GK and Current Affairs Updates

 Bharti Airtel Ltd., India’s largest mobile phone operator, on 17 March 2016 announced the acquisition of Videocon Telecommunications Ltd’s entire spectrum for 4428 crore rupees.
•    It is the second such acquisition in India’s fragmented telecom sector after the Union Government allowed trading of airwaves in October 2015.
•    The deal gives Bharti Airtel the rights to use 2x5MHz spectrum in the 1800 megahertz (MHz) band in six licence areas, which are Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, eastern Uttar Pradesh, western Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat.
•    After the deal, Bharti Airtel’s 4G coverage will go up to 19 circles from the current 15.
•    The deal gives Airtel additional spectrum in the 1,800 megahertz (MHz) band in six licence areas—Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, eastern Uttar Pradesh, western Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. 
•    It also signals the exit of Videocon, which acquired the spectrum in a November 2012 auction, from telecom services.
•    The spectrum trading rules have finally spurred consolidation in India’s telecom sector, where as many as 11 operators are competing, driving down prices and profits, even as the high cost of spectrum is adding pressure on already stressed balance sheets. 
•    The operators have a combined debt of more than Rs.3.5 trillion on revenue of more than Rs.2 trillion.

 Federal Open Market Committee of US Federal Reserve on 16 March 2016 release an implementation note with a decision to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0.25 to 0.5 percent.
•    The stance of monetary policy remains accommodative, thereby supporting further improvement in labor market conditions and a return to 2 percent inflation.
•    And it also decided to maintain its existing policy of reinvesting principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities and of rolling over maturing Treasury securities at auction. 
•    It anticipates doing so until normalization of the level of the federal funds rate is well under way.
•    The US central bank last raised rates in December 2015, saying it expected to raise rates four times in the year 2016 but at present it expects to raise rates just twice.
•    The Committee met in January 2015 and suggested that economic activity has been expanding at a moderate pace despite the global economic and financial developments of recent months. 
•    Household spending has been increasing at a moderate rate, and the housing sector has improved further; however, business fixed investment and net exports have been soft.
•    A range of recent indicators, including strong job gains, points to additional strengthening of the labor market. Inflation picked up in recent months. 
•    However, it continued to run below the Committee's 2 percent longer-run objective, partly reflecting declines in energy prices and in prices of non-energy imports.

 Songkran festival, often referred to as the world's biggest water fight festival, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration decided to impose a curfew during the festival season that will be celebrated in April 2016.
•    The Songkran festival is celebrated in Thailand as the traditional New Year's Day from 13 to 15 April. 
•    The word "Songkran" comes from the Sanskrit word saṃkrānti literally "astrological passage", meaning transformation or change.
•    It coincides with the rising of Aries on the astrological chart, the New Year of many calendars of South and Southeast Asia. The festive occasion is in keeping with the Buddhist/Hindu solar calendar.
•    The curfew was imposed to show solidarity with farmers hit by drought. In form of solution, the Bangkok authority cut festival days down from four to three and imposed a curfew.
•    At present, Thailand is facing its worst water shortage in two decades, with 14 out of 76 provinces hit and large swathes of agricultural land at risk.
•    Thailand has entered its annual dry season, which typically runs from March to May, meaning the drought is likely to get worse.

 Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan on 17 March 2016 launched the Online Depot System in New Delhi to automate all the operations of Food Corporation of India (FCI) depots.
•    The key objective of the Depot Online System is to align with Digital India vision for transformation of food distribution supply chain in India.
•    The system, which efficiently captures data online on a real time basis, will bring total transparency in the working of FCI. Besides, it will also help in better monitoring and supervision to reduce leakages and losses.
•    The online depot system will eliminate usage of manual registers.
•    The cost of the project is estimated to be 63 crore rupees.
•    The Depot Online System will be rolled out in all 554 FCI-owned godowns by July 2016.
•    It will also be implemented in godowns owned by state-run Central Warehousing Corporation and State Warehousing Corporations as well as hired ones by March 2017.

 Beleaguered businessman Vijay Mallya has stepped down as director of Royal Challengers Sports Pvt Ltd (RCSPL), which runs the Royals Challengers Bangalore IPL franchise.
•    Amrit Thomas, newly appointed chairman of the RCSPL, will be the man in charge of the franchise and the main point of contact with the BCCI.. 
•    Mallya, who is currently in the UK, is the subject of several investigations by federal authorities in India following the collapse of some of his business interests and the seizure of several of his assets. 
•    On February 25, he announced he was stepping down from his positions as non-executive director and chairman at United Spirits. 
•    As for his association with RCB, which he bought in 2008 for $111.6 million, Mallya said he would become the franchise's "chief mentor".
•    Vijay Mallya has been the owner of RCB since 2008, with the franchise failing to win the IPL a single time. 
•    It has been five days since he left India for the United Kingdom with the allegations of being loan defaulter by various Banks of India.
•    He has 9000 crore rupees debt which need to be paid toward various Indian Banks

 Famous magician Paul Daniels passed away on 17 March 2016 due to brain tumor. He was 77.
Daniels was best known for his BBC TV series The Paul Daniels Magic Show, which ran from 1979 to 1994.
• Daniels was born in 1938 in South Bank, Middleborough, where he began his career as a magician and entertainer.
• A major turning point in Daniels' career came in 1969 when he was offered a summer season at Newquay.
• He made his television debut on the long-running talent show Opportunity Knocks in 1970.
• Later, he was given a regular spot on a show The Wheel tappers and Shunters Social Club for Granada Television.
• In 1982, he was awarded the prestigious Magician of the Year Award by the Academy of Magical Arts. He was the first magician from outside the US to receive it.
•    Daniels was awarded the prestigious "Magician of the Year’" Award by the Academy of Magical Arts in 1982, and was the first magician from outside  US to receive it.
•     An Easter special of The Paul Daniels Magic Show won the Golden Rose of Montreux Award at the International TV Festival in Switzerland in 1985.
•    Daniels was the recipient of The Maskelyne, awarded for services to British Magic by the Magic Circle in 1988.
•    Daniels was also awarded the "Great Lafayette Award" by the Edinburgh International Magic Festival in 2011.
He is also known for expertise specially in Card games.

 Eminent Shehnai exponent Ustad Ali Ahmad Hussain Khan died on 16 March 2016 in Kolkata. He was 77.
•    Ustad Khan was known as one of the best-known players of the instrument after the legendary Bismillah Khan (1916-2006).
•    He was from a family of renowned shehnai exponents. His grandfather Wazir Ali Khan, father Ali Jan Khan and uncle Nazir Hussain Khan were also renowned shehnai specialists.
•    In fact, Wazir Ali Khan was the first to demonstrate Indian classical music on shehnai at Buckingham Palace.
•    He was famously known for his innovative style and mastery over the classical and semi-classical and folk music repertoire.
•    He, along with sitar maestro Pandit Ravi Shankar, played Shehnai at the inauguration ceremony of Doordarshan in 1973. He also rendered its signature tune.
•    He was a top-graded artiste of All India Radio (AIR) and taught in the ITC Sangeet Research Academy in Kolkata.
•    His concert tours have included countries like United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, France, etc.
•    In 2010, he was felicitated with the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for his contribution to Hindustani instrumental music.
•    In 2012, he was felicitated with the Bangabhushan Award by the Government of West Bengal

 An unmanned spacecraft named ExoMars 2016 was successfully launched jointly Europe and Russia to search for biosignatures on Mars (or Martian life) in past or present. 
•    The spacecraft was launched on a Proton-M rocket operated by Russia’s Roscosmos from Baikonur, Kazakhstan. ExoMars 2016 is the first of a two-phase of ExoMars (Exobiology on Mars) program. 
•    About ExoMars program ExoMars program is an astrobiology mission of European Space Agency (ESA) and Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos). 
•    Primary Goal is to address the question of whether life has ever existed on Mars. 
•    The program comprises two missions: 
•    ExoMars 2016 and ExoMars 2018. ExoMars 2016: It consists of the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and Schiaparelli, an entry, descent and landing demonstrator module. 
•    Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO): Its sole purpose is to search (trace) evidence of methane (CH4) and other atmospheric gases that could be signatures of active biological or geological processes on Mars. 
•    TGO has 4 suites of science instruments. They are ACS (Atmospheric Chemistry Suite), FREND (Fine Resolution Epithermal Neutron Detector), CaSSIS (Color and Stereo Surface Imaging System) and NOMAD (Nadir and Occultation for MArs Discovery). 
•    It will obtain measurements of electric fields on the Mar’s surface combined with measurements of the concentration of atmospheric dust. 
•    For the first time it will provide new insights into the role of electric forces on dust lifting, the trigger for dust storms on the Martian surface. 
•    It is planned to be launched in 2018. It comprises a unmanned rover and surface science platform. 
•    The rover that will carry a drill and a suite of instruments dedicated for the exobiology and geochemistry research. 
•    At present there are two rovers functional on the Mars viz. Curiosity and Opportunity which were sent by NASA, the federal space agency of United States.

 British mathematician Sir Andrew Wiles on 15 March 2016 was named as the winner of the 2016 Abel Prize by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters in Oslo.
•    Wiles won the award for solving a centuries-old hypothesis, Fermat's Last Theorem.
•    Crown Prince Haakon will present the award to Wiles in May 2016 for an achievement that the academy described as an epochal moment for mathematics.
•    Sir Andrew John Wiles is a Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford, specialising in number theory.
•    He is most notable for proving Fermat's Last Theorem.
•    He earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1974 at Merton College, Oxford, and a PhD in 1980 at Clare College, Cambridge.
•    In 1985–86, he was a Guggenheim Fellow at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques near Paris and at the École Normale Supérieure.
•    From 1988 to 1990, he was a Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford. He rejoined Oxford in 2011 as Royal Society Research Professor.
•    In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem states that no three positive integers a, b, and c satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than two. The cases n = 1 and n = 2 are known to have infinitely many solutions since ancient times.
•    The theorem was first conjectured by Pierre de Fermat in 1637.
•    However, the first successful proof was released in 1994 by Andrew Wiles. It was formally published in 1995, after 358 years of effort by mathematicians.
•    It is among the most notable theorems in the history of mathematics and prior to its proof it was in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most difficult mathematical problem.
•    The Abel Prize is a Norwegian prize awarded annually by the Government of Norway to one or more outstanding mathematicians.
•    It is named after Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel.
•    The award was established in 2001 by the Government of Norway.
•    It comes with a monetary award of 6 million Norwegian kroner.
•    The Abel Prize is described as the mathematician's Nobel Prize.
•    John F. Nash, Jr. And Louis Nirenberg were the winners of the 2015 Abel Prize.

 The International Labour Organisation (ILO) on 14 March 2016 announced that around 90 percent of domestic workers in the world are excluded from social protection.
•    It was revealed by the ILO in its Social Protection Policy Paper 16 entitled Social protection for domestic workers: Key policy trends and statistics.
•    Highlights of Social Protection Policy Paper 16
•    60 million of the world’s 67 million domestic workers still do not have access to any kind of social security coverage.
•    The vast majority of domestic workers are women, accounting for 80 per cent of all workers in the sector globally.
•    Most of their work is undervalued and unprotected. When domestic workers become old or injured, they are fired, without a pension or adequate income support.
•    As female workforce highly subject to social and economic vulnerability, policies to extend social protection to domestic workers are key elements in the fight against poverty and the promotion of gender equality.
•    The largest gaps in social security coverage for domestic work are concentrated in developing countries, with Asia and Latin America representing 68 per cent of domestic workers worldwide.
•    The study revealed that social protection deficits for domestic workers also persist in some industrialized countries.
•    In Italy, for example, some 60 per cent of domestic workers are not registered with, or contributing to, social security systems.
•    In Spain and France, 30 per cent of domestic workers are excluded from social security coverage.
•    It cautioned that migrant domestic workers – currently estimated at 11.5 million worldwide – often face even greater discrimination.
•    Around 14 per cent of countries whose social security systems provide some type of coverage for domestic workers do not extend the same rights to migrant domestic workers.
•    Apart from mandatory coverage, the strategies to protect them should include fiscal incentives, registration plans, awareness-raising campaigns targeting domestic workers and their employers as well as service voucher mechanisms.
•    Domestic work should also be integrated into broader policies aimed at reducing informal work.
•    The coverage of domestic workers by social security schemes is feasible and affordable, including in lower middle and low-income countries, as evidence from Mali, Senegal and Viet Nam clearly demonstrates.