GK and Current Affairs Updates

On 4 May 2016 President Pranab Mukherjee conferred the 15^th set of Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) Niryat Shree and Niryat Bandhu Awards in New Delhi.
•    Reliance Industry was adjudged as the top foreign exchange earner and leading exporter of last 50 years.
•    TCS bagged the Gold Award in IT services. 
•    State Bank of India got the Gold award 
•    President also unveiled the brand new FIEO Logo representing growth, vibrancy, innovation and entrepreneurship.
•    It was set up in 1965 and completed 50 years .
•    The Federation recently moved to Niryat Bhawan, New Delhi.
•    It extended its arms to support the State Governments through formulation of Export Strategy and Export Policy.
•    The Trade Portal developed by FIEO has provided single window information on all facets of international trade for Indian Exim community.

On 5 May 2016 Suresh Prabhu launched a high speed Wi-Fi hotspot at the three Railway Stations. 
These stations are Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh, Kachiguda in Telangana and Raipur in Chhattisgarh.
•    RailTel Corporation of India Ltd. has been mandated by Ministry of Railways to provide Wi-Fi 
•    RailTel engaged with Google as the technology partner for setting up high speed Wi-Fi network.
•    RailTel will upgrade its backbone infrastructure to backhaul high speed connectivity of approximately 1Gbps per station.
•    Wi-Fi services to passengers will be provided under Railwire the retail Broadband distribution model of RailTel.
•    Designed to offer users the best Internet experience, Railwire Wi-Fi will be available to any user who has a working mobile connection on a smart phone.
•    Users will be able to easily stream a high definition video and surf the web.
•    RailTel Corporation of India Ltd. is a Miniratna enterprise of Government of India.
•    It is one of the largest neutral telecom services providers in the country owning a Pan-India optic fiber network.
•    It covers all important towns and cities of the country and several rural areas covering 70% of India’s population.

Astronomers discovered three planets which have similar sizes and temperatures those of Venus and Earth
This was found using the TRAPPIST telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory. 
•    The discovery was published in the Journal Nature on 2 May 2016.
•    Ultra-cool dwarf star 2MASS J23062928-0502285, now also known as TRAPPIST-1.
•    They found that the dim and cool star faded slightly at regular intervals which indicated that several objects were passing between the star and the Earth.
•    On the detailed analysis, it showed that three planets are present around the star.
•    It is much cooler and redder than the Sun and barely larger than Jupiter.
•    Despite being so close to the Earth, the star is too dim and too red to be seen with the naked eye or even visually with a large amateur telescope.
•    Two of the planets have orbital periods of about 1.5 days and 2.4 days respectively, and the third planet has a orbital period in the range 4.5 to 73 days.

Saina Nehwal, headed to the Olympics for third time.PV Sindhu on way to her maiden Games as well as K Srikanth in men’s singles, another first timer. 
•    Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponappa (No. 15) have made the grade for a second straight Olympics.
•    India is one of only eight countries in the world to qualify two entries in a category — women’s singles, with PV Sindhu (ranked No. 10) joining Saina Nehwal (ranked No. 8). 
•    Japanese Kento Momota’s suspension opens up men’s singles, but Srikanth will to upset the last Olympic outings of the two legends, Dan and Chong Wei, and title favourite Chen Long. 
•    Jwala-Ashwini, have done well at consecutive Commonwealth Games, but struggled to cross quarters in Super Series.
•    Olympics is considered to be kinder to shuttlers from outside China, Japan and Korea with only two pairings allowed.
•    Olympics tend to be easier than Super Series 
•    For Manu-Sumeeth, the first ever men’s doubles pairing to qualify for Olympics.

Ban Ki-moon has selected Mexican diplomat Patricia Espinosa as the executive secretary of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). 

•    She will replace the incumbent Christiana Figueres when her term ends in July 2016. 
•    Before this she was serving as Mexico’s ambassador to Germany Earlier she had served as Mexico’s representative at the UN in New York 
•    She used to work in the field of drug traffic, human rights, women promotion, social development and children’s rights. 
•    She will be implementing the Paris Agreement on Climate Change that was approved by 195 countries in December 2015 during UNFCCC’s COP 21 held in Paris, France.
•    The UNFCCC is an international environmental treaty negotiated at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 
•    It came into force in 1994. 
•    It has 196 countries and European Union (EU) as its members. 
•    It is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol which was ratified by 192 of the UNFCCC Parties. 
•    The ultimate objective of both treaties is to stabilize greenhouse gas (GHGs) concentrations in the atmosphere.

Google has acquired business technology startup Synergyse founded by an Indian-origin entrepreneur Varun Malhotra. 

•    The financial detail was disclosed by the Google. 
•    Synergyse was launched in 2013 to teach users how to use Google Applications. 
•    With this acquisition, Synergyse will be joining the Google Apps team and help it to accelerate its mission and build Google Apps. 
•    Entrepreneur Varun Malhotra has over 10 years of experience in the enterprise space.
•    Google is an American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products. 
•    These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, and software. Most of its profits are derived from AdWords.
•    An online advertising service that places advertising near the list of search results.
•    Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University. 
•    Together, they own about 14 percent of its shares and control 56 percent of the stockholder voting power through super voting stock. 
•    They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998.

On 2 May 2016Cambridge researchers have built the world's smallest working engine. The research was published in the journal of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).
•    The engine is few billionths of a meter in size and uses light to power itself.
•    The nano scale engine can set a benchmark for nano-machines that can navigate in water, sense the environment around them, or even enter living cells to fight disease.
•    Professor Jeremy Baumberg from the Cavendish Laboratory, who led the research, has named the devices Actuating Nano-Transducers.
•    Device is made of tiny charged particles of gold, bound together with temperature-responsive gel.
•    When the engine is with a laser, it stores large amounts of elastic energy in a fraction of a second.
•    This has the effect of forcing the gold nano particles to bind together into tight clusters.
•    However, when the device is cooled, the polymers take on water and expand, and the gold nano particles are strongly and quickly pushed apart.

On 3 May 2016 Lok Sabha passed the Compensatory Afforestation Fund bill, 2015.
It is intended to establish setting up of a National Compensatory Afforestation Fund and also a State Compensatory Afforestation Fund.
•    The Bill establishes the National Compensatory Afforestation Fund under the Public Account of India, and a State Compensatory Afforestation Fund under the Public Account of each state.
•    These Funds will receive payments for: (a) compensatory afforestation, (b) net present value of forest (NPV), and (c) other project specific payments. 
•    These Funds will be primarily spent on afforestation to compensate for loss of forest cover
•    The Bill establishes the National and State Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authorities to manage the National and State Funds.
A High Level Committee on Environment Laws said that quality of forest cover has declined between 1951 and 2014, with poor quality of compensatory afforestation plantations being one of the reasons behind the decline.

On 4 May 2016 Indian Railways (IR) announced creation of Non-Fare Revenue Directorate to carry out advertisements in rail coaches, along the track and near stations.
•    Advertisements on coaches, wagons, locomotives and at stations will be explored.
•    It will be headed by a senior railway official.
•    Revenues are estimated to be increased by 10 per cent to 20 per cent from the current 5 per cent from the non-tariff sources.
•    Railways were first introduced to India in 1853.
•    Indian Railways is an Indian state-owned enterprise, owned and operated by the Government of India.
•    It is one of the world's largest railway network
•    It has more than 115000 km of track over a route of 65808 km and 7112 stations.
•    In 2014-15, railway carried 8.397 billion passengers annually. It also carried 1058.81 million tons of freight in the year.
•    In 2014–2015, Indian Railways had revenues of 1634.50 billion rupees.
•    Indian Railways is the world's seventh largest commercial or utility employer
•    It has over 1.376 million employees as of last published figures in 2013.

Minister of State (I/C) for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman on 3 April 2016 launched EXIM Analytics Dashboard to provide an easy access to detailed trade data of the country.
•    It will ensure the following:
•    The export turnover of the country, how it performs over time?
•    What are the export destinations?
•    What items are being exported?
•    Which are the ports – inland, sea or airports from which the exports are taking place?
•    This will enable small and upcoming businessmen to foray into global trade based on reliable information directly accessible through government sources.
•    Export Overview: It provides analysis of data by time period, export destinations and ports of export.
•    Import Overview: It provides analysis of data by time period, countries of Import and ports of import.
•    Balance of Trade (BOT): BOT can be analysed over time periods for different Regions, Countries and Ports.
•    The data for analysis is presented as a month’s aggregate at its lowest granularity, namely, at the level of country, commodity, port etc.
•    At present, monthly data from April 2014 till January 2016 has been provided on the analytics. Progressively additional dashboards and data for older period will be added.