Current Affairs - February 22, 2018 Current Affairs

The Sanskriti Mahotsav "Swachhagrah - Bapu ko Kaaryaanjali" has started at the Man Mandir Ghat and Assi Ghat in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh on February 21, 2018 to celebrate the creative and cultural industries in Varanasi and to focus attention on the need for Swachhta by using cultural forms. The 2-day Mahotsav will integrate the tangible and intangible heritage along the river-belt and will see the engagement of the academia, artists, artisans, writers, poets, environmental and cultural forums on the use of cultural expressions for conservation and protection of the river and the ancient city. It will cover a profusion of art forms from classical, folk music, dance and visual arts and would offer the chance to experience the best in established and emerging virtuosity.

Union Ministry of Railways and Maharashtra State Government have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to set up a rail coach factory at Latur, Maharashtra. The MoU was signed on the sidelines of the Magnetic Maharashtra event in Mumbai. The coach factory will be set up over a land area of 150 hectares and will entail investment of Rs. 500 crore in the first phase. This project is expected to generate thousands of direct and indirect employment opportunities in Marathwada, which is one of the most backward regions of Maharashtra.

As per a report from content delivery network services Akamai Technologies, India has ranked 7th on the list of targeted countries for Web Application Attacks (WAA). It outlined that during 2017, nearly 40 per cent of over 53000 cyber attacks in India occurred in Banking, Financial services and Insurance (BFSI) sector. The attacks were in the form of phishing attempts, website intrusions, defacements, virus and ransomware. A sharp increase in the threat of credential abuse has also been found. Based on analysis of 7.3 trillion bot requests per month, it was found that more than 40 per cent of login attempts were malicious.

PM Modi flagged off the Palace Queen Humsafar Express between Mysuru and Udaipur in the Mysuru Railway Station. The train between Mysuru and Udaipur will act as a backbone of tourism, an employment generating industry. Both the Mysuru Palace and Udaipur palace are iconic tourist attractions and this special train will create a new tourist circuit connecting North India and the South.

Uttar Pradesh's Khadi and Village Industries Board signed a pact with Amazon India to facilitate online selling of Khadi products. As part of a MoU, Amazon India will educate, train and enable rural khadi artisans to directly sell their products to Amazon.in customers across the country under the brand of UP Khadi.

Pakistan has been granted a 3 month reprieve by the Financial Action Task Force to be placed on a terror-financing watch-list. The reprieve comes a week after Pak amended its anti-terror laws to ban groups listed as terrorists by the United Nations. Pakistan had been on the FATF watchlist for years but was removed in 2015 following "significant progress" in meeting the demands of the group.

Uma Bharati, the Union minister of Drinking Water and Sanitation, has launched the Bagori Ganga Gram project, New Swajal Project at Bagori and Gangotri Iconic Place at Dunda village in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand on February 20, 2018. Besides creating cleanliness, providing basic amenities to the people of Ganga bank villages, these projects would also generate employment. The Open Defecation Free (ODF) village Bagori is one of the 24 pilot Ganga Villages picked up to be transformed into Ganga Grams this year. Swajal is a community owned drinking water programme for sustained drinking water supply.

Union Cabinet approved six rail projects in 4 states for new lines as well as doubling and electrification of tracks. Esitamted cost for executing all these projects is Rs 11661. As per Indian Railways, these projects would generate more than 200 lakh person days of employment in Uttar Pradesh and three other states. Projects that have been approved include doubling and electrification projects of 425 km-long Jhansi-Manikpur and Bhimsen-Khairar lines covering districts of Jhansi, Mahoba, Banda, Chitrakut Dham in Uttar Pradesh and Chhatarpur in Madhya Pradesh. Doubling with electrification of the 116.95 km-long Bhatni-Aurnihar line covering the districts of Deoria, Ballia, Mau and Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh has also been approved.

The Union Cabinet has approved the creation of National Urban Housing Fund (NUHF) with Rs 60,000 crore in its kitty. The fund will be situated in Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. The Ministry has so far sanctioned 39.4 lakh houses under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban).

The Gandhi Nagar railway station in Jaipur, Rajasthan became railway station to be fully-managed by women. Gandhi Nagar is an important railway station in Jaipur situated on the Jaipur-Delhi rail route. The station has a footfall of more than 7,000 passengers every day. There are 40 women staff at the station beside women personnel of the railway protection force have been deployed at the station.

India & Russia have decided to strengthen practical cooperation to prevent misuse of info & communication technologies to fight against its use in criminal & terrorist activities. To prevent possibilities of conflict appropriate mechanism for ensuring security in use of ICT should be put in place. Both sides reiterated the intention to strengthen cooperation in info sharing & capacity building.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has constituted a new 5-member expert Committee under the chairmanship of Y H Malegam, a former member of the Central Board of Directors of RBI, to look into the reasons for wide divergence by banks in asset classification and provisioning by banks and measures to prevent frauds. The committee will also look into the issue of huge non-performing asset divergences - between what banks classify and what is detected in RBI inspection - and recommend steps to address the issue. The other members of the committee are Bharat Doshi, S. Raman and Nandkumar Saravade. A.K. Misra, Executive Director of RBI, will be the Member-Secretary of the committee.

In the Corruption Perception Index for 2017, India was ranked at the 81st place with a score of 40. Among the neighbouring countries, Pakistan was ranked at the 117th place with a score of 32, Bangladesh at 143th (score of 28), Myanmar at 130th (score 30) and Sri Lanka 91st (score 38). India has been ranked worse than China and Bhutan in terms of 'corruption perception', but fares better than its other neighbours including Pakistan and Bangladesh, as per a global list released by graft watchdog Transperency International. New Zealand and Denmark have topped the list, while Syria, South Sudan and Somalia have been ranked the lowest with scores of 14, 12 and 9 respectively.

Agriculture Minister affairs Radha Mohan Singh launched six new features in the National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) platform to make it more user-friendly. The six new features of e-NAM platform includes- 1. MIS dashboard for better analysis, 2. BHIM payment facility by traders, 3. Mobile payment facility by traders, 4. Enhanced features on mobile app such as gate entry and payment through mobile, 5. Integration of farmer's database, and 6. e-Learning module. e-NAM was launched in 2016 with the objective of providing competitive and remunerative price to farmers for their products through an online competitive bidding process. Currently, 479 mandis across 14 states and 01 union territory are covered under it.

A three -day India International Textiles Expo (IITExpo) of India began in Sri Lankan capital of Colombo. It is being organized by Powerloom Development & Export Promotion Council (PDEXCIL) with the support of Union Ministry of Textiles & Ministry of Commerce & Industry. The event was inaugurated by Sri Lankan minister of Special Assignments Dr. Sarath Amunugama. At the event, about 45 exhibitors from various textile clusters of India displayed a variety of fabrics, home textiles, traditional items etc. suitable for apparel, industrial, technical application and general consumers.

The Telangana Government signed an MOU with Taoyuan City of Taiwan for better technology partnership in the state. The agreement was signed after the World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT) 2018 in Hyderabad. IT Minister K T Rama Rao and principal secretary Jayesh Ranjan signed the agreement with Robert Huang, Director of the Board of Taiwan company at World IT Congress 2018.