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Union Cabinet approves listing of General Insurance Companies at the stock exchanges

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on 18 January 2017 gave its in-principle approval for listing five government-owned General Insurance Companies in stock exchanges. 
●    The approval was given at a cabinet meet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
●    The companies are National Insurance Company, New India Assurance Company, Oriental Insurance Company, United India Insurance Company and General Insurance Corporation of India.
●    The listing will open a way for the companies to raise resources from the capital market to meet their fund requirements. 
●    Shareholding of these PSGICs (Public Sector General Insurance Companies) will be divested from 100 per cent to 75 per cent.
●    This disinvestment process will be carried on as per the existing rules and regulations of Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDA) and Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) will be followed.

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Kalraj Mishra Inaugurates Workshop on MSME Cooperation amongst Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) Member Countries

Union Minister of MSME, Shri Kalraj Mishra today inaugurated Workshop on MSME Cooperation amongst Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) Member countries. Speaking on the occasion, he said that this workshop will strengthen economic relationship amongst the member countries in the field of trade and investment facilitation especially in MSME sector. He also stated that India has  Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) with 18 countries for cooperation in MSME sector. The National Small Industries Corporation of India, Public Sector Enterprise under the Ministry of MSME has 34 MoUs with its counterpart organizations of foreign countries for cooperation in MSME sector.
●    Shri Mishra also stated that this Workshop on SME cooperation will facilitate exchange of ideas, concerns and experiences of IORA member states and would help evolve a common MoU to address the emerging challenges in the region in MSME sector. He emphasized that the resilience in IORA over the last 20 years has been its innate strength. IORA’s evolution and growth have consistently seen an upward trajectory. He said that this strength must be reinforced by ensuring independence of strategy and priority. The onus of strengthening the regionalism in a composite manner must rest first on the shoulders of IORA members themselves.
●    Minister of State for MSME Shri Haribhai Parthibhai Chaudhary has emphasized that the IORA region has emerged as a strong one with the highest growth prospects in the world. He also stated that India and IORA together represent a huge market in which suppliers can build scale and efficiency and investors can allocate capital most productively.
●    IORA Secretary General, Shri Bhagirath spoke about the IORA secretariat’s efforts in enhancing cooperation between the IORA member countries in terms of industrial and cultural cooperation. He also spoke about how the MSMEs in the IORA member countries help in alleviating poverty by creating more job opportunities.
●    Secretary MSME, Shri KK Jalan said that with the combined population of over 2 billion, IORA and India represent a vast market for goods and services and it is highly attractive due to large segment of high consuming middle class of about 600 million persons in India. He also expressed that this workshop will inspire the member countries to further cooperation and seek opportunities to support the progress towards mutual goals.
 

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Dr. Jitendra Singh and Parshottam Rupala inaugurate International Symposium

Addressing the inaugural session at the two-day International Symposium on Medicinal and Aromatic plants of India here today, the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh said that lifestyle diseases like Diabetes Mellitus Type 2 require holistic management and with more than 65% to 70% of India’s population today being less than 40 years of age, Diabetes and heart attack in young are going to be the main challenges ahead, because these tend to affect the youth potential which is imperative in the task of nation building.
●    Dr Jitendra Singh referred to the change of disease spectrum of India over the last few decades and said that India today has evolved from an era of communicable diseases into an era of non-communicable diseases like Diabetes Mellitus, heart attack, lipid disorders, hypertension and other metabolic diseases. 
●    Even though a number of new remedies and medicinal options are available for the treatment of these diseases, he said, the basic Mantra is still based on lifestyle modifications and natural methods, and for this purpose, the various Indian medicine regimens incorporated in Naturopathy, Yoga and other indigenous therapies find a contributory role, he added.
●    India is the fountain- head and original birth-place of all the aromatic and medicinal plants, said Dr Jitendra Singh and regretted that in the last few decades, most of the research on the Indian medicinal plants was conducted in other countries and not in India. To that extent, he said, the Central Government has tried to vindicate the lapse of the earlier decades.
 

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President Inaugurates Centenary Celebrations of Jhalda Satyabhama Vidyapith, Purulia, West Bengal

The President of India, Shri Pranab Mukherjee inaugurated the Centenary celebrations of Jhalda Satyabhama Vidyapith today (January 18, 2017) at Jhalda, Purulia, West Bengal. 
●    Speaking on the occasion, the President called upon the students to uphold the values of our civilization through the attainment of education. 
●    He appreciated the effort by Jhalda Satyabhama Vidyapith to mark its Centenary by setting up a museum on the freedom struggle on the occasion of its centenary. 
●    He paid homage to five young men of this area who, inspired by revolutionary patriot, Satya Kinkar Dutta, laid down their lives in the freedom struggle. 
●    The President said these martyrs who made the supreme sacrifice for our independence must be saluted. 
●    People should be educated about their sacrifice and also, about the Chuar uprising, a glorious chapter in our struggle for freedom whose epicentre was Jhalda. 
●    The President quoted Swami Vivekananda, and said the aim of education is to become a real man. 
●    He urged students to have a common goal of attaining education and to uphold the qualities of tolerance, determination and honesty. 
●    He said they would hold thereby the flag of our great civilisation high.
 

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Priyanka Chopra wins 2nd People's Choice Award

Priyanka Chopra on 18 January 2017 won the Favourite Dramatic TV Actress at the 43rd People’s Choice Award. 
●    She won the honour for her role in the American drama TV series Quantico.
●    This is the second People’s Choice Award for Chopra. 
●    She had won her first award in 2016 in the ‘Favourite Actress in a New TV series’ category for her role in Quantico.
●    The People's Choice Awards is an American awards show.
●    It recognizes the people and the work of popular culture, voted on by the general public.
●    It has been held annually since 1975.
●    The creator of the award show was Bob Stivers, who produced the first show in 1975.
 

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Prehistoric Rock Paintings found near Hyderabad

In a recent discovery by Dyavanapalli Satyanarayana, ten prehistoric rock art sites in one cluster of four kilometers area with hundreds of red and white colour paintings in Daasarlapalli, Mulugu Mandal of Siddipet District and Yadaram of Medchal District is attracting a lot of attention.
●    On the southern face of the stone two elephants with tusks and trunks lifted are engraved as leaping further.
●    The time period of the engravings cannot easily be determined a Hanuman figure is also chiseled nearby the elephant figures during subsequent times,” says Satyanarayana.
●    In the last six-and-a-half decades the Department of Archaeology discovered 68 sites but in the last few years Satyanarayana has discovered 26 ones across Telangana.
●    Generally rock paintings are said to be 200 years old but there have been some discoveries that are much older.

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Eugene Cernan, Last Man to Walk on Moon Passes Away

U.S. astronaut Gene Cernan, who as the commander of the final Apollo lunar landing mission in 1972 became known as the "last man on the moon," died on Jan 16. He was 82.
●    NASA confirmed Cernan's death on its website and social media channels, noting he was surrounded by his family at the time he died. 
●    The cause of death was not stated, but he was known to have been ill in recent months.
●    Cernan was chosen with NASA's third group of astronauts in 1963. 
●    His first spaceflight, Gemini 9A, came three years later, after he and Thomas Stafford replaced Elliot See and Charles Bassett in the wake of a jet crash that claimed the original crew members' lives.
●    As the pilot of NASA's seventh Gemini Flight — a three-day mission in Earth orbit that rendezvoused but failed to dock with an unmanned target vehicle, Cernan became only the second American astronaut to go out on an extra-vehicular activity (EVA). 
●    The two-hour spacewalk though, nearly cost him his life.

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Prof. C V Vishweshvara, Black Hole Research Pioneer Passes Away

Professor CV Vishveshwara who did pioneering work on black holes, passed away on 16 January 2017 in Bengaluru following a brief illness. He was 77. 
●    He is survived by wife and two daughters.
●    Popularly called Vishu, he was celebrated as the 'Black Hole Man of India'.
●    In the 1970s at the University of Maryland, he was among the first to study black holes even before they were named. 
●    His calculations gave a graphic form to the signals emitted by two merging black holes. This was the waveform detected in 2015 by the LIGO collaboration.
●    This waveform also contained the quasi normal modes, a ringdown stage that sounds like a fading out ringing bell. 
●    He was also the founding director of the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium in Bengaluru. 
●    He had written several books including Einstein’s Enigma and Black Holes in My Bubble Bath.

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Chandrasekaran Appointed Tata Motors Chairman

Tata Motors has appointed Tata group chief designate N. Chandrasekaran as its chairman with immediate effect.
●    In a regulatory filing, the company said “the Board of Directors have today appointed Natarajan Chandrasekaran as additional director and Chairman of the board with immediate effect.”
●    The appointment comes within a week of Tata Sons announcing Mr. Chandrasekaran as its executive chairman.
●    Popularly known as ‘Chandra’, the 54-year-old will take charge of Tata Sons, the main holding company of the salt-to-software conglomerate from February 21.
●    At Tata Motors, he will have to take the responsibility of turning around the struggling homegrown auto major which is trying to regain lost ground, specially in the passenger vehicles segment. 

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India becomes associate member state of CERN

India became an Associate member of CERN on Monday with the Indian government completing its internal approval procedures in respect of the agreement it had signed with CERN on November 21, 2016.
●    On November 21, 2016, Sekhar Basu, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and Fabiola Gianotti CERN Director General signed an Agreement to admit India to CERN as an Associate member. 
●    But India had to “notify CERN of its final approval for the Agreement to enter into force” and become an Associate member, which it did on Monday.
●    There are other benefits of becoming an Associate member. Whenever any CERN facilities get upgraded and go through maintenance, it will provide opportunities for Indian industries to participate.
●    India has to pay about Rs. 40 crore a year as an Associate member. 

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