Current Affairs September 2017

1. Current Affairs
September 1
Anirudh Reddy

2. India

3. CSIR - Council of Scientific and Industrial
Research (CSIR)
 9th rank - Public Research Institution of the World
 75th - overall global ranking
 Scimago Institutions ranking World Report 2017
 1)Chinese Academy of Sciences.
 2) Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France.
 3) Helmholtz Gemeinschaft and Max Planck Gesellschaft in Germany

4. Cabinet reshuffle
 Nirmala Sitharaman – defence - first full time independent women defence
minister
 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi held the defence portfolio as an additional charge
 Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore was appointed the new sports minister
 first sportsperson to become the head of the Sports Ministry

5. Ancient Buddhist site from 1st century
 Guntur dist., discovered in Andhra Pradesh

6. Karnataka to give free education to all girls
till graduation
 Class 1 to graduation level in all public and aided private schools and colleges
 main objective is to provide free education to underprivileged girls who generally
drop out of school after Class 10, especially in rural areas

7. SAUNI Scheme
 Saurashtra Narmada Avataran Irrigation (SAUNI)
 Fill 115 dams of Saurashtra by overflowing water from Sardar Sarovar Dam on
Narmada River
 pipe canals
 President laid the foundation for Link-4 pipeline canal

8. Health Ministry launches two new
contraceptives
 injectible MPA (Medroxyprogesterone Acetate) , pill ‘Chhaya’
 Antara(injectable) is effective for three months and Chayya (pill) works for one
week

9. HDFC Bank is now ‘Too big to fail’
 RBI included HDFC Bank in the list of domestic systemically important ban(D-SIB)
 SBI and ICICI
 higher levels of supervision
 to prevent disruption in financial services in the event of any failure.

10. renaming
 West Bengal to Bangla
 Mughalsarai railway station near Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh renamed after RSS
ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyaya
 Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus  Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus
 Elphinstone Road Station in Mumbai  Prabhadevi
 Bangalore City Railway stationKrantivira Sangolli Rayanna
 Mhow railway station in Indore district of Madhya Pradesh  B R Ambedkar

11. Edinburgh Military Tattoo
 series performance of music
 by British Armed Forces, Commonwealth and international military bands
 Edinburgh Castle in Scotland
 Indian Navy band has joined

12. Gujarat International Finance-Tec City
(GIFT City)
 India’s first International Financial Services Centre (IFSC)
 Gandhinagar, Gujarat
 10 leading banks, 2 international exchanges (India INX and NSE IFSC), around 100
capital market players and 8 insurance companies
 GIFT City wins ASSOCHAM Services Excellence Awards

13. river linking projects in Maharashtra
 Par-Tapi-Narmada and Damanganga-Pinjal
 Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY).

14. Project Insight
 contract with L&T Infotech Ltd
 check high value transactions, and track tax evaders
 to restrict black money holdings and transactions
 method will use the government databases of IT forms, IT returns, TDS/TCS
statements and transaction statements received from financial institutions

15. Cabinet Committees – permanent and
Adhoc
 Appointments Committee of the Cabinet
 Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs
 Political Affairs - super cabinet
 Security
 Parliamentary Affairs (Home minister )
 Accommodation(Home minister )

16.  Narendra Modi inaugurated annual conference ‘Rajaswa Gyan Sangam’ in New
Delhi
 Yalla Kerala - target tourists from Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates,
Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar
 National Award for ‘Excellence’ in Energy Management - Hyderabad airport
 National Nutrition Week: 1 to 7th September - theme is “Optimal Infant & Young
Child Feeding Practices: Better Child Health”.
 International Day of Charity– September 5 - death anniversary of Mother Teresa
 Amazon India opens largest fulfilment centre in Hyderabad

17.  first fully organic state of India- Sikkim - CM Pawan Chamling was conferred the
Grand Prix Award for work in organic farming
 India starts producing world’s most expensive coffee- Civet Coffee-coffee is named
as ‘Ainmane’
 HDFC Bank becomes the second most valuable company on BSE
 first Greenfield smart city-Ranchi ,Jharkhand –HEC land - fully wi-fi, carbon free,
garbage free locality with modernised housing, traffic management system,
education hub and equipped with facilities like round the clock power and water
supplies.

18. World

19. International Hindu Conference
 held in Nepal
 aim of the conference is to make Kathmandu the global capital of Hinduism
 theme of the conference is ‘Emerging spiritualism: Renaissance of Hinduism’

20. Lebanon gets first law to protect animals
 guarantees that domestic and wild animals will be legally protected from abuse in
the country

21. Saab + Adani = Gripen jets
 Swedish defence giant Saab, Adani join hands for defence manufacturing
 design, development and production of Gripen jets

22. India is the most corrupt country in Asia
 Report by Transparency International - Berlin based NGO
 Japan is the least corrupt nation
 India,Vietnam,Thailand,Pakistan,Mayanmar

23. Tajikistan bans women from wearing veils
 “stick to traditional national clothes and culture”
 women wearing hijabs are already banned from entering the country’s government
offices

24. Diesel Consignment to Myanmar
 first consignment of 30 MT of High Speed Diesel

25. 9th BRICS summit @ Xiamen, China
 Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa
 BRIC expanded to include 5 countries and the acronym changed into BRICS- 2010

26. China bans raising funds through
cyrptocurrencies
 raising funds through initial coin offerings (ICO)
 Bitcoin, created in 2009, was the first decentralized cryptocurrency

27. Varuna to Sri Lanka
 India hands over off-shore patrol vessel Varuna to Sri Lanka
 helping smaller states in capacity-building has been a vital element of the Indian
diplomacy
 earlier handed over two OPVs of the Indian Coast Guard,Varaha in April 2006 and
Vigraha in August 2008.

28. UJALA (Unnat Jyoti by Affordable Lighting
for All) Scheme
 distribution of LED lights
 scheme launched in Melaka, Malaysia

29. Habib Bank
 Pakistan’s largest private lender
 kicked out of US over terror financing charge
 shut down its New York office after nearly 40 years of operation

30. The World University Rankings 2018
 Times Higher Education (THE)
 Oxford University,Cambridge University,California Institute of Technology, Stanford
University,Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
 IISc Bangalore,IIT-Bombay,IIT-Delhi,IIT-Kanpur,IIT-Kharagpur

31. Countervailing Duty (CVD)
 for a period of 5 years on Chinese steel products
 domestic steel industry had a downfall in sales due to subsidised imports from
China
 imposed in a move to safeguard domestic traders from imports that are given
unfair subsidies by the exporting nation

32.  Jordan launches project to grow crops from seawater part of Sahara Forest Project
(SFP) is supported by Norway/130 tons of vegetables a year and 10,000 liters of
freshwater a day.

33. Technology & science

34. India’s first indigenous sniper rifle
 rifle factory in Ishapore, West Bengal
 shooting range of 800 meters

35. European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL)
 world’s largest and powerful X-ray laser
 in Hamburg, Germany

36. World’s tallest sandcastle
 built in Duisburg, Germany
 54.5ft (16.68 meters) high and its theme is tourism
 14.8m tall in Puri, by the Sudarsan Sand Institute.

37. Australia, East Timor agree on maritime
boundary
• long-running dispute
• revenue sharing from a natural
gas field

38. FDA approves First gene-altering leukemia
treatment
 Kymriah is a cell-based gene therapy by Novartis
 In United States
 will treat childhood leukemia

39. Movidius Myriad X
 Intel
 vision processing unit (VPU) for end-to-end artificial intelligence (AI)
 smart cameras, virtual reality (VR) devices, robotics and even drones

40. TRAPPIST-1
 seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a dwarf star
 The system is called TRAPPIST-1
 planets likely to have water
 three planets in the habitable zone - Goldilocks zone
 Exoplanets?

41. SBI Intelligent Assistant or SIA
 Chatbot
 powered by AI
 designed to assist customers.
 created & developed by Allincall
 Reliance Energy launched digital assistance robot-ELEKTRA

42. Hyperloop
 design released by a joint team from Tesla and SpaceX
 Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) has signed a memorandum of
understanding with the Andhra Pradesh
 Vijayawada and Amaravati in AP

43. DIKSHA Portal
 provide new and modern technologies to the teachers
 learn free courses online at their home

44. First water ATM
 Nalgonda X Roads, Hyderabad
 Safe Water Network, an international NGO has partnered with Greater Hyderabad
Municipal Corporation (GHMC) to launch water ATMs

45. Airbus Perlan 2 aircraft
 new altitude world record for a engineless glider
 52,000 feet over the Patagonia region of Argentina

46. Environment

47. Parali 1 island of Lakshadweep vanishes
 due to coastal erosion
 0.032 square km in area

48.  Hurricane Irma – World’s longest storm to bear 185 mph winds in 30 years

49. PEOPLE IN NEWS

50. Sunil Arora
 appointed as the Election Commissioner
 Om Prakash Rawat is the other Election Commissioner
 Achal Kumar Joti is the Chief Election Commissioner

51. Rajiv Mehrishi
 appointed as Comptroller and Auditor General of India
 term of six years or he attains the age of 65 years, whichever is earlier.

52. J Y Pillai
 appointed Singapore’s acting President
 Indian-origin

53. Halima Yacob
 first female President of Singapore
 She was the first female Speaker of
 Parliament in 2013

54. Sumiteru Taniguchi
 Nagasaki Survivor
 died of cancer at the age of 88
 prominent activist against nuclear weapons

55. Peggy Whitson
 Astronaut
 World’s oldest spacewoman, at age 57
 Highest no of days in space for an American astronaut

56. PLuS Alliance Prize
 N R Narayana Murthy and Scientist Veena Sahajwalla
 Research Innovation, Education Innovation, Global Leadership and Global
Innovation.

57. Gauri lankesh
 journalist, editor and activist

58. Mother Teresa
 named as co-patron of Kolkata archdiocese
 first anniversary of Mother Teresa’s canonization
 She was declared a Saint by Pope Francis

59. Edith Windsor
 LGBT rights activist
 lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court of the United States case United States v.
Windsor
 which successfully overturned Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act
 landmark legal victory for the same-sex marriage movement in the United States of
America

60. books
 Immortal India book by Amish Tripathi
 Hit Refresh - Satya Nadella

61. SPORTS

62. Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Award
 awarded to Reliance Foundation
 immense contribution to the promotion of sports
 Nita Ambani collected the award from President
 Nita Ambani is the first Indian woman to become a member of the International
Olympic Committee

63. AIBA world boxing championships
 Hamburg, Germany
 Gaurav Bidhuri Clinches Bronze Medal

64. Joycilline Jepkosgei
• first woman to run 10 km distance under 30
minutes - 29 minutes 43 seconds
• broken a total of five records this year-
10km, 15km, 20km and half-marathon
• 10 kilometres (road) – 29:43 (2017) WR
• 15 kilometres (road) – 45:37 (2017) WR
• 20 kilometres (road) – 1:01:25 (2017) WR
• Half marathon – 1:04:52 (2017) WR

65.  100 stumpings in One-Day Internationals – MSD ; Kumar Sangakkara, who has 99
stumpings
 Star India wins IPL media rights for next five years
 Tottenham Hotspur will have world’s first dividing retractable pitch- NFL and
football
 Badminton Association of India (BAI)- first Lifetime Achievement Award to Prakash
Padukone -only Indian male badminton player to have reach the world number 1
rank

66. DEFENCE

67. Surya Kiran
 Nepal - India
 Joint Military Exercise

68. Sri Lanka India Naval Exercise- SLINEX
 SLINEX 2017 started near Vishakhapatnam

69. Ashok Leyland, ELCOM ink defence pact
with Russian firm
 Ashok Leyland Defence Systems (ALDS), Russia’s Rosoboronexport and ELCOM
Group
 signed a cooperation agreement in defence business

70. Anti Tank Guided Missile – NAG
 indigenously developed third generation Anti Tank Guided Missile
 DRDO