GK and Current Affairs Updates

On 29th March India’s first indigenous composites sonar dome, a ship’s underwater eyes and ears, was flagged off by Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar from Goa to be delivered to Mazgaon docks in Mumbai.

•    Designed and produced by a Defence and Research Development Organisation (DRDO) lab in Pune, the sonar dome is a first of its kind in the country and has been manufactured by a composites manufacturing company.

•    Only a couple of companies worldwide have the capability of realizing such structures.
•    All anti-submDefense Minister flagged of 1st indigenous Sonar Dome
arine warfare (ASW) ships have a sonar array fitted to the ship structure below the waterline. The sonar functions as the ship’s underwater eyes and ears.

•    The sonar dome is a structure fitted over the sonar array so that its electronics and sensors are not exposed to surrounding hostile environment and has to be structurally sound as well as acoustically transparent.

•    It has been designed by Research and Development Establishment (Engineers), a DRDO laboratory based in Pune and manufactured by Goa-based composites manufacturing company Kineco.

India ranks third among countries with high number of financial Trojan infections, where cybercriminals defraud customers of online banking services, security solutions firm Symantec announced on 29th March 2016.
•    India has moved up from 5th position in 2014 to rank 3 in 2015, although global detections have dropped, Symantec said in a report.
•    The report said India has consistently moved up the rankings for countries with the most number of financial Trojan infections over the last three years.
•    Using financial Trojans to defraud customers of online banking services is still a popular method among cybercriminals looking to make a profit, it added.
•    The total number of financial Trojan detections continued to decrease in 2015, with a 73 per cent drop compared to the previous year, Symantec added.
•    Globally, the financial sector was the highest targeted sector in January with 40.2 per cent of all spear-phishing attacks, it added.
•    Users should monitor bank statements regularly for suspicious activity and notify financial institution of any strange behaviour while using their service.

Researchers at ETH Zurich, a Swiss technical university, plan to host a “cyborg Olympics” in Zurich in October 2016.
•    The university’s games will actually be open to disabled people that use an electronic prosthetic to complete daily tasks that the able-bodied take for granted. 
•    According to IEEE Spectrum, there will be races where paralyzed people will be able to use recumbent bikes using electric stimulations and others with robotic arms to race while carrying items, like a cyborg version of an egg-and-spoon competition.
•    Those with leg prosthetics will have to climb stairs and walk on stepping-stones; those with arm prosthetics will have to slice loaves of bread and open jars. 
•    A test event was held in July 2015, and 80 teams are set to compete so far in 2016 main event. 
•    Cyborg Olympic is all about promoting sports among disabled people who have an urge of playing sports with the help of electronic inventions.

The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare launched India’s first indigenous rotavirus vaccine named Rotavac to combat infant mortality due to diarrhoea. 
•    It was launched by Union Health Minister J.P. Nadda as part country’s ambitious Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP). 
•    The vaccine is being introduced initially in four States Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh (first to launch it) and Odisha. It would be expanded to the entire country in a phased manner. 
•    The Rotavirus vaccine has been developed indigenously under a public-private partnership between the Union Ministry of Science Technology, Union Health Ministry, institutions of the US Government and NGOs in India supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. 
•    The vaccine is administered orally to infants in three dose course at ages of six, ten and fourteen weeks as part of Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP). 
•    The Rotavirus is a genus of double-stranded RNA virus in the family Reoviridae. 
•    It most common causative agent of moderate-to-severe diarrhoea (MSD) among infants below 11 months age group and death among children less than five years of age. 
•    The virus spreads from person to person due to bacterial and parasiting agents that are primarily transmitted through contaminated food or water. 
•    It causes gastroenteritis after it damages the cells that line the small intestine and causes gastroenteritis. 
•    In some cases, in causes malnutrition, delayed physical and mental development among children

Indian American Nandita Bakhshi was appointed as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Bank of the West, a unit of French banking giant BNP Paribas. Her appointment was announced by the bank on 16 March 2016.
•    She will take over the roles of President and CEO-designate effective from 1 April 2016 and will assume the role on 1 June 2016.
•    Bakhshi succeeded Michael Shepherd who will take on the role of Chairman of BNP Paribas USA, the new holding company for all BNP Paribas subsidiaries in the US. 
•    Shepherd will continue to serve as Chairman of BancWest Corporation and of Bank of the West.
•    Nandita Bakshi earned a bachelor's degree in History at the University of Calcutta and masters in International Relations and Affairs at Jadavpur University.
•    A New England News 'Woman of the Year' award recipient, Bakhshi also serves on the board of the Consumer Bankers Association. She previously held several leadership roles at different top Banks in US like
•    Executive Vice President and Head of Consumer Banking at TD Bank in the US
•    Executive Vice President and Head of North American Direct Channels
•    Executive Vice President of Consumer Deposits and Payments at Washington Mutual in Seattle, now JP Morgan Chase
•    She also held leadership positions at FleetBoston, now Bank of America, as well as at First Data Corp., where she was the managing director of their mobile payments division
•    Bank of the West is a regional financial services company chartered in California and headquartered in San Francisco with 75.7 billion dollars in assets as of 31 December 2015. 
•    Founded in 1874, Bank of the West provides a wide range of personal, commercial, wealth management and international banking services through more than 600 offices in 22 states and digital channels. 
•    Bank of the West is a subsidiary of BNP Paribas, which has a presence in 75 countries with 185000 employees.

An India-born academician Surya Deva has been appointed as the United Nations (UN) Adviser on Human Rights and Businesses. 
•    He was appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) as the Asia-Pacific representative of the UN Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. 
•    Surya Deva is an associate professor at the School of Law of City University of Hong Kong. His research interests lie in Business and Human Rights, India-China Constitutional Law, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainable Development. In 2014, he was elected a Member of the Executive Committee of the International Association of Constitutional Law. 
•    Recently he had written a background paper for India’s National Framework on Business and Human Rights. 
•    He is one of the founding Editors-in-Chief of the Business and Human Rights Journal. He also sits on the Editorial Board of the Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights.

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar launched Project Salamati on Monday, making it the first state to implement the use of injectable contraceptives as a family planning measure.
•    The facility would be available free of cost at all primary health centres, community health centres, sub divisional and district hospitals.
•    Project Salamati is being implemented by Haryana health department, in association with Pathfinder International - a non-profit that deals with family planning and reproductive health.
•    The project was initially implemented in nine health blocks of four districts of the state. 
•    These included four health blocks in Palwal, three in Mewat, Kurali block in Faridabad and Khor block in Rewari.
•    This facility would be available at all primary health centres, community health centres, sub-divisional and district hospitals for free of cost.
•    An outlay of Rs 3,916.94 crore has been earmarked for health and family welfare in the year 2016-17 as compared to Rs 2,857.28 crore in the year 2015-16, thus showing an increase of 37.1 per cent.

Moving a step closer towards fee regulation at the national level, the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) has accepted the report of the government appointed committee, which had recommended a ceiling on the tuition fee charged by all private institutes for technical courses including engineering and MBA.
•    A 10-member panel headed by former Supreme Court Judge B N Srikrishna had proposed a range of maximum fees to be charged by private institutes.
•    The committee has fixed the maximum (tuition and development) fee for a two-year MBA course at Rs 1.57 lakh to Rs 1.71 lakh per annum, depending on the location of the institute. The annual fee for a four-year engineering degree (BE or B Tech) has been fixed at Rs 1.44 lakh to 1.58 lakh. It has also proposed the maximum fee for technical courses like B Arch, B Pharma, MCA and M Tech.
•    The AICTE accepted all the recommendations at its council meeting on December 11 and decided to draft a regulation on the fee to be charged by private institutes. 

•    But before that, it will share the committee’s report with state governments for their comments, and to apprise them of the additional financial burden which they will have to bear because of increased scholarships, said sources.
•    The HRD Ministry too has been requested to consult the Finance Ministry on the funds required for scholarships once the recommendations are implemented. The AICTE, however, hasn’t decided on a timeline to introduce the fee regulation.
•    The Justice Srikrishna committee was set up by the AICTE to honour the Supreme 

Court’s direction in the TMA Pai Foundation case.
•    The apex court had ruled that to prevent commercialisation of technical 

education, the fee charged by private institutes should be decided by the state 

governments until a national-level fee fixation committee gives its recommendations.

Braving the elements, a team of Indian Air Force pilots has created a national record by completing a 10,000-km paramotor adventure expedition that traversed over mountains, deserts and plains.
•    Paramotor flying, which means flying in a powered paraglider, involves open cockpit flying where a pilot is exposed to the elements.
•    The IAF's 'Skyriders' team of 14 Air Warriors led by Wing Commander M.P.S. Solanki had set out on the arduous flight on February 1 from the Kalaikunda Air Force Station in West Bengal and returned to the base on Saturday.
•    The team followed the eastern coast to Kanyakumari before turning northwards along the western coast till Gujarat. It then transited over the desert of Rajasthan, fields of Punjab and followed the foothills of the Himalayas till Jammu.
•    The team then followed a southerly course till New Delhi and resumed on an easterly course through Uttar Pradesh and Bihar before arriving at Kalaikunda," the statement added.
•    The earlier paramotor flying national record was for 9,132 km.

In a historic moment, an Indian container vessel left from Krishnapatnam port for Bangladesh, on a direct route for the first time, as a part of coastal shipping agreement between both the countries. 
•    The voyage aims at developing and facilitating coastal trade between India and Bangladesh after the Narendra Modi government revived the trade agreements signed by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1974.
•    Earlier the shipments from Indian ports being transported to Bangladesh were routed either via Colombo or Singapore.
•    With the launch of the direct service, time taken for such shipments would come down from 2-5 days.
•    Last Novermber, the two countries had signed a standard operating procedure forcommercial cargo movement aiming at easier bilateral trade conditions.
•    Various provisions were added including that the vessels from both the countries will be treated as domestic vessels upon entry.
•    Krishnapatnam port is the country’s largest all-weather, deep water port situated at Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh.