Current Affairs - June 14, 2018 Current Affairs

The Haryana government increased the upper age limit to enter into government service from 40 to 42 years. All departments have been informed to incorporate the provisions related to increasing the upper age limit to enter into the government service in their service rules, at their own level. The departments do not need to obtain the approval of council of ministers, general administration, Finance Department and Haryana Public Service Commission or Haryana Staff Selection Commission, according to a decision taken by the council of ministers on 30th May 2018.

Union Cabinet approved the proposal for grant of permission to HDFC Bank to raise additional share capital of up to a maximum of 24,000 crore rupees. The composite foreign shareholding in the Bank will not exceed 74% of the enhanced paid-up equity share capital of the bank. According to the Finance Minister Piyush Goyal, the proposed investment is expected to strengthen the capital adequacy ratio of the bank. The Cabinet also approved reconstitution of North Eastern Council (NEC). Home Minister will be the ex officio chairman of NEC and the Minister of State for DoNER will serve as Vice Chairman of the council.

According to SBI's annual report for 2017-18 Paytm tops the chart by volumes with 22% and by value it is 0.25%. ICICI has 17.1% share by value and 9.7% by volume. SBI has 19.5% by volume in January 2018 compared to 25% at the end of March 2019. Mobile-banking usage itself has seen a steep jump, with volumes soaring a steep 91 per cent to 1,871 million in FY18 from 977 million in FY17.

India stands 177th at the bottom of the Global Environment Performance Index (EPI) rankings. In 2016, the country had ranked 141 out of 180 countries. In 2018, according to the State of India's Environment (SoE) 2018 in Figures, it has slipped to the 177th position. India scored 5.75 out of 100 in air quality. The Top 3 countries on the list are: 1. Switzerland, 2. France, and 3. Denmark.

Uber Technologies Inc has hired Facebook Inc product director Daniel Danker as its head of driver product. The company is also searching for a chief financial officer who can help take the company public in 2019. The CFO position has been vacant since 2015.

Sebastian Vettel claimed the 50th win of his career and reclaimed the lead of this year's world championship on Sunday when he ended Lewis Hamilton's run of supremacy at the Canadian Grand Prix.

India and the US have agreed to hold comprehensive talks to address trade and economic issues. The decision in this regard was taken during a series of meetings, Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu had with US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. Mr Suresh Prabhu was on a two-day visit to the US.

India and China, which together accounted for almost 17% of world oil consumption last year, are working on combining their shopping carts with a view to challenging Opec's capability to play havoc with crude prices and seek better bargains from the cartel of oil exporting countries, especially its West Asian members.

World Blood Donor Day is being observed on June 14 across the globe. The day is celebrated each year on 14 June across. It is also a day to thank voluntary, unpaid blood donors for their life-saving gifts of blood. The day also strongly encourages more people to donate blood so that the donor population does not decline and patients requiring transfusion have timely access to safe blood.

An Indian-American woman, Dhivya Suryadevara has been named the Chief Finance Officer of the US' largest automaker, General Motors. Suryadevara, currently the vice president of corporate finance, will succeed Chuck Stevens, the GM's present CFO. She is a chartered financial analyst and accountant, and worked at UBS and PricewaterhouseCoopers before joining the Detroit-based GM in 2005 at the age of 25.

The Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS) developed a mobile-based application 'utsonmobile'. The 'utsonmobile' application enables booking and cancellation of unreserved tickets, issue and renewal of season and platform tickets, check and load R-wallet balance and helps maintain user profile management and booking history.

Housing finance major HDFC has been ranked as the 5th biggest public company globally in the 'consumer financial services category' on a list compiled by Forbes magazine. American Express has topped this category, while Indiabulls Housing Finance is the only other Indian company (at 13th place) on the list.

PM Modi inaugurates hi-tech command and control centre in Chhattisgarh. The centre will control and monitor online water and power supply, sanitation, traffic movement, integrated building management, city connectivity and Internet infrastructure, under one roof. The command and control centre will be managed through a GIS (geographic information system) platform, where residents can register their complaints regarding service dysfunction through helpline numbers.

President Ram Nath Kovind will launch Solar Charkha Mission on 27th of this month which will entail a subsidy of 550 crore rupees in the initial two years for 50 clusters. Briefing media in New Delhi on achievements of his ministry in the last four years, Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Giriraj Singh said the scheme is aimed at linking five crore women and self help groups to the initiative. MSME is playing a big role in empowerment of people and created a large number of employment in the country. The ministry has provided training to over 15 lakh people over the past four years through its various initiatives. The 15 new technology centres will be set up and out of these, ten will be made operational this year.

Raksha Mantri, Nirmala Sitharaman inaugurated the first Representative Office of Navratna Defence PSU Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) in Hanoi, Vietnam. Smt Sitharaman handed over the symbolic key of the Representative Office of BEL at Vietnam (VIRO) to Chairman & Managing Director, BEL Mr Gowtama MV during the Vietnam-India Defence Industry Business Meeting. The Representative Office will aim to promote BEL's exports in areas such as Weapon Systems, Radar Systems, Naval Systems, Military Communication Systems, Electronic Warfare Systems, Combat Management System and Coastal Surveillance System.

Gujarat will become the first Indian state to get completely covered under the piped gas distribution network after the ninth round of bidding, which will see a quarter of the country brought under the network. The western Indian state already has 84.31 per cent of its area under the city gas distribution (CGD) network.

Noted social reformer and founder of Sulabh International, Bindeshwar Pathak was honoured with Japan's prestigious Nikkei Asia Prize. The award was given under Culture and Community category for his significant work in tackling poor hygiene and discrimination. Launched in 1996, the award honours people in Asia who have made significant contributions in one of the three areas of regional growth; science, technology & innovation and culture & community.

French defence electronics group Thales is partnering with Microsoft to jointly develop a common defence cloud solution for armed forces. Based on Microsoft's Azure Stack platform, the "flexible cloud application platform" will allow armed forces to keep sensitive data inside their own infrastructures. Thales will integrate its connectivity and end-to-end cybersecurity and encryption solutions into Microsoft's cloud platform which is delivered as an integrated system.