CURRENT AFFAIRS 15-16th Feb., 2015

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1. Centre proposes to consult state governments for the integration of Aadhar with registration of various documents across the country. This is a part of the Centre’s move to promote citizen-centric services. Aadhar would help eliminate bogus, fake and duplicate beneficiaries.
2. Cabinet is likely to give approval for Sagarmala project which seeks to develop a string of ports around India’s coast. Operational autonomy for implementation of port projects will rest with states and the port-formed Special purpose vehicles. At the top there will be the National Sagarmala Apex Committee (NSAC) to oversee and review the implementation.

3. Singapore has launched a dedicated centre - Singapore International Mediation Centre (SIMC) for the mediation of cross-border commercial disputes. This specialist centre offers a panel of 67 mediators from 14 countries to choose from. Mediation is a form of alternative dispute resolution wherein disputes are resolved without the need to go to court.

4. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is likely to announce the merger of commodity futures market regulator, Forward Markets Commission (FMC) with the capital market regulator SEBI in his Budget speech on February 28. A SEBI-FMC merger is aimed at more effective regulation of the futures market and is based on recommendations of the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission (FSLRC).

5. Indian-origin scientist Professor Srikanth Jagabathula received Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) given by the National Science Foundation (NSF) of the United States (US). He received the award for developing data-driven modelling and learning techniques to improve the accuracy of operational decision making.

CURRENT AFFAIRS 15th Feb., 2015

1. India and Russia are now “actively engaged” in developing an appropriate mechanism for rupee-rouble trade. Currently, the two-way dollar-denominated trade between the two countries stands at $11 billion.

2. India is embarked on a strategy to build seamless sub-regional transit corridors that Saarc nations collectively have failed to agree upon. First such corridor will be in the BBIN (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal) nations.

3. Finance ministry is considering using the Resolution Corporation as a code for insolvency and bankruptcy in financial companies. The corporation was proposed in the Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission (FSLRC) report. The insolvency code for financial institutes will contain a safe harbour provision, specifically for institutes contributing to the infrastructure of the financial markets in India.

4. Book titled Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me written by Vinod Mehta was published by Penguins India. Vinod Mehta is a veteran journalist and was Editor-in-Chief of Outlook weekly magazine until February 2012.

5. Climate change negotiations at Geneva ended with more than 190 countries adopting the first draft of a negotiating text for the 2015 global climate change agreement. There will be over three rounds of talks that will continue till October and culminate with two weeks of top-level meeting of countries at Paris in December 2015.

6. India is now Number 3 replacing Russia in the Hurun Global Rich List 2015, a ranking of the dollar billionaires across the world. The US and China make up half of the world’s billionaires. India has 97 billionaires, 27 more than last year. Mukesh Ambani (worth $20 billion and rank 41 on the Hurun List) retains his rank as the richest Indian.