cricket Stadium in Mirpur, Bangladesh.
•    Batting first, Bangladesh made 120 runs by losing 5 wickets in rain truncated 15 over while India chased down the target by losing two wickets and seven balls to spare.
•    Shikhar Dhawan was adjudged Man of the Match for his 44-balls 60 runs.
•    This was the first time that Asia Cup was played in T20 format and the countries that played in 2016 Asia Cup were India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and United Arab Emirates (UAE).
•    Sri Lanka has won the Asia Cup title five times including the 2014 Asia Cup and Pakistan has won it two times.
•    Asia Cup is a men's One Day International & Twenty20 International cricket tournament. 
•    It was established in 1983 when the Asian Cricket Council was founded as a measure to promote goodwill between Asian countries. 

Prof. Sirshendu De, Head of the Chemical Engineering department of the IIT, Kharagpur on 4 March 2016 was selected for the Innovation Award 2016 given by the Indian Desalination Association (IDA), South Zone.
•    He was selected for the award for developing an ultra-low-cost eco-friendly laterite based arsenic water filter.
•    The cost-effective filter would provide safe drinking water in areas contaminated with arsenic. 
•    The indigenous filter, made from naturally occurring red laterite soil, is capable of absorbing arsenic to the extent of 32mg per gram.
•    This material has undergone chemical treatment to enhance its capabilities to adsorb arsenic. 
•    Ultra-low cost of the filter media compared to available such filters, appropriate for the socio-economic conditions of our country
•    Arsenic concentration of filtrate is always within the WHO drinking water permissible limit, independent of the ground water concentration
•    Extremely long life of the filters (about five years)
•    No power requirement for the household filter
•    Removal of arsenic (below 10 ppb), iron (below 0.3 ppm) and bacteriological contamination (more than 98%) together in a single unit
•    The capacity of domestic filter is in the range of 80-100 litres/day
•    Cost of the treated water is less than 3 paisa/litre

On 3 March 2016 The International Hockey Federation (FIH) promoted Hockey India national-level umpire Napoleon Singh as the International Outdoor Umpire.
•    The FIH took the decision after seeing his performance in the recently-concluded 12th South Asian Games 2016.
•    It was held at Guwahati from 5 to 16 February 2016.

•    Napoleon started his career as an umpire from Manipur in the third Hockey India Junior Women National Championship 2013 which got held at Ranchi, Jharkhand.
•    He was also appointed as umpire in the eighth Junior Men Asia Cup, held at Kuantan, Malaysia in 2015.
•    The 30 year-old Napoleon is among those young umpires from India who have recently been upgraded to international-level outdoor umpire. 
•    With Napoleon's promotion, a total of 14 Indian umpires  are now in the category of international-level umpires.
•    Out of those 14 10 are men, 4 are women.
•    He has been a national level hockey player and completed a diploma in Sports Coaching from the National Institute of Sports, Patiala in 2011. 
•    Currently he is presently working as a coach at Kokrajhar, Assam.

International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, on 1 March 2016 launched its first Uridashi Masala Bond. 
•    The bonds are worth 300 million rupees and will be utilised to promote private sector development in India.
•    The three-year Uridashi Masala Bond is Japan-specific and builds on IFC’s Masala bond Program.
•    While Masala bonds are rupee-denominated instruments sold only to offshore investors, Uridashi bonds are sold to Japanese household investors.
•    Earlier, in November 2014, the IFC issued first-ever Masala Bonds in London. 
•    The bonds were worth 10 billion rupee and listed in the London Stock Exchange.
•    So far, the IFC raised 1.7 billion US dollars from international investors under the Masala Bond Program.
•    This is going to be huge for Indian market as it is supposed to bring a huge money inflow in the country. 
•    Indian economy is going through slow down and this is intended to bring foreign currency to the country.
International Hockey Federation promoted Napoleon Singh as international Umpire
On 3 March 2016 The International Hockey Federation (FIH) promoted Hockey India national-level umpire Napoleon Singh as the International Outdoor Umpire.
•    The FIH took the decision after seeing his performance in the recently-concluded