Current Affairs - December 7, 2017 Current Affairs

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the Dr Ambedkar International Centre in New Delhi. There are three auditoriums and an extensive library with a rich digital repository. He will also launch Dr Ambedkar International Centre For Socio-Economic Transformation. The institution will show the way and further discussions on vital issues as well as encourage research, original thinking among the youth.

Online food delivery start-up Swiggy (Bundle Technologies Pvt. Ltd) has appointed Vishal Bhatia as a chief executive officer for its new supply business. Bhatia comes with 19 years of experience in consumer goods firms like Reckitt Benckiser Group, PepsiCo and Britannia.

In order to help and rescue the people affected during Ockhi cyclone, Operation Synergy was launched which has till now successfully rescued 793 fishermen.

The government has engaged private lender ICICI Bank to enable online payments at 470 mandis integrated with the national portal of electronic National Agriculture Market (e-NAM).The target is to connect 585 mandis with e-NAM by March 2018. At present, e-NAM participants are doing payments through traditional ways via bank branches, debit cards and net banking.ICICI Bank will enable BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) on the e-NAM portal for making cashless payments.

To boost Digitisation, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has taken a crucial step revising merchant discount rates (MDR) charges on Merchants. Now even small businesses will start accepting payments from your Debit card through Scan and Pay. DR is the rate charged to a merchant by a bank for providing debit and credit card services. As per the new rules, merchants with revenue of less than Rs 20 lakh, the MDR would be 0.4% for Rs 200 and 0.9% for Rs 1,000. These charges will come into effect from 1 January 2018. For accepting payments via QR (quick response) code based transactions, the charge will be 0.30 percent subject to a cap of Rs 200 per transaction.

The United States of America recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. It's a move that upends decades of U.S. policy, was the announcement made by the U.S President Donald Trump which invited lots of criticism but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu termed this as 'historic day' for Israel. The Israeli leader says his country will continue to work with the president and his team to make that dream of peace come true.

Retirement fund body Employees' Provident Fund Organisation, EPFO opened a new facility for its over 4.5 crore members that will allow consolidation or merger of their multiple PF accounts with the current Universal Account Number, UAN. Under this facility, subscribers of the EPFO can merge as many as 10 previous accounts with their UAN at one go. The EPFO has made it easy with this facility with an objective of having one employee, one EPF account.

Uttarakhand government has signed an MoU with IT giant Hewlett Packard to provide tele-medicine facilities in the remote areas of the state. The company will create tele-medicine facilities at four Community Health Centres under the MoU signed in the presence of Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat. The MoU is part of the state government's ongoing efforts to boost health facilities in the hills.

India and Cuba signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for enhanced cooperation in the health sector, here today. Shri J P Nadda, Union Minister of Health & Family Welfare and Dr Roberto Tomas Morales Ojeda, Public Health Minister of Cuba signed the MoU in the presence of senior officers from the Health Ministry and a high level delegation from Cuba.

Flag Day of India is a day dedicated to India towards collection of funds from people of India for the welfare of the Indian Armed Forces personnel. It has been observed annually in India on December 7 since 1949. Over the years, it has become a tradition to commemorate this day as an honour to the soldiers, sailors and airmen of India.

India has for the first time submitted a formal document opposing any talks on e-commerce at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The submission comes ahead of the key ministerial conference of the WTO, where India is likely to face pressure from many countries to begin talks to open cross-border digital trade.

Caltech scientists have made the world's smallest recreation of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, the size of a bacterium, out of DNA. The technique, dubbed DNA origami, enabled scientists to fold DNA into desired self-assembling structures using 64 tiles, which were 100 nanometers wide. The team also created a life-sized portrait of a bacterium and a bacterium-sized portrait of a rooster.

Venezuela's Avior Airlines has been banned from European Union skies after a commission determined it no longer meets international safety standards. The European Commission announced that Avior had been added to a list of international airlines prohibited from flying within the union because the European Aviation Safety Agency detected unaddressed safety deficiencies.

Andhra Pradesh rolled out red carpets for South Korean Investors. The State government and Make in India Korea Center (MIC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to set up Korea Industrial Complex in the State. Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu's three-day Korea tour where he wooed industrialists to come and invest in Andhra Pradesh. As per the MoU, the Andhra Pradesh Centre will be established at Busan in South Korea. The MIC will also conduct outreach programmes in Korea for the promotion of investment and business in AP.