GK and Current Affairs Updates

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has inked a MoU with Advertising Standard Council of India (ASCI) to check misleading advertisements in the food and beverages sector.
•    This partnership between FSSAI and ASCI will put in place a mechanism to monitor misleading advertisements. 
•    It will also lead to streamlining advertisements effectively through structured guidelines and appropriate action. 
•    As part of the MoU, ASCI will comprehensively monitor these advertisements across various media. 
•    FSSAI has given a suo motu monitoring mandate to ASCI to process complaints against misleading advertisements of food and beverages.
•    ASCI will report to FSSAI, the non- compliance of its decisions for further action as required per provisions of the FSS Act. 
•    FSSAI will also redirect complaints against misleading food and beverages advertisements to ASCI, which will be reviewed using ASCI’s code and guidelines. 
•    The review will include violation of the FSS Act and regulations related to advertisements making unsubstantiated, misleading or false claims. 

India’s largest food products marketing organization Amul recently became official sponsor of Indian contingent to the 2016 Rio Olympics. 
•    Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), which sells its product under the brand Amul has inked an agreement with Indian Olympic Association (IOA). 
•    By sponsoring Indian contingent, Amul seeks to engage with youth and leverage the connection between the energy of milk and sports. 
•    In this regard, GCMMF will launch a series of advertising campaigns for milk and various dairy products to promote this association. 
•    Amul will use its famous tagline, Amul Doodh Pita hai India to cheer the Indian contingent. 
•    It also has embarked upon an “Eat Milk with Every Meal” campaign to highlight the importance of milk and dairy products like cheese, yogurt, butter, ghee, paneer, etc. 
•    Earlier, Amul also had sponsored the Indian contingent in the last edition of 2012 London Olympics games. 
•    2016 Rio Olympics will play host to the largest Indian contingent ever in which more than 100 sports persons are taking part in different sporting events.

The Argentina women’s team on 27 June 2016 won the 2016 Champions Trophy Hockey title. 
•    To win the title, Argentina defeated the reigning World and Olympic champions the Netherlands 2-1.
•    The final match was held at the Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre in London, the UK.
•    For Argentina, it was the 3rd consecutive title and the 7th title overall.
•    In the championship, while the Argentina captain Carla Rebecchi stood as the top scorer with 7 goals, Netherlands’ shot—stopper Joyce Sombroek was named as best goalkeeper.
•    In the bronze medal game, the USA defeated Australia. 
•    For them, it was the first Champions Trophy medal since wining bronze at the 1995 event in Mar del Plata, Argentina.
•    The Hockey Champions Trophy is an international field hockey tournament held by the International Hockey Federation. 
•    Founded in 1978 by Pakistan's Air Marshal Nur Khan and the Pakistan Hockey Federation, it features the world's top-ranked field hockey teams competing in a round robin format. 
•    A biennial women's tournament was added in 1987. 
•    The Champions Trophy was changed from an annual to a biennial event from 2014 onwards, due to the introduction of the Hockey World League. 
•    The 2018 edition will be the last edition of champions trophy.

The Interim Administrative Cell of the International Solar Alliance (ISA Cell) and the World Bank on 30 June 2016 signed declaration to promote solar energy globally. The declaration was signed during the visit of the World Bank President Jim Yong Kim to India in June 2016.
•    The declaration was signed by  Upendra Tripathy, Secretary of Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and Chairperson, ISA cell and Onno Ruhl, India Country Director of the World Bank.
•    Developing a roadmap to mobilize financing
•    Developing financing instruments including credit enhancement, reduce hedging costs/currency risk, bond raising in locally denominated currencies etc. which support solar energy development
•    Supporting ISA’s plans for solar energy through technical assistance and knowledge transfer
•    Working on mobilization of concessional financing through existing or new trust funds
•    The Joint Declaration will help in accelerating mobilization of finance for solar energy. 
•    The World Bank will have a major role in mobilizing more than 1000 billion US dollars in investments that will be needed by 2030 for the massive deployment of affordable solar energy.

The Railways Minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu on 30 June 2016 launched NIVARAN portal, an online system for redressal of service related grievance of serving current and former railway employees.
The Portal is developed by CRIS, the IT arm of Indian Railways, on the basis of process designed by Establishment directorate of Railway Board which deals with staff matters.
•    This new initiative is a portal for the internal Grievance Redressal of Railway Employees & Former Railway Employees. 
•    It facilitates the employees to lodge their grievances and also monitor their progress. 
•    The system would also provide facility for lodging appeal to the higher authority in case the decision is not found satisfactory. 
•    Highest controlling authorities shall also be able to monitor the progress of grievance redressal by field offices.

The Union Minister for Human Resource Development Smriti Zubin Irani on 30 June 2016 launched the Prashikshak, a teacher education portal, with a vision to strengthen District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs) and bring quality teachers into the Indian school education system.
•    For now, Prashiskshak Portal works only for DIETs, however it will cover block level institutes in the future and identify gaps at the bottom of the pyramid. 
•    Prashikshak is a unique IT initiative, a first of its kind in the country, which will contain a comprehensive database of all DIETs in the country with all relevant performance indicators. 
•    It will help benchmark DIETs to enable aspiring teachers to make informed choices about their future. 
•    It will give the opportunity to Union and State Governments to do real time monitoring of the institutions. 
•    The major users of Prashikshak will be Pre-service teacher educators, DIET principals and faculty, Policy makers at District, State Government and National Level and the General public.
•    It was established through joint collaboration between UnionMinistry of Human Resource Development and Central Square Foundation.

Renowned Marathi writer Ramchandra Chintaman Dhere passed away on 1 July 2016 following prolonged illness. He was 86.
Dhere was known for his exhaustive research in folk literature and bhakti tradition of Maharashtra.
•    Ramchandra Chintaman Dhere was a Marathi writer from Maharashtra.
•    He was born in the town of Nigade in Pune district.
•    He obtained a Doctorate of Literature from Pune University.
•    He wrote over 100 scholarly books on Marathi folk literature and culture, Marathi literature, religious sects in Maharashtra, and lives of saint poets.
•    He also composed a few poems and musical plays.
•    He received a Sahitya Akademi Award in 1987 for his work Shri Vitthal: Ek MahaSamanvay.
•    His other important literary works are Dakshinecha Lokdev Khandoba, Marathi Loksanskrutiche Upasak, Gangajali and Musalman Marathi Santkavi among others.

The first squadron of home-grown Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas was inducted into Indian Air Force (IAF) at the Aircraft System Testing Establishment in Bengaluru on 1 July 2016.  The squadron has been named ‘Flying Daggers’ 45.
•    State-run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) handed over the first two Tejas aircraft to the Air Force.
•    The aircraft will be operated for nearly two years by the squadron at Bengaluru before it is moved to its designated location at Sulur near Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu.
•    According to IAF, the idea is to have a total of six aircraft this financial year 2016-17 and about eight in the financial year 2017-18. Tejas will feature in combat plan of the IAF in 2017 and will be deployed in forward bases also.
•    All squadrons of Tejas will have 20 planes in total, including four in reserve. As per the plan, while 20 would be inducted under the Initial Operational Clearance, another 20 will be inducted later with Beyond Visual Range Missile (BVR) and some other features.
•    IAF plans to induct over 80 aircraft with better specifications known as Tejas 1A. The upgraded version of Tejas, with Active Electrically Scanned Array Radar, Unified Electronic Warfare Suite, mid-air refueling capacity and advanced beyond the vision range missiles, will cost between 275 crore and 300 crore rupees.
•    The Light Combat Aircraft Tejas is a supersonic, single-seat, single-engine multirole light fighter aircraft that uses fourth generation technologies.
•    It was co-developed by the Aeronautical Development Agency in cooperation with the Bengaluru-based Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.
•    It is built from CFC materials and has unstable aerodynamics 
•    It is equipped with a quadruplex digital fly-by-wire flight control system to ease handling by the pilot
•    It incorporates an advanced glass cockpit that comprises all the round dialed electro-mechanical instruments
•    It is fitted with the coherent pulse-Doppler Multi Mode Radar that is designed to operate equally effectively in the Air to Air and Air to Surface domains.
•    It is fitted with Open Architecture Computer (OAC)
This induction of the two aircrafts in the IAF helped in ending the three decades long wait of induction of a homemade aircraft in forces. India in 1970s conceptualised the idea of having an indigenous fighter aircraft but the actual work on the same was started in 1980s.

Indian quarter-miler Nirmala Sheoran made the cut for next month's Rio Olympics after clocking 51.48 secs in 400m at the National Inter-State Senior Athletics championships on Friday.

•    Nirmala had revealed her Rio ambitions when she improved her previous best by a huge margin clocking 52.35 secs during Friday's 400m heats at GMC Balayogi Stadium.
•    The Haryana quarter-miler today ran the race of her life as she led right from start to finish and recorded a personal best of 51.48 secs, a time that put her on the Rio bus and erased the previous meet mark of 51.73 secs held by M R Poovamma since 2014.
•    Nirmala became the 24th track and field athlete from India to qualify for the Rio Olympics after she surpassed the Olympic qualification mark of 52.20 secs.
•    Saturday's time put Nirmala fourth in the Indian all-time rankings behind Manjeet Kaur (51.04s, 2004), K M Beenamol (51.21s, 2000) and Chitra K Soman (51.30s, 2004).
•    P T Usha's trainee Jisna Mathew (53.14 secs) and Tamil Nadu's P N Souwndharya (53.85s) took the other medals of the day.
•    Chandigarh boy Pankaj Malik romped home in the men's 400m gold in 47.40 secs.

The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved the National Mineral Exploration Policy (NMEP). 
The NMEP primarily aims at accelerating the exploration activity in the country through enhanced participation of the private sector. There is a need for comprehensive mineral exploration of the country to uncover its full mineral potential so as to put the nation's mineral resources (non-fuel and non-coal) to best use and thereby maximize sectoral contribution to the Indian economy. 
The policy emphasizes on making available baseline geoscientific data of world standards in the public domain, quality research in a public-private partnership, special initiatives for search of deep-seated and concealed deposits, quick aerogeophysical surveys of the country, and creation of a dedicated geoscience database etc. 
i. The Ministry of Mines will carry out auctioning of identified exploration blocks for exploration by private sector on revenue sharing basis in case their exploration leads to auctionable resources. The revenue will be borne by the successful bidder of those auctionable blocks. 
ii. If the explorer agencies do not discover any auctionable resources, their exploration expenditure will be reimbursed on normative cost basis. 
iii. Creation of baseline geoscientific data as a public good for open dissemination free of charge. 
iv. Government will carry out a National Aerogeophysical Program for acquiring state-of-the-art baseline data for targeting concealed mineral deposits. 
v. A National Geoscientific Data Repository is proposed to be set up to collate all baseline and mineral exploration information generated by various central & state government agencies and also mineral concession holders and to maintain these on geospatial database. 
vi. Government proposes to establish a not-for-profit autonomous institution that will be known as the National Centre for Mineral Targeting (NCMT) in collaboration with scientific and research bodies, universities and industry for scientific and technological research to address the mineral exploration challenges in the country. 
vii. Provisions for inviting private investment in exploration through attractive revenue sharing models. 
viii.    On the lines of UNCOVER project of Australia, the government intends to launch a special initiative to probe deep-seated/ concealed minerals deposits in the country in collaboration with National Geophysical Research Institute and the proposed NCMT and Geoscience Australia. 
In order to implement the recommendations of the NMEP, initially an amount of about Rs.2116 crore over 5 years would be required over and above the annual plan budget of the Geological Survey of India under the Ministry of Mines. The NMEP will benefit the entire mineral sector across the country. 
1) The pre-competitive baseline geoscientific data will be created as a public good and will be fully available for open dissemination free of charge. This is expected to benefit public and private exploration agencies. 
2) The collaboration with scientific and research bodies, universities and industry for the scientific and technological development necessary for exploration in public- private partnership. 
3) Government will launch a special initiative to probe deep-seated/concealed mineral deposits in the country. Characterizing India's geological cover, investigating India's lithospheric architecture, resolving 4D geodynamic and metallogenic evolution, and detecting and characterizing the distal footprints of ore deposits, would be the main components of this initiative. 
4) A National Aerogeophysical Mapping program will be launched to map the entire country with low altitude and close space flight to delineate the deep-seated and concealed mineral deposits. 
5) Government will engage private agencies for carrying out exploration in identified blocks / areas with the right to certain share in the revenue accruing to the State government through auction. 
6) Public expenditure on regional and detailed exploration will be prioritized and subject to periodical review based on assessment of criticality and strategic interests.