GK and Current Affairs Updates

Yasmin Sooka, the South African Indian-origin lawyer and long-time human rights activist, was appointed to chair a UN commission on 24 June 2016.
The commission will monitor the human rights situation in South Sudan and make recommendations for their improvement.
She will serve together with Kenneth Scott from the US and Godfrey Musila of Kenya on the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan.
The UN resolved to establish the Commission following calls for investigation into alleged atrocities by both government and rebel forces before an independent South Sudan was carved out of the larger Sudan in 2011.
•    It will provide guidance to the government of South Sudan on transitional justice, accountability and reconciliation issues.
•    It will engage with international and regional mechanisms to promote accountability for human rights violations and abuses.
•    She carries vast experience in global human rights matters.
•    At the time of appointment, she was the Executive Director of the Foundation for Human Rights (FHR) in South Africa. FHR is a grant making institution that implements programmes that promote and protect human rights. It also addresses the legacy of apartheid, to promote and advance transformation in the country and to build a human rights culture using the Constitution as a tool.
•    Earlier, she has served on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) established by former President Nelson Mandela from 1996-2001, assisting with the final report of the Commission.
•    She has served UN’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Sierra Leone from 2002-2004.
•    She was also an advisor on the UN Secretary General on accountability for war crimes committed during the final stages of the war in Sri Lanka.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday held a meeting with Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov during which the two leaders called for more security cooperation to further expand and strengthen bilateral relations.

•    During the meeting, the two leaders recalled old historical and cultural connections and discussed ways to further expand and strengthen relations. 
•    The Prime Minister, who is on a second visit to the country within a year, conveyed India’s decision to extend e-Tourist Visa to Uzbek nationals.
•    He also said India will organise a ‘Festival of India’ and an ‘Indian Trade Exhibition’ in Uzbekistan to mark 25 years of Uzbekistan’s independence and 25th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations with India. Both leaders noted that cooperation was growing in defence and an MoU on Cyber Security had been concluded. 
•    They called for more cooperation in security.
•    The Prime Minister also thanked President Karimov for support to India’s membership of SCO.

Harmanpreet Kaur has become the first Indian Women's cricketer to be signed by an overseas Twenty20 franchise, inking a deal with Sydney Thunder.
•    The signing was confirmed by BCCI president Anurag Thakur on Friday, the final day of the Indian board's working committee meeting in Dharamsala. 
•    The move is significant as it is the first official signing since the BCCI cleared the women players to participate in overseas leagues earlier this month.
•    It is understood that Harmanpreet, an allrounder and India's vice-captain, received an offer from three teams - including the Sydney Sixers, the runners-up in the inaugural season - before zeroing in on the Thunder
•    Blackwell's comments came after India recorded their first-ever bilateral series win in Australia, beating the then champions 2-1 in the T20 series ahead of the World T20. 
•    Harmanpreet contributed a 31-ball 46 in a historic chase in the series opener. She was a standout performer in a disappointing World T20 campaign for India, scoring 89 runs and taking seven wickets in four outings.
•    India captain Mithali Raj and fast bowler Jhulan Goswami were approached by the Adelaide Strikers for the inaugural edition of the tournament last year, but had to turn down the offer after the BCCI refused to grant permission.

Neil O'Brien, a pioneer of quizzing in India and leader of the Anglo-Indian community, died in Kolkata on 24 June 2016. He was 82.

•    A former member of Lok Sabha, Neil O'Brien was also a three-time nominated Anglo-Indian MLA in West Bengal and an educationist.
•    His son Derek O'Brien is an Indian television personality and Member of Parliament for All India Trinamool Congress.
•    He conducted the first well-organized, formal quiz in 1967 at Christ the King Church Parish Hall in Calcutta.
•    He has served the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) as its chairman from December 1993 till July 2011. CISCE is an all India examination body which conducts the ICSE and ISC Examinations. 
•    He served Oxford University Press, India as its managing director.
•    Being the leader of the Anglo-Indian community, he was the president-in-chief of All-India Anglo-Indian Association.
•    He also headed the Frank Anthony group of schools

The Union Cabinet on 22 June 2016 approved the establishment of Fund of Funds for Startups (FFS). The establishment of the fund is in tune with the Start up India Action Plan that was unveiled in January 2016 to boost start up ecosystem in the country.
•    Beneficiaries: It will be utilised for contribution to various Alternative Investment Funds (AIF), registered with Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) which would extend funding support to Startups.
•    Resource allocation: It has a corpus of 10000 crore rupees which shall be built up over the 14th (2015-20) and 15th Finance Commission (2020-25) cycles subject to progress of the scheme and availability of funds.
•    An amount of 500 crore rupees has already been provided to the corpus of FFS in 2015-16 and 600 crore earmarked in the 2016-17.
•    Further provisions will be made as grant assistance through Gross Budgetary Support by Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP).
•    The 10000 crore rupees corpus could potentially be the nucleus for catalyzing 60000 crore rupees of equity investment and twice as much debt investment.
•    This would provide a stable and predictable source of funding for Startup enterprises and thereby facilitate large scale job creation.
•    Employment: On full deployment, the Fund is expected to generate employment for 18 lakh persons on full deployment.
•    Execution: The expertise of the Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) would be utilized to manage the day to day operations of the FFS.
•    Monitoring: The DIPP will monitor and review performance of the fund in line with the Start up India Action Plan.
•    The monitoring and review of performance would be linked to the implementation of the Start Up Action Plan to enable execution as per timelines and milestones.
•    For India, accelerating innovation driven entrepreneurship and business creation through Start-ups is crucial for large-scale employment generation.
•    The NITI Aayog-appointed Tarun Khanna Committee on Innovation and Entrepreneurship opined that India has the potential to build about 2500 highly scalable businesses in the next 10 years.
•    Given the probability of entrepreneurial success that means 10000 Start ups will need to be spawned to get 2500 large scale businesses.
•    However, start-ups face several challenges - limited availability of domestic risk capital, constraints of conventional bank finance, information asymmetry and lack of hand holding support from credible agencies.
•    A large majority of the successful Start-ups have been funded by foreign venture funds and many of them are locating outside the country to receive such funding.
•    A dedicated fund for carrying out Fund of Funds operations would address these issues and enable flow of assistance to innovative Start ups through their journey to become full fledged business entities.
•    This would encompass support at seed stage, early stage and growth stage.
•    Government contribution to the target corpus of the individual Fund as an investor would encourage greater participation of private capital and thus help leverage mobilization of larger resources.

The Union Cabinet on 22 June 2016 approved a Special Package for employment generation and promotion of exports in Textile and Apparel sector.
The package includes a slew of measures which are labour friendly and would promote employment generation, economies of scale and boost exports.
•    Employee Provident Fund Scheme Reforms: The Union Government shall bear the entire 12 percent of the employers’ contribution of the EPF Scheme for new employees of garment industry for first 3 years who are earning less than 15000 rupees per month.
•    At present, 8.33 percent of employer’s contribution is already being provided by the Government under Pradhan Mantri Rozgar Protsahan Yojana (PMRPY).
•    Ministry of Textiles shall provide additional 3.67 percent of the employer’s contribution amounting to 1170 crore rupees over next 3 years.
•    EPF shall be made optional for employees earning less than 15000 rupees per month so that workers will be left with more money in hands.
•    Increasing overtime caps: Overtime hours for workers will not be exceeded 8 hours per week in line with International Labour Organisation (ILO) norms. This measure will lead to increased earnings for the workers
•    Introduction of fixed term employment: Since the industry of seasonal nature, fixed term employment shall be introduced for the garment sector. A fixed term workman will be considered at par with permanent workman in terms of working hours, wages, allowanced and other statutory dues.
•    Additional incentives under ATUFS:  The package breaks new ground in moving from input to outcome based incentives by increasing subsidy under Amended-Technology Up gradation Fund Scheme (TUFS) from 15 percent to 25 percent for the garment sector as a boost to employment generation.
•    A unique feature of the scheme will be to disburse the subsidy only after the expected jobs are created.
•    Enhancing scope of Section 80JJAA of Income Tax Act, 1961: Looking at the seasonal nature of garment industry, the provision of 240 days under Section 80JJAA of Income Tax Act would be relaxed to 150 days for garment industry.
•    Indian textiles industry contributes about 14 percent to the industrial production, 4 per cent to the gross domestic production (GDP) and 11 percent to the country’s export earnings.
•    The textile sector is the second largest provider of employment after agriculture.
•    The growth in this sector is of significance to achieve the objective of inclusive growth as nearly 70 percent employed are women.

Japanese conglomerate Soft Bank on 22 June 2016 named Ken Miyauchi, head of the group's Japanese telecommunications operations, as President and Chief Operating Officer (COO).
•    The appointment came after Nikesh Arora had abruptly resigned from his position after it became clear that Chairman and CEO Masayoshi wanted to remain at the helm longer than first planned.
•    Before being named as President and COO of Soft Bank, Ken Miyauchi led the Japanese telecommunications operations.
•    He held 1101230 shares of SBG as of 31 March 2016.
•    He joined SOFTBANK Corp. Japan in October 1984.
•    Soft Bank Group Corporation is a Japanese multinational telecommunications and Internet corporation.
•    It was established in Tokyo, Japan, on 3 September 1981.
•    As of 2015, Soft Bank was the 62nd largest company in the world based on a composite of sales, profit, assets and market value.

The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has been apprised of signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Steinbeis GmbH Co. 
•    KG for Technologie transfer, Germany on technology resourcing in manufacturing, including sub-sectors of CapitalGoods. 
•    The MoU was signed on 25th April, 2016 during the Industrial Exhibition Hannover Messe 2016 in Hannover, Germany. 
•    Steinbeis GmbH is leading organization for applied industrial research in Europe. It will act as a Technology Resource Partner for implementing identified projects in manufacturing. 
•    The field of cooperation envisaged in the MoU are: 

a) Profiling of specific technologies; 
b) technology road mapping for specified Capital Goods sub-sectors, 
c) assessment of technology status of Capital Goods Cluster; 
d) cooperation in events on technology; and
e) upgrading existing technology institutes / setting up Greenfield institutes in India and other technology related co-operation and collaboration. 
The MoU is a framework instrument to facilitate industrial technology projects by Indian Capital Goods Sector. The MoU will provide a platform to various public sector undertakings and Capital Goods Sector units to have easy access to capabilities and expertise of Steinbeis GmbH for identifying and plugging technology gaps. 

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on 22 June 2016 launched a record 20 satellites in a single mission from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.
With this launch of 20 satellites, ISRO also managed to break its previous record of placing 10 satellites into orbit in a single mission in 2008.
The Cartosat-2 series satellite is the primary satellite carried by PSLV-C34. This satellite is similar to the earlier Cartosat-2, 2A and 2B. After its injection into a 505 km polar Sun Synchronous Orbit by PSLV-C34, the satellite will be brought to operational configuration following which it will begin providing regular remote sensing services using Panchromatic and Multispectral cameras.
•    LAPAN A3 of Indonesia: The micro-satellite will be used for earth surveillance and magnetic field monitoring.
•    BIROS from Germany: This is meant for remote sensing of high temperature events.
•    SKYSAT GEN 2-1 from US: It will be used for earth imaging. The micro-satellite was developed by Google Company Terra Bella's SkySat Gen2-1.
•    Dove Satellites from US: it comprises of a total of 12 Flock-2P Earth imaging satellites.
•    Maritime Monitoring and Messaging Microsatellite (M3MSAT) from Canada: This micro-satellite of Canada will be used for collection and study of automatic identification system signals from low earth orbit.
•    GHGSat-D from Canada: It is an Earth observation satellite and is meant for measuring the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases (Carbon Dioxide and Methane).
•    Sathyabamasat (Sathyabama University, Chennai): The satellite aims to collect data on green house gases.
•    Swayam (College of Engineering, Pune): The satellite aims to provide point to point messaging services to the HAM (amateur radio) community.
•    Cartosat-2 along with its 19 co-passenger satellites together weighing about 560 kg at lift-off was injected into a 505-km polar Sun Synchronous Orbit.
•    According to ISRO, the total weight of all the 20 satellites was about 1288 kg.

NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope and its extended K2 mission allowed astronomers to discover the youngest fully formed exoplanet, K2-33b. The WM Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii also helped in discovery of this new found planet. Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars beyond our sun.
The finding was published online on 20 June 2016 in journal Nature.
•    The planet K2-33b is nearly 10 times closer to its star than Mercury is to our sun, making it hot.
•    K2-33b is a bit larger than Neptune and whips tightly around its star every five days.
•    It is only 5 to 10 million years old, making it one of a very few newborn planets found to date. 
•    The discovery of exoplanet K2-33b so close to its star has given the theorists new data point to ponder. They argue that the closeness of K2-33b could be explained either through the ‘theory of disk migration or the ‘theory of in-situ formation’.
•    As per the former theory, the exoplanet might have migrated so close in a process called disk migration that takes hundreds of thousands of years. On the other hand, later theory puts that planet might have formed in-situ – right where it is.
•    The first signals of the planet's existence were measured by K2.
•    The telescope's camera detected a periodic dimming of the light emitted by the planet's host star, a sign that an orbiting planet could be regularly passing in front of the star and blocking the light.
•    Data from the Keck Observatory validated that the dimming was indeed caused by a planet, and also helped confirm its youthful age.
•    Infrared measurements from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope showed that the system's star is surrounded by a thin disk of planetary debris, indicating that its planet-formation phase is wrapping up.
•    Astronomers have discovered and confirmed roughly 3000 exoplanets since the discovery of first massive exoplant 20 years ago. However, nearly all of them are hosted by middle-aged stars, with ages of a billion years or more.