GK and Current Affairs Updates

Internet search engine Google and Tata Trusts’ joint initiative Internet Saathi was launched on 8 June 2016 in Kolkata, West Bengal.
•    The initiative aims at reducing the digital gender gap in rural areas of India such as Purulia, where girls have now been trained to use the Internet and teach others in turn.
•    Internet Saathi had been successfully launched in five states. In July 2015, it began in four more states including West Bengal.
•    About Internet Saathi - Internet Saathi aims at empowering women and their communities by providing basic training on the usage and benefits of the internet.
•    The programme is driving a meaningful impact in improving the lives of women and their communities in rural India.
•    It focuses on training women in rural India to explore the various uses of Internet, who then impart training to the larger rural community in their own and neighbouring villages.
•    Google helps in training the Saathi’s and provides data enabled devices along with the training material.
•    On ground training classes is conducted by involving self help group federations and local NGO members who are supported by Tata Trusts on-ground network.
•    In the last ten months, the initiative has been active in villages across five states in India, namely Rajasthan, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

An international team of astrophysicists discovered a new optical Einstein ring called Canarias Einstein Ring. Einstein Ring is a distorted image of a galaxy, the source, which is very distant from the Earth.

•    The rare phenomenon was discovered in the Sculptor constellation, IAC J010127-334319, in the vicinity of the Sculptor Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy.
•    The discovered new source of galaxy (Einstein Ring) is an almost complete ring with an angle of 300 degree having a diameter of 4.5 arcsec.
•    The discovered optical Einstein Ring shows two perfectly aligned galaxy, namely source galaxy and lens galaxy.
•    The source galaxy is 10000 million light years away from Earth and it appears as a blue galaxy populated by young stars began to evolve. The young stars were forming at a high rate.
•    The lens galaxy is 6000 million light years away from Earth and is more evolved, however, its stars have almost stopped forming, and its population is old.
•    Confirmation of the object was obtained by deriving spectroscopic redshifts for lens and source from observations at the 10.4-m Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC) with the spectrograph OSIRIS.
•    The chance discovery was made while inspecting the data taken through the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) of the 4m Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Observatory in Chile.
•    The phenomena were predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity.
•    An Einstein ring is a distorted image of a very distant galaxy, which is termed the source.
•    The ring is an illusion created by chance alignment of two galaxies.
•    The distortion is produced by the bending of the light rays from the source due to a massive galaxy, termed the lens, lying between it and the observer.
•    The strong gravitational field produced by the lens galaxy distorts the structure of space-time in its neighborhood, and it not only attracts objects which have a mass, but also bends the paths of light.
•    This change in alignment of two galaxies and the consequent bending of light rays create an illusion in the form of Einstein Ring.
•    Studying Einstein Ring gives relevant information about the composition of the source galaxy, and also about the structure of the gravitational field and of the dark matter in the lens galaxy.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on 8 June 2016 announced that a new Indian Reserve Battalion in Rajasthan will be named after Maharana Pratap. 
The battalion will be named as Maharana Pratap reserve battalion.
•    Maharana Pratap, a Rajput ruler who had fought against the Mughals and never bowed before them, is attributed as the greatest warrior of the Mewar region.
•    The announcement was made at a programme attended by Rajnath Singh during his two-day visit to the state.  
•    The decision was taken on the request of Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje.
•    The government introduced the scheme of Indian Reserve Battalions in 1971 and so far, 153 battalions have been sanctioned to various states.
•    Besides, the union government also announced setting up of a global center for counter terrorism at Sardar Patel University of Police, Security and Criminal Justice at Jodhpur.

India and the United States (US) on 8 June 2016 signed eight agreements in various fields including exchange of Terrorist Screening Information, cooperation on Energy Security, Clean Energy and Climate Change among others.
•    Technical Arrangement concerning Unclassified Maritime Information Sharing: The arrangement would allow sharing of unclassified information on White Shipping between India and the US as permitted by respective national laws, regulations and policies, and provides a framework for mutually beneficial maritime information. It was inked between the Indian Navy and the United States Navy.
•    MoU for Cooperation in Gas Hydrates: The MOU aims to increase the understanding of the geologic occurrence, distribution, and production of natural gas hydrates along the continental margin of India and in the US.
•    It was inked between the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and the Department of Energy of the United States.
•    Information Exchange Annex (IEA) to the Master Information Exchange Agreement concerning Aircraft Carrier Technologies: IEA is aimed to enhance data and information sharing specific to aircraft carriers technology between India and the US.
•    It was finalized between the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Defense of the United States.
•    Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement: The agreement is aimed at facilitating mutual logistic support between India and the US for authorized port visits, joint exercises, joint training and HA-DR (humanitarian assistance and disaster relief).
•    It was finalized between the Ministry of Defence, Government of India and the Department of Defense of the United States.
•    Apart from signing of the MoUs/agreements, the two leaders, Modi and Obama also issued a joint statement in which US recognized India as a major defence partner. Under this, US will allow India to buy more advanced and sensitive technologies. 
•    This move will also complement India’s entry into the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). MTCR is an exclusive club that restricts trade in sensitive defence technologies.
•    The US also declared that it will be its “strong objective to have India voted as a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), another export control regime, later in June 2016.

Researchers at Assam Agricultural University have developed two rice varieties, namely Ranjit Sub-1 and Bahadur Sub-1. 
•    These rice varieties were developed to get better yields under submerged conditions in state mainly Barak Valley.
•    Most parts of the state including Barak valley is prone to periodical flash floods particularly during the monsoon season.
•    These are ideally suited for such submerged areas in the khariff season.
•    These new rice variants are improved forms of the Ranjit and Bahadur varieties which the farmers of the state have been using for years.
•    An additional gene has been incorporated in the new variants which ensure productivity even if the crops remain submerged during flash floods.
•    Assam is a state in northeastern India known for its wildlife, archeological sites and tea plantations. In the west, Guwahati, Assam’s largest city ,features silk bazaars and the hilltop Kamakhya Temple. 
•    Umananda Temple sits on Peacock Island in the Brahmaputra river. The state capital, Dispur, is a suburb of Guwahati. The ancient pilgrimage site of Hajo and Madan Kamdev, the ruins of a temple complex, lie nearby.

Akhil Sharma has won the world’s richest award for a single novel.
•    Sharma’s Family Life, a mostly autobiographical novel that tells of how a family moves from Delhi to New York, where the older brother has an accident that leaves him brain-damaged and in need of 24-hour care, was named winner of the International Dublin literary award.
•    The India-born American writer describes the almost 13 years it took him to write Family Life as “a nightmare – like chewing stones, chewing gravel”.
•    Sharma’s immediate intentions for his €100,000 cheque include grand and ordinary ambitions. 
•    The Irish prize is unusual in that contenders, which must be published in English or English translation, are nominated by public libraries from around the world, with Family Life put forward by the India International Centre library in New Delhi and by Jacksonville public library in the US. 
•    It was one of 160 titles up for the prize, with nominations spanning 43 countries. 

For building a phone "that can understand almost any language", an Indian software engineer has found a place in Time magazine's 2016 list of “Next Generation Leaders”. 
•    He is Umesh Sachdev.
•    His new telephone allows the user to use internet almost in any language. 
•    Thirty-year-old Sachdev is co-founder and CEO of Uniphore Software Systems since 2008. 
•    The other co-founder is Ravi Saraogi. 
•    The Chennai-based startup produces software that allows people to interact with their phones and access services such as online banking by communicating in their native languages, Time said in its profile on Sachdev.

•    Prior to Uniphore, Umesh co-founded Singularis Technologies, whose Mobile Theft Security product received global recognition. 
•    In 2009, Umesh was identified as an innovative entrepreneur by the Ministry of Science and Technology’s Technopreneur Promotion Programme (TePP), according to his profile in Uniphore.
•    Through the software, Sachdev is building bridges and helping “hundreds of millions of people cross the divide between the digital and the real world by harnessing the power of speech.

The economist Pedro Pablo Kuczynski have won the majority of votes in Peru's cliff-hanger presidential election.
•    The electoral commission said he received 50.12% of votes, against 49.88% for his rival, Keiko Fujimori.
•    About 50,000 ballots must first be settled by an electoral court before a winner can be officially declared.
•    This has been the tightest fought election in Peru in five decades.
•    As the last few votes were counted, the candidates remained neck-and-neck, with Mr Kuczynski leading by a tiny margin.
•    The closeness of the result came as a surprise after polls in the run-up to the election had suggested Ms Fujimori had a comfortable lead.
•    Analysts said corruption scandals in Ms Fujimori's Popular Force Party may have dented her support since April, when she comfortably won the first round of voting.
•    She is the daughter of Peru's former President, Alberto Fujimori, who is in jail for crimes against humanity.
•    'Promoting economic growth'
•    Mr Kuczynski, who is an ex-Wall Street financier, said he would use his international financial experience to promote economic growth.
•    He has the support of prominent figures such as Nobel-Prize-winning novelist Mario Vargas Llosa and left-wing candidate Veronika Mendoza, who came third in the first round of voting.
•    But he has faced scrutiny over his close relationship to Peru's business elite.

India has signed loan agreement of US 12 crore dollars with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to improve irrigation and water management infrastructure in Odisha.
On 7 June 2016 India signed loan agreement of 12 crore ($120 million) US dollars with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to improve irrigation and water management infrastructure in Odisha.
•    The financing will be used for modernizing seven irrigation subprojects resulting in improved irrigation in over one lakh hectares.
•    It will also help in strengthening of Water User Associations (WUAs) and the institutional capacity of Odisha’s Department of Water Resources.
•    The project aims to improve existing irrigation infrastructure, operation and maintenance, and water use efficiency that will lead to higher agricultural productivity.
•    The selected areas for the investment program are the Baitarani, Brahmani, Budhabalanga, and Subernarekha river basins and part of the Mahanadi delta.
•    The loan is the second tranche of a 157.5 million dollar financing facility under the Orissa Integrated Irrigated Agriculture and Water Management Investment Program.
•    The second tranche loan from ADB’s ordinary capital resources has a 20-year term. 
•    The State of Odisha, acting through its Department of Water Resources is responsible for implementing the tranche 2 activities and overall program, which are both due for completion by September 2018.

India was ranked low at 141st place on a Global Peace Index  making it less peaceful than countries like Burundi, Serbia and Burkina Faso – with violence taking a $680-billion toll on its economy in 2015. 
•    In a ranking of 163 countries, compiled by global think tank Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), Syria has been named as the least peaceful, followed by South Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.
•    On the other hand, Iceland was ranked as the world's most peaceful country, followed by Denmark and Austria. 
•    India has moved up two position, from 141st last year, but the study said the country's peace score has "deteriorated" over the past year – which means the slight rise in ranking could be due to worse performance of others.
•    India's scores for ongoing domestic and international conflict and militarization have deteriorated slightly. 
•    The country remains vulnerable to acts of terror and security threats at its shared border with Pakistan. 
•    The GPI 2016 ranks 163 independent states and territories according to their level of peacefulness. 
•    The economic impact of violence on the global economy touched $13.6 trillion or 13.3 percent of gross world product. 
•    The amount is also equivalent to 11 times the size of global foreign direct investment, it added.