Current Affairs - December 25, 2018 Current Affairs

Veteran Rabindra Sangeet singer Dwijen Mukhopadhyay died at his residence in Salt Lake,West Bengal following various age-related ailments at the age of 91. Dwijen Mukhopadhyay was known for his rendition of 'Jagoo Durga' on All India Radio and he was honoured with Padmabhushan and Banga Bibhusan. He was born in 1927 and recorded over 1000 songs of Tagore during his lifetime.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Uttar Pradesh registered 236 cases against police personnel for human rights violations between 2014 and 2016, the highest in the country's total of 411 such cases during the same period. Uttar Pradesh was followed by Delhi where 63 cases of atrocities by police personnel were registered in the same period. The cases of human rights violations by police personnel include disappearance of persons, illegal detention or arrests, fake encounter killings, extortion, assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty, atrocities on scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, torture among others.

Every Year 24th December is observed as National Consumer Day with a specific theme in India. This year the National Consumer Day is celebrated with the theme "Timely Disposal of Consumer Complaints". On this day the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 had received the assent of the president. The enactment of this Act is considered as a historic milestone in the consumer movement in the country.

Sahitya Kala Parishad, Department of Art, Culture and Languages, Government of Delhi, organized the sixth edition of five-day long Yuva Natya Samaroh at Kamani Auditorium in New Delhi. The event will conclude on 26th December. It is a theatre festival of five young directors with some of the best modern, mythological as well as Parsi style drama. The festival will start with the famous and well-discussed story by Mithileshwar titled Babuji and directed by Rajesh Singh while the Parsi play Safed Khoon directed by Samiruddin (Javed Sameer), will be presented on the last day of the festival.

National Farmer's Day (NFD) was celebrated throughout the country to acknowledge the role of farmers in India's socio-economic development and to mark the birth anniversary of Indian farmer's leader and 5th Prime Minister of India Shri Chaudhary Charan Singh. This day which is also observed as KisanDiwas is celebrated across the nation every year with the focus on the upliftment of the status of farmers. On this occasion Yogi Adityanath, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh unveiled a statue of Sri Chaudhary Charan Singh in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh and addressed a public meeting and announced the allocation of Rs. 325 crore for the development of the city and rural areas.

State-owned Punjab National Bank (PNB) in collaboration with Uttar Pradesh government launched a special card called PNB Rupay card, for Kumbh Mela 2019. It is aimed to create a model for digitization at this edition of Kumbh Mela for convenient and hassle-free transactions for the participating 12 crore devotees. This product can be used even in absence of internet.

Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh were the top three performing states under the maternity benefit programme Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY). Minister of State for the Women and Child Development Ministry Virendra Kumar stated PMMVY is a centrally-sponsored scheme under which the cost-sharing ratio between the Centre, states and the Union Territories with the legislation is 60:40. For the eight northeastern states and the three Himalayan states it is 90:10, and 100 per cent central assistance for the Union Territories without the legislation. About 51.70 lakh beneficiaries are covered annually under the PMMVY and grants-in-aid amounting to Rs 2,048.59 crores and Rs 369.31 crores have been sanctioned to the states and the Union Territories during the year 2017-18 and 2018-19 respectively.

Jharkhand CM Raghubar Das announced a Rs.2,250 crore scheme to help 22.76 lakh small and marginal farmers of the state. Named Mukhyamantri Krishi Ashirwad Yojana, the scheme will provide farmers with a yearly financial assistance of Rs.5,000 per acre for Kharif crops. The scheme will start from 2019-20 financial year.

Sahitya Kala Parishad, Department of Art, Culture and Languages, Government of Delhi, organized the sixth edition of five-day long Yuva Natya Samaroh at Kamani Auditorium in New Delhi. The event will conclude on 26th December. It is a theatre festival of five young directors with some of the best modern, mythological as well as Parsi style drama. The festival will start with the famous and well-discussed story by Mithileshwar titled Babuji and directed by Rajesh Singh while the Parsi play Safed Khoon directed by Samiruddin (Javed Sameer), will be presented on the last day of the festival.

Lewis Hamilton was awarded Drivers' Driver of the Year after claiming the 5th World Drivers' Championship. After this he became the 3rd man in history to secure the 5th world title. This was a part of vote given by the F1 management for the first time among 17 of the 20 drivers participating in the event. He was followed by Max Verstappen in the second place, Fernando Alonso in the third place.

Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu has conferred the Skoch Golden Jubilee Challenger Award at the 55th Skoch Summit in New Delhi. The Skoch Challenger Awards are the highest independently instituted civilian honours. The Commerce and Industry Minister was awarded for his contribution to reforms, particularly in the power sector reforms. A book titled 'India 2030' was also released on the occasion. For its inclusive banking and expansion in rural areas with the establishment of 35 easy payment units in Himalayan district of Leh in Jammu and Kashmir, J&K Bank was conferred with SKOCH Award in 'Banking and Finance (B&F) Silver Category'.

The President of India, Shri Ram Nath Kovind, on his first visit to Karimnagar, inaugurated the Centre of Excellence for Genetic Blood Disorders at the Prathima Institute of Medical Sciences in Karimnagar, Telangana. This centre will work on Sickle Cell Anaemia, Thalassemia and Other Genetic Blood Disorders. It was set up by Prathima Institute of Medical Sciences.

The State Minister for Culture and Tamil Development Shri K Pandiarajan announced setting up of the country's first music museum in Thiruvaiyaru, Tamilnadu. The venue chosen for the project is the birth place of Saint Tyagaraja, one of the Trinities of Carnatic music. The museum will be set up with assistance from the Central government.

ICICI Bank projected the GDP to increase to 7.4% in 2019-20. Its growth forecast for 2018-2019 is at 7.2 mainly due to slow consumption. It states that one of the biggest factors restricting growth will be the real estate and small scale units as they are yet to recover from effects of GST and demonetisation.

United States President Donald Trump announced through a tweet that Defence Secretary Jim Mattis will be replaced by his deputy Patrick Shanahan as acting Pentagon chief on January 1, 2019 the date which is two months earlier than planned. Earlier Jim Mattis, had announced his resignation on 21st December 2018 due to strong policy differences with Mr Trump especially on Trump's Syria troop with drawl move but offered to stay on for two months in order to facilitate a smooth transition. Mr Shanahan, is a former executive at the aerospace giant Boeing, joined the Pentagon in July 2017 after Mr Trump nominated him and was reportedly a vocal supporter of the president's plan to establish a sixth branch of the armed forces, known as the "space force".

21 light years away on december 22, 2018 in the constellation Cassiopeia, a shimmering "super-Earth", five times the mass of Earth, dubbed as HD219134 b was discovered. Unlike the Earth, however, it most likely does not have a massive core of iron, but is rich in calcium and aluminium alongside magnesium and silicon. It shimmers red to blue like rubies and sapphires, because these gemstones are aluminium oxides which are common on the exoplanet. According to the researchers it is one of three candidates likely to belong to a new exotic class of exoplanets. The other two exoplanets studied were 55 Cancri e and WASP-47 e. The study was published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.

On 24 December 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi released a stamp and a coin to commemorate the Paika rebellion of 1817 in Odisha. The Paika Rebellion was the first war of Independence against the British. In the early 1800s, the farming community of Odisha had risen in rebellion against British's revenue model. The rebellion of 1817 came to be known as Paika Bidroh.

SpaceX launched the U.S. Air Force's newest 'GPS III' satellite on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, USA. The solar-powered spacecraft, dubbed "Vespucci," is the company's first official "National Security Space" mission. Vespucci's nickname honours Italian cartographer and explorer Amerigo Vespucci, after whom North and South America were named. It was competed through the Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program. The successful GPS III SV01 mission marked SpaceX's 21st and final launch of 2018, beating the company's 2017 flight rate of 18 launches.