GK and Current Affairs Updates

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on 7 December 2016 released the fifth Bi-monthly Monetary Policy Statement 2016-17, the first policy review post-demonetisation.
●    The key announcement under the policy was that the policy Repo Rate under the Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF) was kept unchanged at 6.25 percent. 
●    This decision was taken on the basis of an assessment of the current and evolving macroeconomic situation.
●    Reverse Repo Rate: Consequently, the Reverse Repo Rate under the LAF remains unchanged at 5.75 percent.
●    Marginal standing facility (MSF) Rate: The MSF rate was also kept unchanged at 6.75 percent.
●    Bank Rate: The Bank Rate also stands at 6.75 percent.
●    The policy decision was taken by Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of Reserve Bank of India.
●    In the external sector, India’s merchandise exports rebounded in September and October. After a prolonged fall for 22 months, imports rose in October on the back of a sharp rise in the volume of gold imports and higher payments for POL imports.
●    The level of foreign exchange reserves was 364 billion USD on 2 December 2016.

Former US astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, died on 8 December 2016. He was 95. 
●    John Glenn was best known for circling the earth in 1962. He circled the planet aboard the Friendship 7 space capsule. 
●    This achievement of Glenn marked the moment the US caught up with the Soviet Union in manned space exploration.
●    After returning to Earth, Glenn was elected in 1974 as a Democrat to the US Senate, where he served for 24 years.
●    He was the last of NASA's original seven astronauts to die.
●    He was the colonel in the US Marine Corps and flew combat flights during the Second World War and Korean War.
●    He was a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honours awarded by the United States and Congressional Gold Medal.
●    In 1959, he was named as an astronaut. 
●    He was named as the astronaut after he set a transcontinental speed record flying a jet to New York from California in three hours and 23 minutes.
●    Glenn served as an advisor to NASA until 1964.

The Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF) is scheduled to be held from 16 December to 23 December 2016 in Goa.
●    The festival will see a stellar line-up of 33 global artists, who will display their work at the eight-day inspiration-packed festival.
●    More than 40 exciting projects and exhibitions featuring famous artists, like Kabi Raj Lama, Bandu Manamperi, Escif, Billy Chang, SP Pushpakanthan, Lisa Stertz and Paquito Gonzalees, will be a part of the festival.
●    The Serendipity Arts Festival will be held on the banks of River Mandovi in Goa.
●    The festival is envisioned as a space, which brings together the visual, performing and culinary arts.
●    The festival is curated by a panel of artists and institutional figures.
●    The festival is a long-term cultural project that hopes to affect positive change in the arts in India on a large scale.
●    It is a cultural experiment that hopes to affect the way Indians interact with art on a daily basis by addressing issues such as arts education, interdisciplinary discourse, accessibility of the arts and patronage culture.

The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) Committee on 7 December 2016 recommended limiting bat size edges and depths along with many other suggestions.
●    The recommendations were made by the MCC’s World Cricket Committee, headed by former England captain Mike Brearley, to bring about a balance between bat and ball.
●    The suggestions were made during a two-day meeting of the committee in Mumbai, which hosts the fourth Test between India and England from 8 December 2016.
●    The committee has come up with a radical proposal of introducing a football-hockey-like red card as punishment for violent acts on the cricket field.
●    It deliberated on the ball-tampering laws, which it felt will remain unaltered.
●    The committee was split vertically on the possibility of reducing Test cricket from a five-day affair to a four-day one.
●    It urged the International Cricket Council (ICC) to continue to work towards introducing a World Test Championship and presenting the case for cricket at the Olympic Games and changing the law on ball striking a fielder’s helmet.
●    It was announced that 60% of the world’s professional players supported the decision to limit the bat size to 40 mm on edges and 67 mm for depths, including 7 mm for curvature.

Allahabad High Court on 8 December 2016 declared ‘Triple Talaq’ as unconstitutional. 
●    The single judge bench of Justice Sunit Kumar observed that no Personal Law Board is above the Constitution.
●    The verdict was pronounced while deciding two separate writ petitions that the ‘Triple Talaq’ practice, sanctioned under Muslim personal law that governs marriage, property and divorce - violated the rights of Muslim women.
●    The Union Government has told the top court that it is against gender justice, equality and the Constitution. 
●    It had said that the issue of the validity of triple talaq, polygamy and nikah halala should be considered in accordance with the principles of gender justice as well as dignity and equality.
●    The All India Muslim Personal Law Board has slammed Allahabad Court’s order stating that it is against Shariat. 
●    The board said that the order will be studied by its legal committee and challenged in the Supreme Court.
●    Comment: Triple Talaq is an Islamic practice of divorcing a woman in which the male counterpart of the woman pronounces the word talaq, three successive times. 
●    This judgement can be termed as a major boost for women right.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi resigned on 6th December.
●    Renzi tendered his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella, who said he would consult with political parties to decide the next steps. 
●    He asked Renzi to carry on in a caretaker capacity until a solution is found.
●    After the consultations, which began on 8th December and will end on 10th December, Mattarella is widely expected to ask a member of Renzi's cabinet, or a politician from his Democratic Party, to try to form a new government.
●    Elections are due in 2018 but many politicians are calling for them to be held earlier.
●    The political crisis sparked by the referendum coincides with a crisis in Italy's debt-laden banks, especially at its third-biggest lender Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which looks likely to require government intervention to survive.
●    Two sources told Reuters on Tuesday that Renzi's administration was preparing to take a 2-billion-euro ($2.15-billion) controlling stake in the bank by purchasing junior bonds.

A staggering percentage of the world's sharks and rays are now "alarmingly" close to the brink of extinction, according to the a new study spearheaded by the Shark Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). 
●    A collaborative project that involved more than 300 experts from 64 countries, the study also found that chondrichthyes -- the class of cartilaginous fish that includes sharks, rays and chimaeras -- are at a "substantially higher risk than most other groups of animals and have the lowest percentage of species considered safe -- with only 23 percent categorized as 'Least Concern.'"
●    Researchers say they were also troubled to find that rays are generally even more threatened than sharks are. Rays like sawfish, wedgefish, guitarfish and stingray, for instance, are among the top 10 most-threatened families of chondrichthyes.
●    According to the IUCN, sharks, rays and chimaeras are "one of the world’s oldest and most ecologically-diverse groups of animals."
 

The Union Cabinet today approved the development of phase-I of Pune Metro Rail Project which will cover a length of 31.25 km at the total completion cost of Rs. 11,420 crore.
●    It comprises two corridors -- Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC)- Swargate covering length of 16.589 km and Vanaz to Ramwadi with a length of 14.665 km.
●    The population of approximately 50 lakh of Pune Metropolitan Area will be benefited through this metro corridor.
●    The project is scheduled to be completed in five years from the date of start of work as per the Detailed Project Report (DPR).
●    The Project will be implemented by Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation Limited (MAHA-METRO), which will be a 50:50 jointly owned company of Government of India and Maharashtra government.
●    The approved alignments are expected to provide the much needed connectivity to the commuters and would traverse through some of the densest and traffic congested routes in the Pune Metropolitan Area.
 

Veteran journalist, political analyst and comedian Cho S Ramaswamy passed away on 7 December 2016 following a prolonged illness at Apollo Hospital in Chennai. He was 82. He is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter.
●    Ramaswamy was a law graduate, a play writer and a stage actor and also directed several movies and was also a screen play writer.
●    He practised law in the Madras High Court in 1957-63 and served as a legal adviser to TTK & Co, group Companies, till 1978.
●    He was a member of the BRC cricket club which played in the II division of Madras Cricket Association (now Tamil Nadu Cricket Association) in the 1950's.
●    He was nominated to the Rajya Sabha under the previous NDA government in 1999.
●    He had acted in movies along with MG Ramachandran, Sivaji Ganesan, Jayalalithaa, Kamal Hassan, Rajinikanth and others.
●    He had written, directed and acted in over 20 Tamil plays which were performed over 5000 times.
●    He also acted in 180 movies, scripted 14 and directed four.
●    He founded and edited the political magazine Thuglak magazine.

India on 5 December 2016 inked an agreement with Hanoi to train the pilots of Vietnam's fleet of Russian-made Sukhoi Su-30MK2 'Flanker F' multirole combat aircraft.
●    The agreement was signed in New Delhi by Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and his Vietnamese counterpart, General Ngo Xuan Lich.
●    As per the deal, the training of the fighter pilots from the Vietnam People's Army Air Force (VPAAF) by Indian Air Force (IAF) instructors will commence in early 2017.
●    The two air forces are expected to imminently work out the details on the number of pilots to be trained, the scope of their instruction and the overall cost.
●    The overall cost will not be paid through the USD 500 million Line of Credit (LoC) extended by Delhi to Hanoi for defence procurements.
●    Both India and Vietnam operate Russian Su-30 jets. However, the two countries’ models differ slightly in their configuration. 
●    India operates over 200 Su-30MKI fighters and nine Kilo-class diesel electric submarines.