Current Affairs 12-13th Mar, 2015

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1. Rajya Sabha passed the Insurance Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2015, a legislation envisages 49 per cent FDI in the insurance sector. The new law also allows PSU general insurers to tap the capital market.

2. Ganasen Reddy, an Indian-origin South African educator, was awarded with KwaZulu-Natal 2015 National Teachers Awards at the annual National Teaching Awards held in Johannesburg. KwaZulu-Natal 2015 National Teachers Awards is a Lifetime Achievement Award for teaching in South Africa.

3. Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) will set up a new launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. It will have facilities for launching rockets meant for studying the earth’s atmosphere.

4. Former Lok Sabha member Sadashivrao Dadoba Mandlik died on 10 March 2015 following a brief illness. He was from Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and also was a member of the 12th Lok Sabha, 13th Lok Sabha and 14th Lok Sabha.

5. Reserve Bank of India has proposed to ease the authentication process for buying products up to Rs. 2,000 using contact-less cards based on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. NFC cards enable users to make payment by just waving or touching the card on a terminal kept at the merchant.

Current Affairs 12th Mar, 2015

1. International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned India about global financial market volatility that may arise from any unexpected developments in the course of US monetary policy normalisation. The spillover impact to India from any such volatility could be “very disruptive”.

2. The Railways and Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) signed an agreement under which the public sector insurer will give financial aid worth Rs. 1.5 lakh crore over the next five years to finance various projects. The financial assistance will be available from the financial year 2015-16.

3. Competition Commission of India (CCI) is investigating if banks have been acting as a cartel in fixing lending rates in recent times. It was known in response to an RTI query furnished by an activist.

4. Centre has elevated nine General Managers to the post of Executive Directors of various public sector banks (PSBs). A panel headed by Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan had interviewed 35 candidates on December 25 last year in New Delhi.

5. India has made a strong pitch to global ratings agency Fitch for sovereign rating upgrade. The current rating for India is ‘BBB (minus)’ with a stable outlook, which is the last investment grade, and a downgrade will take to it to junk grade. India has similar investment ratings from other ratings agencies such as S&P’s and Moody’s.