Current Affairs - June 13, 2019 Current Affairs

Interim President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has won the 2019 Presidential election of Kazakhstan with 70.96% of the vote. He was recognised as the elected president by the Central Election Commission (CEC) and will take an oath of office June 12. Earlier, on 20th March 2019, Tokayev took office as the Interim President of Kazakhstan & succeeded Nursultan Nazarbayev who served as the President from the country's independence in 1992 until his resignation. The President of the Republic of Kazakhstan is the head of state, commander-in-chief and holder of the highest office within the Republic of Kazakhstan.

China will enter into a trade deal with the United States, as told by US President Donald Trump. Increased tariffs on Chinese products is having an impact on its economy. China will subsidise their product because there is a need to keep people working, so China is going to pay a lot. The US has put 25% tariffs on 250 billion dollars of Chinese goods.

Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC)-owned IDBI Bank reduced its Marginal Cost of funds based Lending Rate (MCLR) by 5-10 basis points to 8.95% across various tenors with immediate effect on June 12. Against one-year MCLR most of the customer loans such as auto, personal and home loans are priced.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would visit India in June 2019 to forge relations with India. He would outline the US strategy on the Indo-Pacific ahead of his trip to India. New Delhi would be Pompeo's first stop during the nearly week-long visit to the Indo-Pacific region. The tour includes Sri Lanka and Japan with South Korea being his last stop.

Sharad Kumar has been named as acting Central Vigilance Commissioner as current (CVC) K V Chowdary completed his tenure at the anti-graft body.

Virendra Kumar, a seven-time MP from Tikamgarh in Madhya Pradesh chosen as the pro tem speaker of the 17th Lok Sabha. He was MoS in the ministry of women and child development He was also in the minority affairs ministry in the previous government. He is likely to be administered the oath of office at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on June 17, the day where newly elected Lok Sabha commences its first session. He became a member of the Standing Committee on Labour and Welfare. He served as a member and chairman of various committees. He studied a Ph.D. started his political career in 1977.

The Goa cabinet chaired by the Chief minister Pramod Sawant approved the amendment of 10 percent reservation for economically weaker sections of a general category in education and employment. The state cabinet also assured the reservation for Muslims and Christians, who are not covered under the quota. Currently, reservation for ST, SC, OBC , persons with disability, ex-servicemen having 2%,12%,27%,4%,2% respectively. The Parliament had cleared the reservation bill in January 2019 with the qualification criteria of those with income below Rs 8 lakh per annum considered as a weaker section of the society. However it excluded those with having 5 acres or more agriculture land, residential flat of 100sqm and above, the residential plot of 83.6 sqm and above, and residential plot of 167.2sqm and above.

Max Life Insurance Company launched a unique proprietary tool named 'My Protection Quotient' (MyPQ) to ensure financial protection in the country. Max Life Insurance Company is one of the fastest growing life insurance companies in India. It is a smart tool designed for individuals to provide financial protection and to promote awareness and importance of term plans in protecting the financial future of families. It helps the consumers to measure their preparedness for their life stage goals and gives protection against unplanned eventualities of life. The final output will be a quotient reflected on a scale of 100. Score from 0-25 indicates extremely poor financial protection, 25-50 reflects a poor score, 50-75 a moderate and 75-100 indicates a reasonable quotient. It had earlier launched 'India Protection Quotient' survey in association with Kantar IMRB to understand where India stands with regards to life and term insurance ownership.

Japan is planning to invest Rs 13,000 cr in the northeast region of India. Some of the important projects in which Japan will collaborate include Guwahati Water Supply Project and Guwahati Sewage Project in Assam and Northeast Road Network Connectivity Improvement Project spread over Assam and Meghalaya.

The Union Government has decided to develop Eklavya Model Residential Schools meant for scheduled tribes at par with Navodya Vidyalaya. The initiative is part of the 100 days target of the Ministry towards the welfare of scheduled tribes.

Chandrayaan-2 will be launched on July 15, 2019 confirmed Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman K Sivan on June 12. ISRO has released the first images of the moon lander. Chandrayaan-2 is India's second mission to the moon.

The Election Commission of India granted the National party status to National People's Party(NPP) led by Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma. It becomes the first Party from North East region to get this tag. With this tag, it becomes the eighth national party in the country among All India Trinamool Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), BSP, CPI, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Indian National Congress (INC) and NCP parties. It has fulfilled eligibility criteria as laid down in paragraph 6B (iii) (the party is recognized as State party in at least four States) to become a national party. It is getting status of the state party in four states such as Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya and Nagaland.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) conducted the maiden test of an indigenously developed Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle (HSTDV) along with several technologies on 12 June. The project aims to develop a hypersonic vehicle that will be powered by a scram-jet engine. The HSTDV demonstrated the performance of a scram-jet engine at an altitude of 15 km to 20 km.

Japanese auto major Nissan announced the appointment of Sinan Ozkok as the President of its Indian operations. Mr. Ozkok will be based out of Gurugram and responsible for all functions in India, for both Nissan and Datsun brands.

Facebook is set to launch an updated version of its video chat device 'Portal' later in 2019. Facebook would also reveal some new form factors, including Ripley, that Portal would be shipped with. The device is also powered by Amazon's voice assistant Alexa and comes with front cameras. It was first launched in November 2018.

The BJP has constituted its Parliamentary Party Executive Committee with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the leader of the party and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh as Deputy leader of the party in the Lok Sabha.

Indian skipper Virat Kohli is again the only Indian in the Forbes 2019 list of world's highest-paid athletes. The list, announced on June 11, 2019, is topped by Argentinean football star Lionel Messi.

India's largest software services company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has surpassed US technology giant IBM in terms of market capitalisation. As of recent closing, the market cap of TCS stood at Rs8.37 lakh crore ($120.5 billion) compared to IBM's $119.5 billion. TCS reported revenue of $20.9 billion in the previous fiscal while IBM ended 2018 with $79.6 billion in revenue.

Amazon clinched the world's most valuable brand in cloud computing, consumer tech and movie production. It is founded by the world's richest man Jeff Bezos. According to the 2019 BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands rankings, Amazon online retailer set its brand value quintuple in the past five years to reach $315.5billion. It is undertaken annually by advertising holding company WPP. The detailed study of Brand Z reveals firms financial data and draws on an extensive consumer survey to reach its conclusions.

The Reserve Bank of India constituted a six-member committee to review the ATM interchange fee structure with a "view to increase the ATM deployment in the unbanked areas". The committee will be led by V G Kannan, Chief Executive, Indian Banks Association. It aims to review the existing structures and patterns of costs, charges and interchange fees for ATM transactions. To review the overall patterns of usage of ATMs by cardholders and assess the impact, if any, on charges and interchange fees. To assess the entire gamut of costs in respect of the ATM ecosystem.