GK and Current Affairs Updates

India’s largest biscuit maker Britannia Industries Ltd’s new financial chief N. Venkataraman has his work cut out for him when he takes over from outgoing chief financial officer (CFO) Amlan Datta Majumdar next month.
●    For starters, the company’s managing director Varun Berry wants him to find new ways to cut costs. That won’t be easy as Britannia has already trimmed its fat in a big way since Berry took charge three years ago.
●    Berry wants to plough more money into new products or categories without disrupting margins amid high raw material costs. 
●    Some analysts advised him to focus on cutting freight costs, while others urged him to take a hard look at the inefficiencies in the supply chain.
●    On Wednesday, Berry reiterated on a post-earnings conference call that the cost efficiency programme is critical.

Carmakers will have to provide airbags, vehicle reverse gear sensors for child pedestrian safety, speed-warning systems and seatbelt reminder system as standard equipment from October 2017. 
●    Speed alert will warn vehicles if they exceed 80 km per hour and then a continuous audio alert if speed exceeds 100 kmph, the road transport and highways ministry said in a draft notification issued on Wednesday. 
●    The move will ensure that Indian cars are on par with those sold globally as far as safety parameters are concerned. 
●    Currently, few auto companies provide airbags and ABS in entry level models. 
●    According to the government’s rough estimate, including these two features would add 10% to the cost of the base model. 
●    The government plans to set up its own safety authority, Bharat National Car Assessment Programme (NCAP), which will rate vehicles on safety. 
●    India will also have a rating system for cars based on fuel efficiency. 

China today successfully launched a navigation satellite which will conduct in-orbit experiments
using pulsar detectors to demonstrate new technologies. 
●    The X-ray pulsar navigation satellite — XPNAV-1 — weighing more than 200 kilogrammes, was sent skyward at 7:42 AM (local time) at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China’s northwest.
●    The satellite operates in a Sun-synchronous orbit and will conduct in-orbit experiments using pulsar detectors to demonstrate new technologies. 
●    It was carried by a Long March-11 rocket, the 239th flight mission by a Long March carrier rocket series.
●    While in orbit, the satellite will undergo tests on its detector functions and space environment adaptability. 
●    It weighs more than 200 kilogrammes and carries two detectors.
●    The satellite and the rocket were designed by academies affiliated with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. 
●    The X-ray pulsar navigation will help reduce the spacecraft’s reliance on ground-based navigation methods and is expected to lead to autonomous spacecraft navigation in the future.

Scientists have discovered a huge magmatic lake, 15 kilometres below a dormant volcano in South America, a finding that could unlock why and how volcanoes erupt.
●    The body of water - which is dissolved into partially molten rock at a temperature of almost 1,000 degrees Celsius - is the equivalent to what is found in some of the world's giant freshwater lakes, such as Lake Superior.
●    The finding by researchers from University of Bristol in the UK and colleagues has led scientists to consider if similar bodies of water may be 'hiding' under other volcanoes and could help explain why and how volcanoes erupt.
●    In order to characterise the partially molten region the team performed high temperature and pressure experiments at the University of Orleans in France.
●    This measured the electrical conductivity of the molten rock in the 'anomalous' region and concluded that there must be about eight to ten per cent of water dissolved in the silicate melt.
●    The researchers hope that better understanding of how water can trigger volcanic eruptions can improve predictions of when it is going to erupt.

US Republican Donald Trump on 9 November 2016 won the US presidential elections in a stunning victory. He won the elections by 276 seats.
●    He is scheduled to take office as the 45th President of the United States of America (USA)on 20 January 2017. He will succeed Barack Obama.
●    He won Florida, Ohio, Iowa and North Carolina, while Democrat Hillary Clinton, who won 218 seats, took Virginia and Nevada, ABC projects.
●    Donald Trump is an American businessman and the President-elect of the United States.
●    He was the Republican Party's nominee for president in the 2016 election
●    Earlier, he said that he will vacant his position in the Trump Organisation prior to his assumption of the presidency.
●    He has received a bachelor's degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1968.
●    Trump has appeared at the Miss USA pageants, which he owned from 1996 to 2015, and has made cameo appearances in films and television series.
●    He hosted and co-produced The Apprentice, a reality television series on NBC, from 2004 to 2015.

The apex court said the menace of female foeticide corrodes human values and decreases the sex ratio, which is a sign of “colossal calamity” that cannot be allowed to happen. 
●    The bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra said the constitutional identity of a girl child “cannot be mortgaged to any kind of social or other concept that has developed or is thought of”.
●    The bench passed 16 directions to ensure immediate and effective implementation of the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act and the Rules framed there under.
●    “All the States and the Union Territories in India shall maintain a centralised database of civil registration of boys and girls being born. 
●    The information shall be displayed on the website & it shall contain birth information for each District, Municipality, Corporation or Gram Panchayat.
●    The apex court also directed that the states and UTs which do not have any incentive schemes for the girl child shall frame the same.
 

NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission on 5 November 2016 set the Guinness world record for highest altitude fix of a Global Positioning System (GPS) signal at 70000 kilometers above the surface of the Earth.
●    It was launched to understand the causes of magnetic reconnection for understanding phenomena of auroras on Earth, flares on surface of sun, and areas surrounding black holes. 
●    It was designed to gather information about the microphysics of energetic particle acceleration and turbulence, processes that occur in many astrophysical plasmas. 
●    When these four satellites were closest to Earth, they moved up to 35405 km/hour, making them the fastest known operational use of a GPS receiver. 
●    These satellites operated in a highly elliptical orbit around Earth and incorporated GPS measurements into their precise tracking systems. 
●    Earlier in 2016, MMS achieved the closest flying separation of a multi-spacecraft formation with only 7.2 km between the four satellites. 
●    The mission in its first year of prime mission gave scientists the new insight into Earth’s magnetosphere.

Facebook Inc said on Monday, it was testing a feature that would let page administrators create job postings and receive applications from candidates, a move that could pressure LinkedIn Corp's recruiting business. 
●    LinkedIn makes most of its revenue from job hunters and recruiters who pay a monthly fee to post resumes and connect with people on what's often known as the social network for business. 
●    With Facebook's jobs features, companies could drive more traffic to their Facebook pages while allowing them to pay the social network to get their job openings in front of more candidates. 
●    In October, Facebook launched Marketplace to allow people to buy and sell items locally as the social media network tries new ways to keep its users engaged.
●    Facebook (stylized as facebook) is an American for-profit corporation and online social media and social networking service based in Menlo Park, California, United States. 
●    The Facebook website was launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. 
 

India ranked fourth on the climate risk index for 2017, the Germany-based independent environmental organisation.
●    Its report, published at the outset of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22) at Marrakech in Morocco, said there were 4,317 fatalities in 2015 due to extreme weather events in India with a total loss of $40 billion, making it the highest ranking country in terms of economic loss.
●    The report, the 12th edition of the Global Climate Risk Index, said: "India faced several types of extreme weather events in 2015.
●    But it said Africa is the continent that was hit hardest by extreme weather events in 2015.
●    According to the report, four out of the 10 most impacted countries globally are African. 
●    They are Mozambique (rank one), Malawi (rank three), Ghana and Madagascar (both rank eight).
●    Heat waves claimed most lives last year.
●    More than 4,300 deaths in India and more than 3,300 deaths in France show that both developing and developed countries, respectively, are impacted by extraordinary temperatures.The hardest hit countries in the period 1996-2015 were Honduras, Myanmar and Haiti.

The ball is now in the government’s court as the Supreme Court on Tuesday refrained from hearing NDTV’s petition against a one-day telecast ban — now put on hold — on November 9.
●    What is there now? We have read in the newspapers that the ban is already put on hold,” Justice A.K. Sikri, the lead judge in the Bench also comprising Justice N.V. Ramana, remarked.
●    Both NDTV counsel and senior advocate Fali Nariman and Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi confirmed the position to the Bench.
●    The court did not issue notice or indulge further in the case, which had come up for hearing as a mentioning matter.
●    The channel had filed the petition on Monday morning while the ban order was still in place. By evening, the government had made it known the ban was “on hold.”
●    Mr. Rohatgi indicated to the court that certain channel representatives had met the Minister concerned.
●    The court posted the matter for December 5.
●    The ban was imposed for allegedly broadcasting sensitive details of January’s terror attack on the Air Force base in Pathankot.