Important Current Affairs 28th DECEMBER 2017

Important Current Affairs 28th DECEMBER 2017

Current Affairs 28th DECEMBER 2017: NATIONAL NEWS

Telangana government gives Rs 1 crore to Mithali Raj

The Telangana government has gifted one crore rupees to Indian women cricket team captain Mithali Raj and 600 square feet to build the house.
●    According to a release issued by the Telangana government on Thursday, state sports minister T. Padmarao honored Mitali in Hyderabad and presented the amount as a gift.
●    State Sports Minister T. Padmarav also presented a cash prize of 25 lakh rupees to the captain of Indian women's cricket team and veteran batsman Mitali Raj's coach RSR Murthy.
●    Regarding the promotion of the game, the government has taken this step following the instructions of Chief Minister Chandrashekhar Rao.
●    In the captaincy of Mithali Raj, the Indian team reached the finals of the women's cricket World Cup played in July but they had to face a near loss of 9 runs to England in the title match.
●    Mithali scored a total of 409 runs in 9 innings of this tournament and he became the highest run Indian.

Reliance will buy RCom's wireless assets

Reliance Jio Infocomm of Mukesh Ambani has made a deal to buy Reliance Mobile Communications (RCom) spectrum, mobile tower and other mobile business associations including optical fiber network.
●    This deal is being seen as a big relief for Mukesh Ambani's younger brother Anil Ambani's company RCom.
●    RCom is suppressed with a heavy burden of about 45 thousand crore and has been engaged in efforts to repay it for a long time.
●    Reliance Jio has informed about this deal in a statement.
●    The company has said that he has made a certain agreement about this.
●    According to Jio's statement, Geo or its designated entities will purchase four categories - tower, optical fiber cable network, spectrum and media convergence nodes (ACN) Assets from RCom and its affiliated units under this deal.

Government to introduce methanol in petrol to reduce the country's oil imports

On the import of oil, the government has to spend a large part of foreign capital every year. The government is working on a policy that will reduce the oil import bill by $ 20 billion ($ 6.4 billion) by 2030.
●    According to this policy, methanol will be added to cooking gas and petrol and diesel.
●    This information was given by Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari in a statement made in the Lok Sabha. He told that 15 percent of the methanol will be mixed in petrol.
●    He said that the government will soon introduce a scheme under which 15% methanol will be added to the petrol, which will reduce the cost of fuel by 10%.
●    Gadkari said that the country currently needs about 2,900 million liters of petrol and 9,000 million liters of diesel and now we are the sixth largest consumer of the world.
●    By 2030 we will become the third largest consumer of oil and our import bill relies on crude oil and it is about 6 lakh crores.

Country's first bitcoin trading app Pluto Exchange Launched

The country's first bitcoin trading app has been launched. Mobile based application, Pluto Exchange, launches on Thursday.
●    Now the bitcoin-like crypto (virtual currency) transaction can be done through the app.
●    It will execute all the transactions only through the use of mobile number.
●    By using a 4-digit PIN, users will be able to purchase, sell, store and spend their bitcoins using the mobile number.
●    Bharat Verma, Chief Executive Officer of Pluto Exchange, said, "The slogan of the Pluto Exchange is Unbank the Banked Bank" that means liberate people from the complexity of the bank's work.
●    All other apps already in use in the market use bittoine addresses for the transaction of bitcoin.

Three percent additional dearness allowances announced for employees of Himachal Pradesh

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Jairam Thakur announced the announcement of three percent additional dearness allowance for the employees of the state government.
●    This dearness allowance will be payable on July 1, 2017.
●    Addressing the state secretariat employees, the Chief Minister said that the additional dearness allowance will be paid in cash with the salary of January.
●    This will also give dearness relief to pensioners.
●    He said that this will add additional burden of Rs 180 crore annually to the state.
●    On this occasion, he appealed to the employees to work with dedication.
●    He said that the government would try to create new employment opportunities, although it also said that its possibilities are very low.
●    He asked the staff to serve people while appealing to work extra from scheduled time.

Current Affairs 28th DECEMBER 2017: GLOBAL NEWS

US embassy ends visa crisis with Turkey

The Turkish Embassy in Turkey announced Thursday that it will resume normal visa service for Turkish citizens.
●    After the incident in October that a Turkish citizen posted in the US Consulate in Istanbul, the United States had stopped visa services for Turkish citizens.
●    In return, Turkey had stopped the visa service for American citizens coming here.
●    After meeting and following the Turkish officials' assurances, the US announced the launch of a general visa service.

Israel will give exploration license to ONGC-led group

Under the leadership of ONGC Foreign in Israel, a consortium of Indian government companies is getting an exploration license.
●    The decision to issue licenses has been done before the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to India in mid-January.
●    This is another step towards strengthening the relationship between the two countries.
●    Israel had auctioned offshore gas fields, but it did not show much interest in global companies.
●    In the Israeli offshore licensing round that ended last month, only Indian consortium and a company in Greece had bid.
●    24 blocks were offered in this auction. It is estimated to be 6.6 billion barrels of oil and 213.7 billion cubic meter natural gas reserves.
●    Bidders will now have to give signature bonuses, license fees and other guarantees to complete the licensing process.

Current Affairs 28th DECEMBER 2017: ECONOMY

Milk production increased by 16.37 million tonnes in last year: Lion

Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said today that the country's milk production was 1.7-22 million tonnes in the year 1960, it has increased to 163.7 million tonnes in the previous year.
●    He was addressing the meeting of the Advisory Committee on Dairy Development here.
●    He said that India has been the largest milk producing country of V in the last 15 years.
●    It is credited to the campaigns of the government, under which various schemes focused on enhancing the productivity of milch animals have been adopted.
●    He said that similarly, per capita milk availability has increased by 14.3 per cent compared to 307 grams in 2013-14, to 351 grams in 2016-17.
●    Dairy farmers' income has also increased 23.77 percent in 2014-17 compared to 2011-14.
●    Singh said that during the last three years, India's annual milk production of 5.53 per cent has been much ahead of the global growth rate of 2.09 per cent.