Friday, 12 February 2016

Current affairs 12 - February - 2016

1)   Pulitzer winning composer Leslie Bassett passed away on 4 February 2016 in Oakwood, Georgia. He was 93. As a master composer he was known for his lush sonorities and ecumenical instrumentation and for compositions of coaxing a vast range of tonal colours from the bits of wood and brass.
2)   Indian-origin Harinder Sidhu has been appointed as Australian High Commissioner to India. She replaces outgoing High Commissioner Patrick Suckling. She is second envoy from Australia with Indian roots after Peter Varghese who had ancestral roots to southern Indian state of Kerala.
3)   Karnataka’s flagship mobile-one governance application has won gold medal at the fourth World Government Summit in Dubai, UAE in the m-governance awards category. On behalf of state government, Karnataka’s e-governance secretary Srivatsa Krishna received the award.
4)   India’s third largest IT exporter Wipro Limited has acquired US based healthcare technology firm HealthPlan Services for US 460 million dollars. This acquisition was part of the Wipro’s traditional “string of pearls” acquisition strategy and it shall help company to strengthen its position in the US health insurance market. It will help Wipro to participate in the shift of the US health insurance industry towards a customer-centric business model as it has currently has a US 800 million dollars healthcare and life sciences business. This is Wipro’s overall 4th acquisition in the in calendar year 2015 after it had bought Denmark-based Designit, German IT consulting firm Cellent AG and US-based Viteos Group.
5)   The Union Ministry of Railways has launched 3 IT (Information Technology) enabled apps to bring transparency in Indian Railways on the sidelines of Digital India initiative. These app projects were launched by Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu at through Video-Conferencing from Rail Bhawan at a function held in Mumbai, Maharashtra.
6)   Indian-origin lawyer Davinder Singh (58) has been named as Vice-Chairman of International Chamber of Commerce Commission (ICC) on Corporate Responsibility and Anti-corruption. Mr. Singh is one of top Indian-origin lawyer in Singapore. Currently he is chief executive of the Singapore based law firm Drew & Napier. He was member of Singapore Parliament from 1988-2006.
7)   India and United Arab Emirates (UAE) have signed 9 bilateral agreements covering cooperation in the various sectors. These agreements were signed during the second day of Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi official visit to India. Some Agreements are MoU on Technical Cooperation in Cyber Space and Combating Cyber Crime: Provides common platforms for both countries for technical cooperation in Cyber Space and in the area of Combating Cyber Crime. MoU for Participation institutional investors in Infrastructure Investments: It will help to establish a framework to facilitate participation of UAE institutional investors in Infrastructure Investments in India.
8)   The Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has declared Wild Pig (sus scrofa) as vermin in Uttarakhand for a year. In this regard, MoEFCC has used its powers enshrined to it by section 62 of the Wildlife Protection Act (WPA), 1972. For this purpose, ministry has shifted protected wild pig (listed in schedule III to the Act) in the vermin category to Schedule V of the Act for period of 1 year. Background Earlier, Uttarakhand forest department had forwarded proposal to the MoEFCC to declare both wild pig and Neel Gai (blue bull) vermin. In its proposal, authorities had mentioned that due to overpopulation of these animals in the areas outside the forest, they have created havoc by harming life and property including large scale destruction of agriculture produce.

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