GK and Current Affairs Updates

Chinese scientists have developed a new bio-artificial liver that can help patients to survive from liver failure long enough for an organ transplant. It has been developed by team of researchers from the Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences and doctors from  Nanjing Drum Tower Hospital. The bio-artificial liver is based on human liver cells and  has been designed to be attached outside a patient’s body. This liver device is based on cells taken from human fat, skin or other tissues and is reprogrammed into liver cells. It can help  to prolong lives of patients with liver failure by recovering patients’ liver functions till suitable donor livers for a transplant is found.

India, one of the founding members of the AIIB, has been elected to the board of director of the China sponsored Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank which is expected to begin loan approvals before the end of this year.The bank, however, said the Vice President the post for which India as the second largest shareholder aspired for will be selected on merit. Earlier,

Dinesh Sharma, Additional Secretary of Ministry of Finance was elected to the 12-member board for which a secret ballot was held yesterday,This will be the first board of directors for the new bank in which 57 members joined  founding members.

India’s Anuradha Roy has won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2016 for her novel, Sleeping on Jupiter, which deals with the subject of violence against women. At the  Fairway Galle Literary Festival in Galle, about 130 km south of Colombo, Sri Lanka Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on Saturday presented her the prize, which carried a cash award of $50,000 and a trophy, according to a release.

Other authors and novels in contention for this year’s prize were:Akhil Sharma (Family Life); K.R. Meera (Hangwoman) [translated by J. Devika]; Mirza Waheed (The Book of Gold Leaves), Neel Mukherjee (The Lives of Others) and Raj Kamal Jha (She Will Build Him A City).

The people of Taiwan elected their first female President a bookish technocrat who has vowed to put domestic concerns above deepened ties with China, which are increasingly seen here as a poisoned chalice.Tsai Ing-wen, a U.S.- and U.K.-trained scientist, and leader of the Beijing-skeptic Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), took some 56% of the vote to end eight years of Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or KMT) rule blighted by anemic growth and soaring inequality.

Iran has completed the necessary steps in a deal to restrict its nuclear program, meaning international economic sanctions are lifted, officials from the EU and the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said. European Union Foreign Affairs Chief said that the economic sanctions against Iran were lifted now that the country has joined the UK, United States, France, Germany, China, Russia and the EU in "the field of peaceful users" of nuclear energy. 

Among the sanctions lifted will be those imposed between 2006 and 2010 by the U.N. Security Council as it attempted to pressure the Islamic Republic to curb uranium enrichment and other activities that could also be used for nuclear weapons. Iran sees that move and the recent closure of a decade-long investigation of whether it worked on such weapons as a formal end to the allegations against it.

Delhi government will set up its first State Human Rights Commission after the Chief Justice of India expressed concern over absence of such a body in the national capital for over two decades. A senior government official said that Justice Uma Nath Singh as Chairperson and social activist Raj Mangal as the member of the SHRC have been unanimously selected by the Committee constituted to form the State Human Rights Commission. The selection committee comprised of Chief Minister, Home Minister, Delhi Assembly Speaker and the Leader of Opposition. In July 2015, the Supreme Court had asked the Delhi government to set up the SHRC within six months. The court had observed that the government had failed to appoint the SHRC despite the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, being enacted 22 years ago.
 
About HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of India is an autonomous public body constituted on 12 October 1993 under the Protection of Human Rights Ordinance of 28 September 1993. It was given a statutory basis by the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993 (TPHRA). The NHRC is the national human rights institution, responsible for the protection and promotion of human rights, defined by the Act as “rights relating to life, liberty, equality and dignity of the individual guaranteed by the Constitution or embodied in the International Covenants”.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley kick-started Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious Start-Up India mission at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi. The Start Up India mission to be unveiled on Saturday envisages technology business incubators and research parks.The Human Resource Development Ministry and the Department of Science and Technology have agreed to partner in an initiative to set up over 75 such startup support hubs in the National Institutes of Technology (NITs), the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs), the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs) and NIPERs or National Institutes of Pharmaceutical Education and Research.

About Start up India Programme
The campaign was launched during the celebrations of 69th Independence Day at Red Fort, Delhi. The initiative is aimed at encouraging entrepreneurship among the youth of India. As per the initiative, each of the 1.25 lakh bank branches should encourage at least one Dalit or tribal entrepreneur and at least one woman entrepreneur.
Under this initiative, in addition to existing systems to facilitate start-ups, loans would also be given to help people. This initiative will give a new dimension to entrepreneurship and will help set up a network of start-ups in the country.

India test-fired its indigenously developed Nag anti-tank guided missile, which can hit a target upto seven km, from a helicopter at a firing range in Jaisalmer in Rajasthan. Three-round trial of helicopter-launched Nag (HeliNa) missile was conducted on Sunday at the Chandhan firing range. HeliNa is a helicopter-launched version of Nag and has been developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) under the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP).

Madhya Pradesh and the Singapore government have signed four MoUs including one on clean energy providing for setting up a 1000 MW wind energy project in the western part of the central Indian state, 

1.The MoUs, others which deal with the fields of urban planning, skill development, and food processing, were signed at a business seminar attended by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on the third day of his visit to the Southeast Asian city-state, a state government release said.

2.The understanding for the wind energy project was signed by the state's department of new and renewable energy with Singapore's Sembcorp Green Infra Ltd.

3.The MoU on urban planning was signed between Madhya Pradesh's directorate of town and country Planning and the Singapore Cooperation Enterprise, on skill training between its department of technical education and skill development and Singapore's ITE Education Services..

4. And one on food processing between India's LT Food Ltd and Singapore-based DSM. Nutritional Products.

To strengthen the public health infrastructure and enhance access in a cost effective manner, the government has launched four new mobile health services.
▪    Kilkari
▪    Mobile Academy
▪    M-Cessation
▪    TB Missed Call initiative
These initiatives are part of the Government’s Digital India program, aimed at leveraging India’s expanding mobile phone penetration.