GK and Current Affairs Updates

An Indian-origin South African Ravi Reddy was on 18 September 2016 appointed as the Head of International Society for Blood Transfusion (ISBT), headquartered in Amsterdam.
•    With this, Reddy became the first person from the African continent to head ISBT.
•    The ISBT, now with 100 member countries, was established in 1935 as a platform for exchanging knowledge and advancing the blood-transfusion practice.
•    He is currently serving as the Chief Operations Officer of the South African National Blood Service (SANBS).
•    He has served in various capacities for more than three decades after starting out as a volunteer at the age of 16 at SANBS.
•    He subsequently qualified as a medical technologist with an MBA from the University of Natal in South Africa.
•    He represented the African region on the board of the ISBT between 2006 and 2012, and is also a member of the Working Party on Transfusion and Transmissible Infections. 
•    He has presented and published a large number of scientific papers.

The Supreme Court has moved away from death penalty (capital punishment) after it commuted the death sentence of a youth for raping and killing a seven-year-old girl with the Special Category of Punishment. 
•    The apex court in its judicial innovation awarded the convict 25 year jail term considering it appropriate punishment between death sentence and life imprisonment in heinous crimes. 
•    Special Category of Punishment is judicial innovation that will be veering away from capital punishment. 
•    It will be limited to a “very few cases”. In this case capital punishment will be shifted to life imprisonment without the benefit of release on remission for prolonged periods ranging from 25 to 30 years, if not more. 
•    It was formalised by a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court in the Rajiv Gandhi killers’ case in December 2015. 
•    It helps “get rid of death penalty” and addresses the genuine concerns of the society to see justice done. 

Anandi Ramalingam on 16 September 2016 assumed charge as functional/whole time director of Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL).
•    Ramalingam has assumed charge as Director Marketing. It is the first time that a woman has been appointed as the Director of the company.
•    Earlier, Ramalingam served as the General Manager heading the Military Communication Strategic Business Unit (SBU) at BEL's Bangalore Complex.
•    Ramalingam had joined BEL-Bengaluru in March 1985 after completing her BE in Electronics and Communication engineering from the PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore.
•    Bharat Electronics Limited is an Indian state-owned aerospace and defence company with about nine factories in India.
•    It is owned by the Indian Government.
•    It primarily manufactures advanced electronic products for the Indian Armed Forces.
•    It is one of nine PSUs under the Ministry of Defence of India.
•    It has been accorded Navratna status by the Government of India.
 

Amidst increasing scrutiny from investors because of falling revenue growth, micro-blogging platform Twitter has shut its Bengaluru development centre.
•    While the company has termed this a “normal business review”, the move translates into laying off of a majority of the 100-120 employees based out of Bengaluru, according to industry sources.
•    The move comes after Twitter missed revenue estimates for the quarter ended June because of lesser than expected advertiser demand, while revenue growth fell for the eighth straight quarter.
•    It has also issued a weak revenue forecast for the third quarter. 
•    Globally, the company is facing stiff competition from larger competitors like Facebook.
•    The decision is similar to that of Yahoo! India’s, which laid off about 600 employees from its research and development centre in Bengaluru, in 2014.
•    For most big firms such as Apple, Google, Microsoft, SAP and Oracle, the core development happens in Silicon valley.
 

President Pranab Mukherjee on 17 September 2016 appointed Alka Sirohi, a member of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) as its Chairman.
•    Sirohi's appointment will be effective from 21 September 2016.
•    Sirohi was sworn in as Member of UPSC in January 2012, after a long and successful career in the Indian Administrative Service (IAS).
•    Sirohi will succeed Deepak Gupta, who will be attaining 65 years of age on 20 September 2016.
•    In November 2014, Gupta was appointed as the UPSC chief, breaking away from the tradition of appointing the chief from the serving members of the commission.
•    The Union Public Service Commission is India's central agency authorised to conduct the Civil Services Examination, Indian Forest Service examination, Engineering Services Examination, among others.
•    The agency's charter is granted by the Constitution of India. 
•    The examination is one of the toughest examinations in India with success rate of 0.1%–0.3%

The Chinese and Russian navies on 19 September 2016 concluded Joint Sea-2016, eight days of naval exercises, in the South China Sea.
•    The Joint Sea-2016 was launched as a sign of growing cooperation between their armed forces against the backdrop of regional territorial disputes.
•    The exercises was conducted following a spike in tensions after Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague rejected China’s claims in the South China Sea and slammed it for causing environmental damage there.
•    The Joint Sea-2016 included ships, submarines, ship-borne helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, along with marines and amphibious armoured vehicles who will conduct live-firing exercises.
•    Tasks included defensive and rescue drills, anti-submarine exercises and the simulated seizure of an enemy island by marines from both sides.
•    Compared with previous years, the 2016 drill focused more on confrontational capacity such as surface warships, submarines and land-based defences. 
•    It was also the first time the China-Russia joint exercise had been held in the South China Sea.

A team of researchers from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) created a three-dimensional lung, called as organoids, to study diseases, including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
•    The organoids resemble sections of human lungs instead of just cells.
•    The study was published in the journal Stem Cells Translational Medicine.
•    The researchers used stem cells taken from actual adult human lungs to coat tiny sticky hydrogel beads.
•    The beads eventually grew and self-assembled to envelope the hydrogel beads, which were all placed inside linked wells.
•    The resulting structure produced evenly distributed three-dimensional patterns consistent with actual air sacs like those in human lungs.
•    Inside each well, the lung cells grew around the beads, which linked them and formed an evenly distributed three-dimensional pattern.
•    To show that these tiny organoids mimicked the structure of actual lungs, the researchers compared the lab-grown tissues with real sections of human lung.

Indian shooters clinched seven medals, including three gold, on the opening day of the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) Junior World Cup for pistol, rifle and shotgun at Gabala in Azerbaijan.
•    A total of 279 junior athletes, representing 27 countries, are battling it out in 18 events.
•    Subhankar Pramanick clinched gold medal in 50-metre rifle prone event. The Indian shot 205.5 overall to finish top of the podium. 
•    Czech Republic's Filip Nepejchal (205.2) followed in second position, while Romania's Dragomir Iordache (185.1) was placed third at the end of the finals.
•    Subhankar, along with team-mates Fateh Singh Dhillon and Ajaey Nithish, also helped the Indian team to win a silver in the event.
•    Sambhaji Patil won the junior men's 25-metre standard pistol event by shooting 562 to easily beat Australians Sergei Evglevski and James Ashmore.
•    Sambhaji along with compatriots Gurmeet and Rituraj Singh helped India to win the team gold. 
•    The other medals won by India on the day included a silver in the junior men's team rifle prone and two bronze medals.
•    In the year's first Junior World Cup in May 2016 at Suhl, Germany, the Indians had finished fourth with an overall tally of three gold, four silver and three bronze medals.

Hearing-impaired Indian shooter Priyesha Deshmukh on 14 September 2016 won the bronze medal in her first-ever international competition at the first World Deaf Shooting Championships.
•    The Championships was held in Kazan, Russia from 7 September to 15 September 2016.
•    Deshmukh won the bronze in the 10m air rifle category.
•    The shooter won the medal after scoring 180.4 points.
•    Deshmukh had qualified for the medal round after scoring 404.9 in the qualification round.
•    Deshmukh has been winning national gold in her the handicapped category since last three years. However, the World Deaf Shooting Championships is her maiden international participation.
•    Ukraine's Svitlana Yatsenko won the gold in the Championships while Serbia's Gordana Mikovic clinched the silver.
 

The latest Lancet series on maternal health reveals that nearly one quarter of babies worldwide are still delivered in the absence of a skilled birth attendant. 
•    Further, one-third of the total maternal deaths in 2015 happened in India, where 45,000 mothers died during pregnancy or childbirth while Nigeria shouldered the maximum burden of 58,000 maternal deaths.
•    Each year, about 210 million women become pregnant and about 140 million newborn babies are delivered. 
•    Ahead of the U.N. General Assembly, The Lancet has published a new series of papers on maternal health which reveal that while progress has been made in reducing maternal mortality globally, differences remain at international and national levels. 
•    For instance, 40.5% of all births are now by caesarean section in Latin America and the Caribbean,” stated one paper.
•    The authors of the series identify five key priorities that require immediate attention in order to achieve the global target of a maternal mortality ratio of less than 70 per 1,00,000 live births.