Current Affairs Today: 8 April 2016

The Scientists team from the Institute of Advance Study in Science and Technology (IASST), Guwahati in Assam developed an eco-friendly nanotechnology for water-softening applications.
•    The report was published online on 30 March 2016 in the joural Nanoscale and the authors are Upama Baruah and Achyut Konwar of IASST
•    The green technology is the first of its kind with potential to act as a biodegradable and green material for water-softening applications
•    It can be used in civic water treatment plants for generating potable water.
•    The technology is basically a biopolymer, which uses a naturally occurring substance called Chitosan.
•    Chitosan is obtained from the hard outer skeleton of shellfish, including crab, lobster, and shrimp. It will be used as a backbone for the carbon nanoparticles to sit on during the purification process.
•    In conventional water-softening techniques the synthetic resins are used where as in the newly developed biopolymer, the nano particles are the functional parts.
•    They remove calcium and magnesium components of water through ion exchange which will purify the water.

Iceland ruling coalition on 6 April 2016 named Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson as the Prime Minister of the country. The coalition also decided to hold elections in the autumn.
•    Earlier, the polls were scheduled to take place in the spring of 2017.
•    He will succeed Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson who resigned on 5 April 2016 after his name was the leaked in the Panama Papers. The leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca, showed Gunnlaugsson owned an offshore firm with his wife that held millions of dollars in debt from failed celandic banks.
•    Johannsson, 53, is Agriculture and Fisheries Minister and deputy leader of the Progressive Party (PP).
•    Johannsson, who had served also as agriculture minister in the government, told reporters the government would further pursue its big projects of the last three years, the largest being the abolition of capital controls.
•    The opposition has been trying to force a new election with a vote of no confidence in the government, which could lead to a radical political shift.
•    A few thousand demonstrators, though fewer than on Monday, gathered for another evening of protests in front of the parliament building on Wednesday.

Hashim Thaci, the leader of the Democratic Party of Kosovo, was on 7 April 2016 sworn-in as President of Kosovo. 
•    The sworn-in ceremony at the Kosovo Assembly was boycotted by Opposition parties.
•    Thaci, who succeeded Atifete Jahjaga, was elected for the post on 26 February 2016 in the absence of nearly all opposition lawmakers who had earlier tried to disrupt the voting with tear gas.
•    After taking the oath, Thaci said, his goals were Kosovo's integration into NATO and European Union, and the continuation of the process of normalizing relations with Serbia.
•    In the 1990s, he was a leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which fought a guerrilla war against Serbia from 1998-99.
•    He was the first Prime Minister of Kosovo and the Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister in the cabinet led by Isa Mustafa, which assumed office on 12 December 2014.
•    In 2008, he declared Kosovo’s independence from Serbia.

The astronomers at National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) discovered a supermassive Black Hole which weighs about 17 billion times the mass of Sun.
•    It was discovered in the center of a galaxy in a sparsely populated area of the universe and it may indicate that these monster objects may be more common than once thought.
•    The discovery was published on 6 April 2016 in the journal Nature.
•    The lead discoverer is Chung-Pei Ma, a University of California-Berkeley astronomer and head of the MASSIVE Survey, a study of the most massive galaxies and supermassive black holes in the local universe, whereas the lead author is Jens Thomas of the Max Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Garching, Germany.
•    Main finding of the discovery
•    The newly discovered supersized black hole resides in the center of a massive elliptical galaxy, NGC 1600, located in a cosmic backwater, a small grouping of 20 or so galaxies.
•    It is located about 200 million light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Eridanus.
•    The amount of stars pushed away by this black hole equals 40 billion suns, comparable to ejecting the entire disk of our Milky Way galaxy.
•    Unlike other galaxies, wherein the galaxy bulge is proportional to the mass of the black hole, galaxy NGC 1600 has a relatively sparse bulge in relation to the discovered black hole’s mass.
•    The presence of the massive black hole was made through measuring the velocities of stars near it, which are strongly influenced by the gravity of the black hole. The velocity measurements give us an estimate of the black hole’s mass.
•    The velocity measurements were made by the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on the Gemini North 8-meter telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.  GMOS spectroscopically dissected the light from the galaxy’s center, revealing stars within 3000 light-years of the core.
•    However, these stars were found to be moving in a straighter path away from the core suggesting that they had ventured closer to the center and had been slung away, most likely by the twin black holes.
•    This observation was supported by the images taken by the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) of Hubble telescope. The NICMOS images revealed that the galaxy’s core was unusually faint, indicating a lack of stars close to the galactic center.
•    A star-depleted core distinguishes massive galaxies from standard elliptical galaxies, which are much brighter in their centers.

Forbes on 6 April 2016 released Asia’s 50 Power Businesswomen 2016 list. The list features eight Indian women business leaders.
•    Reliance Industries Director Nita Ambani and State Bank of India Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya have been ranked top two in Forbes’ Asia 50 Power Businesswomen 2016 list. China’s Zhu Chongyun, Cofounder & Chairman of Shenzhen Marisfrolg Fashion, was ranked 50th on the list.
•    The list also includes more than 27 newcomers.
•    The list includes following women business leaders from India
•    Nita Ambani, Director, Reliance Industries
•    Arundhati Bhattacharya, Chairman, Bank of India
•    Ambiga Dhiraj, CEO, Mu Sigma
•    Dipali Goenka, CEO and Joint Managing Director, Welspun India Ltd
•    Vinita Gupta, CEO, Lupin Ltd
•    Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO, ICICI Bank
•    Vandana Luthra, Founder, VLCC Health Care Ltd
•    Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairman and Managing Director, Biocon Ltd.
•    Top 10 Power Businesswomen 2016
•    1 - Nita Ambani (India)
•    2 - Arundhati Bhattacharya (India)
•    3 - Cao Thi Ngoc Dung (Vietnam)
•    4 - Somruedee Chaimongkol (Thailand)
•    5 - Sabrina Sih Ming Chao (Hong Kong)
•    6 - Solina Chau Hoi Shuen (Hong Kong)
•    7 - Eva Yi-Hwa Chen (Japan)
•    8 - Sonia Cheng (Hong Kong)
•    9 - Chew Gek Khim (Singapore)
•    10 - Yuwadee Chirathivat (Thailand)

Justice (retd.) Permod Kohli in the first week of April 2016 took over as the Chairman of Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT).
Kohli succeeded Justice Syed Rafat Alam and will be in the office for a period of 5 years or till attaining the age of 68 years, whichever is earlier.
• Born in 1951 in the town of Rajouri, Jammu and Kasmir, he joined Bar at Jammu in 1972.
• He became Advocate General of Jammu & Kashmir in December 1990.
• He is an expert in Constitutional, Civil and Taxation cases
• He remained Legal Advisor to Sri Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine Board and Sri Mata Vaishno Devi University till elevation.
• He as Judge has provided services to the High Courts of Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand and Punjab & Haryana.
• In 2011, he was elevated as the Chief Justice of the Sikkim High Court.
• Article 323A of Part 14A of the Indian Constitution provides for establishment of CAT and was inserted by the 42nd Amendment Act, 1976.
• It was constituted in November 1985 under Section 29 of the Administrative Tribunals Act, 1985. It was set up at Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta and Allahabad.
• The CAT is headed by a Chairman who is a sitting or retired Judge of a High Court. Besides the Chairman, the authorized strength consists of 16 Vice-Chairmen and 49 Members.
• The Tribunal follows the principles of natural justice in deciding cases and the procedure, prescribed by Evidence Act or Criminal Procedure Code (CPC) does not apply.
• Now, there are 17 Benches of the Tribunal located throughout the country wherever the seat of a High Court is located, with 33 Division Benches.

The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 6 April 2016 gave its ex-post facto approval for implementation of One Rank One Pension (OROP).
Implementation of OROP will enhance the pension for the pensioner’s/family pensioners of Defence Forces.
• The benefit will be given with effect from 1 July 2014.
• Pension will be re-fixed for pre 1 July 2014 pensioners retiring in the same rank and with the same length of service as the average of minimum and maximum pension drawn by the retirees in the year 2013. Those drawing pensions above the average will be protected.
• The benefit would also be extended to family pensioners including war widows and disabled pensioners.
• Personnel who opt to get discharged henceforth on their own request under Rule 16B of the Army Rule, 1954 or equivalent Navy or Air Force Rules will not be entitled to the benefits of OROP. It will be effective prospectively.
• Arrears will be paid in four half-yearly instalments. However, all the family pensioners including those in receipt of Special/Liberalized family pension and Gallantry award winners shall be paid arrears in one instalment.
• In future, the pension would be re-fixed every 5 year.
• Constitution of Judicial Committee headed by Justice L Narasimha Reddy, Retd. Chief Justice of Patna High Court on 14 December 2015 which will give its report in six months on the references made by the Government of India.
Judicial Committee headed by Justice L. Narasimha Reddy will help in the removal of anomalies that may arise in the implementation of OROP order dated 7 November 2015.
As per Government declaration, the financial implications on account of grant of OROP including Pre-Matured Retirees (PMR) cases would be 10925.11 crore rupees for payment of arrears and annual financial implication would be 7488.7 crore rupees.

Renowned screenwriter and Hollywood actress Barbara Turner was died on 5 April 2016. She was 79.
She was a screenwriter of Petulia, Georgia, Pollock and may other features for film and television.
• She started her career as an actress in Hollywood. She starred in TV series such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Playhouse 90 throughout the late 1950s.
• She shifted her career towards writing in 1966 with her first screenplay which was an adaption of author Jean Genet's play Deathwatch.
• She went on to pen acclaimed scripts for 1968 drama Petulia, Jackson Pollock biopic Pollack and Robert Altman's The Company.
• She wrote and produced music drama "Georgia In 1995. The film was honoured at the Montreal Film Festival's Grand Prix of the Americas.
• She also wrote a handful of screenplays for TV movies which includes The War Between the Tates and Hemingway & Gellhorn, For both of them she was nominated for Emmy award.