Current Affairs - June 8, 2019 Current Affairs

Under the Transaction of Business Rules, the Central Government has reconstituted eight key Cabinet Committees. These include -Appointments Committee, Committees on Accommodation, Economic Affairs, Parliamentary Affairs, Political Affairs, Security, Investment and Growth and Cabinet Committee on Employment and Skill Development.

Maldives will confer 'Nishan Izzuddin' award on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is the highest award to honour foreign nationals. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will arrive in Male on the first leg of his two-nation tour to the Maldives and Sri Lanka. This will also be the first bilateral visit to the Maldives of an Indian Prime Minister after 2011.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath unveiled a 7-foot tall statue of Lord Rama at the Shodh Sansthan museum in Ayodhya on 7 June. Adityanath will also inaugurate the event to celebrate Mahant Nritya Gopal Das. The statue is made out of a single rosewood block statue which was from Karnataka for Rs.35 lakh from Karnataka. The statue will depict Kodamb Ram, one of the five avatars of Lord Ram. Kodamb Ram is worshipped in the south. The statue depicts the stage of Ram's life when Sita was kidnapped by Ravan, the demon king. The statue shows Ram alone, without Sita and Laxman.

Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare, Dr.Harsh Vardhan held a high level meeting to review the status of the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Program (RNTCP) in New Delhi. At the meeting, the ministry directed all the officials to take a necessary step as "Mission Mode" to eliminate TB (Tuberculosis). The mission includes all stakeholders to come together to make India free of tuberculosis by 2025. The ministry further suggested that innovative approaches should be taken to address TB. The slogan for TB-Free India is "TB Harega Desh Jitega".

World Oceans Day takes place every 8 June. We celebrate World Oceans Day to remind everyone of the major role the oceans have in everyday life. They are the lungs of our planet, providing most of the oxygen we breathe. The theme of World Oceans Day 2019 is 'Gender and the Ocean'.

Swiss-Italian football administrator Gianni Infantino has been re-elected as President of Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), a global governing body of football till 2023. He is a Lawyer from Valais region of Switzerland and holds Italian Nationality.He was elected President of FIFA in 2016.Prior to becoming FIFA President, he was the General Secretary of UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) since 2009.

Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal is leading the Indian delegation for the two-day G20 Ministerial meeting on Trade and Digital Economy beginning at Tsukuba city in Japan. Mr. Goyal will discuss developments in the global trade situation, WTO matters, and digital trade. He will also hold dialogue with other participating Trade Ministers on current international trade and investments. The G-20 Trade Ministers deliberations will form part of the G-20 Summit Leaders agenda in the formal discussions and will also be a part of the Summit Declaration.

Jimmy Carter, Ex-President of United States of America (USA) won the inaugural George H. W. Bush Award for Statesmanship in recognition of his contributions to relations between U.S. and China. It is conferred by George H. W. Bush Foundation for U.S. China Relations. : The award is conferred to people who have made profound contributions towards development of constructive and mutually beneficial relations between U.S and People's Republic of China.

The Indian Air Force signed a deal with Israel to buy more than 100 SPICE 2000 bombs, worth around Rs 300 crore. SPICE bombs were used by the Indian Air Force (IAF) to attack the madrasa of Jaish-e-Mohammed in Balakot, Pakistan, on February 26, in response to the terrorist attack on a CRPF convoy in Pulwama which resulted in the martyrdom of 40 CRPF personnel.

The 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup is the 8th edition of the FIFA Women's World Cup, the quadrennial international football championship contested by the women's national teams between 7 June and 7 July 2019. The Championship will be held in nine cities across France. In March 2015, France won the right to host the event, the first time the country will host the tournament, and the third time a European nation will.

As per Forbes Magazine, Jay-Z, whose real name is Sean Carter, was named as World's 1st Billionaire Rapper. The 49 years older rapper, husband of the singer Beyonce, has a wealth of $1bn (£800m). Forbes has estimated the wealth by adding various assets and then "subtracting a healthy amount to account for a superstar lifestyle".

The Agreement between the Government of India and the Government of the Marshall Islands for the Exchange of Information with respect to taxes was signed on 18th March, 2016 at Majuro, the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The Indian-Marshall Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA) was notified to the gazette of India. The agreement provides a framework for the exchange of Information in tax matters which helps in tax evasion and tax avoidance. It provides information like banking and ownership between two countries for tax purposes.

In an event organized by National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) to celebrate World Environment Day 2019, Union Minister for Jal Shakti, Shri Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, presented the awards to the winners of Ganga Quest 2019, a month-long online quiz organized for awareness and knowledge dissemination about river Ganga in the presence of Shri U.P. Singh, Secretary, and Shri Rajiv Ranjan Mishra, Director General, NMCG along with other senior officials of the ministry.

The RBI's MPC (monetary policy committee) lowered its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth forecast to 7% from 7.2% for FY 20 due to a slowdown in domestic activities and escalation in global trade war. In the April monetary policy, the growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 2019-20 was projected at 7.2% - in the range of 6.8-7.1% for the first half of the fiscal and 7.3-7.4% for the second part - with risks evenly balanced.

The 16-year old climate activist, Greta Thunberg of Sweden won Amnesty International's 'Ambassador of Conscience' Award 2019 for mobilising world public opinion global warming. She is a Swedish teenage climate activist and a fierce campaigner who began protesting outside Swedish parliament in August 2018. She skipped school every Friday demanding Swedish government take more serious action to tackle climate crisis. Her demand was soon joined by other students. She announced that she would take a year off school to pursue her campaigning.

Border Security Force (BSF) appointed as the head of its Tekanpur-based academy, the alma mater of the officers of the country's largest frontier-guarding force. S S Chahar took over the charge of the academy's director. He is the 13th officer of the cadre to have been elevated to the second top post in the organisation in the history of over 50 years. He served on both the western and eastern frontiers of the country. BSF guards the important Indian borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh respectively.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced its second Bi-Monthly Monetary Policy Rates for 2019-20 in Mumbai on June 6, 2019. The three-day policy review meeting by the six members of Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) was headed by RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das with the members Dr Chetan Ghate, Dr Pami Dua, Dr Ravindra H. Dholakia, Dr Michael Debabrata Patra, Dr Viral V Acharya. In a rare 6-0 majority, Repo rate was reduced by 25 bps under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) to 5.75 per cent for third time in a row. It fell below 6% for the first time in 9 years since September 2010.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the reconstitution of the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog. Rajiv Kumar has been retained as the Vice Chairman of NITI Aayog. Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah has been appointed as one of the ex-officio members of the NITI Aayog, along with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, and Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Narendra Singh Tomar. VK Saraswat, Ramesh Chand and VK Paul will continue as members of the NITI Aayog.

A web mapping service, Google map launched three India-First features targeted at Public transport users to access public transport quickly and easily. It stated that Google map users now can see the bus travel times from live traffic data across 10 cities, get to know the real-time train status on the platform as well as get commute suggestions that combine public transport and auto-rickshaws. The 10 cities are Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Lucknow, Chennai, Mysore, Coimbatore, and Surat.

The Haryana government Cabinet meeting chaired by the Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, relaxed the state job recruitment rules in Group B posts such as teachers and educational supervisors and Group C, D posts. As per the amendment, selection of the candidates will be purely based on the written exam, socio-economic criteria, and experience. The total marks for the post comprise 100 marks, including 90 for written exam and 10 for socio-economic criteria and experience. The cabinet decided to grant five extra marks for the first time candidates taking police exam and also decided to give 10 percent extra marks to widows, orphans and people from denotified tribes, besides those who do not have an immediate family member in any government job.