Current Affairs September 2016 ebook 1

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1 Current Affairs September 2016 ebook 1 1

2 Current Affairs September 2016 ebook 2 Preface...4 Pick of the Month...5 National International Economy Science & Technology Environment & Ecology States Report Survey Summit and Conference Corporate Sports Defence Security At a Glance Committees Commissions News Makers Awards Honours Exam Boosters

3 Current Affairs September 2016 ebook 3 Quizzes Latest Government Jobs Closing in November

4 Current Affairs September 2016 ebook 4 PREFACE The Current Affairs November 2016 ebook covers the current events that happened in the month of October. Current Affairs is a crucial component of any competitive exams including IAS PCS, SSC, Banking and MBA. The lack of preparation for current affairs by the aspirants and candidates often is the main cause of their failure. Even though the candidates know it but they are often confused about how to prepare the current affairs section of the different competitive exams. It is to clear such doubts and confusion, Jagranjosh.com has come up with ebook concept. The Current Affairs November 2016 ebook is divided into different section keeping in mind the need of various exams. The sections covered are International, National, Economy, Ecology and Environment, Science & Technology, Corporate, Sports, States and News Capsule. It covers stories like BRICS summit, ASEAN summit, 2016 Noble Prizes, RBI notification on start-ups among others. Every news item in each section is arranged date wise with the most recent news being covered first and so on. Although there might be some deviations but that is solely to give priority to the most important current affairs in each section. Presentation of the given current affairs has been planned in such a way that it remains in the minds of readers for a longer duration. Wherever necessary each news item is presented along with a background and analysis so as to help candidates contemplate all the important current events at the time of exam in an effective way. Copyright Jagranjosh.com All rights reserved. No part or the whole of this ebook may be copied, reproduced, stored in retrieval system or transmitted and/or cited anywhere in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the written permission of the copyright owner. If any misconduct comes in knowledge or brought in notice, strict action will be taken. Disclaimer Readers are requested to verify/cross-check up to their satisfaction themselves about the advertisements, advertorials, and external contents. If any miss-happening, ill result, mass depletion or any similar incident occurs due to any information cited or referenced in this e-book, Editor, Director/s, employees of Jagranjosh.com can t be held liable/responsible in any matter whatsoever. No responsibilities lie as well in case of the advertisements, advertorials, and external contents. 4

5 Current Affairs September 2016 ebook 5 PICK OF THE MONTH BRICS SUMMIT CONCLUDED WITH ADOPTION OF GOA DECLARATION The eighth BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit was held from 15 to 16 October 2016 in Benaulim city of Goa, India. It was held under the theme Building Responsive, Inclusive and Collective Solutions. The summit was attended by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Brazilian President Michel Temer, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and South African President Jacob Zuma. At the end of the summit, Goa Declaration was released by the leaders saying it is the responsibility of all states to prevent terrorist actions from their territories. In the 109 point Declaration, the leaders called upon all nations to adopt a comprehensive approach in combating terrorism. They condemned the recent attacks against some BRICS countries, including the Uri terror attack in India. HIGHLIGHTS OF 109 POINT GOA DECLARATION ADOPTED AT 2016 BRICS SUMMIT The leaders condemned terrorism in all its forms and stressed that there can be no justification for such acts. They acknowledged that international terrorism, especially the Islamic State, constitute an unprecedented threat to international peace and security. All five nations reaffirmed the commitment to increase effectiveness of the UN counter terrorism framework. The Goa Declaration called for the need for reforms of the UN, including its Security Council, to increase representation of developing countries. 5

6 Current Affairs September 2016 ebook 6 They also highlighted the importance of public and private investments in infrastructure, including connectivity. Apart from this, the leaders of BRICS nations appreciated the progress in the implementation of the Strategy for BRICS Economic Partnership and emphasise the importance of the BRICS Roadmap for Trade, Economic and Investment Cooperation until BRICS leaders welcomed the signing of the MoU between the BRICS countries National Development Banks and the New Development Bank. The BRICS Grouping also welcomed the adoption of the landmark 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals. Saying that the global economic recovery is progressing, they noted that the growth is weaker than expected with downside risks to the global economy continuing to persist. They reiterated determination to use all policy tools to achieve the goal of sustainable and inclusive growth. FOCUS OF THE SUMMIT The summit s focus was on enhancing people-to-people (P2P) contacts of BRICS member states, especially youth. In this context, India conducted activities like U-17 Football Tournament, Youth Summit, Young Diplomats Forum, and Film Festival among others. The ninth BRICS Summit will be hosted by China in In 2015, the seventh BRICS summit was held from 8 to 9 July in the Russian city of Ufa in Bashkortostan. Besides, on the sidelines of the 2016 BRICS Summit, the leaders also held an outreach summit with the Leaders of BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) member countries. The BIMSTEC countries comprises of Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal. During this outreach BRICS-BIMSTEC summit, the leaders planned to jointly explore possibilities of expanding trade and commercial ties between the member nations of the two international orgaisations. They Decision on investment cooperation between BRICS and BIMSTEC countries was made, while advancing on the common goal of peace, democracy, development, and prosperity. 6

7 Current Affairs September 2016 ebook 7 BRICS CREDIT RATING AGENCY: A SHIFT TO INVESTOR-PAYS MODEL FROM ISSUER-PAYS MODEL In the BRICS Goa summit 2016, member countries agreed to establish a credit rating agency based on market oriented principles. The BRICS gathering of the five biggest rising economies Brazil, Russia, India, China and South African wants to challenge the current credit rating framework through another credit rating agency where it is the forthcoming financial specialist that will pay for the rating of an issuer of a debt instrument. Under the present estimating model of rating organizations known as Issuer-pays Model, the organization or foundation issuing securities pays the rating agency to be appraised. Whereas in new BRICS rating agency, the speculator wants to put resources into the organization that will pay for the rating of the organization an investor- pays display. It was argued that it would further consolidate the global governance architecture. It is much required change happening where the experts exploring the possibility of setting up an independent BRICS Credit Rating Agency entirely based on market-oriented principles, in order to further strengthen the world wide economic governance. WHAT IS THE NEED OF BRICS CREDIT RATING AGENCY? It is said that this a shift to investor-pays model from issuer-pays model, because there is a moral hazard in the existing model. There is a moral issue. Before 1970s, ratings were supported by the financial specialists, not the issuer. In planning for the BRICS rating agency, Exim Bank had arranged an idea paper and rating agency Crisil Ltd had led a study for India. Later, the idea paper was imparted to the next four individuals from BRICS. "There was an information workshop in Mumbai where Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) which is the controller of rating organizations in India, was there. Other members too presented their ideas. Pretty much as the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) contributes new financing to existing financing accessible through other multilateral organizations, the new rating agency will likewise add to existing information of rating frameworks. Presently, the rating is from one viewpoint, which is not a developing market point of view. The granularity is not there. For instance, SBI (State Bank of India) is an AAA evaluated organisation, yet when it brings securities up in the international market, it is capped at India's sovereign 7

8 Current Affairs September 2016 ebook 8 rating, which is BBB short. India has never at any point defaulted how would you give India a BBB short rating? Therefore, the need of an independent credit agency was realized because it was observed that the methodologies adopted by other top three global credit ratings were compelling growth in emerging economies. The purpose of creating a new credit agency was to challenge the hegemony of western credit rating agencies such as Moody s, Fitch and Standard & Poor s. These three agencies together account for 90 percent of the global credit rating market. Emerging economies have been pointing out the double standards of the global rating agencies and have partly blamed them to be responsible for the high cost of borrowings in developing countries. In the methods of these credit rating agencies developing countries were rated lower compared to western countries with poor macro-economic indicators. The new credit rating agency would assess the economic growth in Asia and in non Western countries. With its own credit agency BRICS would also be able to raise bonds in many countries. CHALLENGES WITH BRICS CREDIT RATING AGENCY Amidst all the talk and some exciting efforts from the member countries, it seems pretty certain that the talk to establish the Credit rating agency is on and being discussed between members. However, there are some issues with this agency. The reputation of credit rating agency is massively hit by the event unfolded after Lehman Brothers collapse which was the first sign of global financial crisis emerged in Another challenge is that if established, in which member countries it will be located? The law of the land will be applicable or not? To answer this some experts are of the opinion that it should be located outside of the five member countries. WHAT IS A CREDIT RATING AGENCY? A credit rating agency (CRA, also called a ratings service) is a company/firm/organisation which assigns credit ratings, by rating a debtor's ability to pay back debt, making timely interest payments and the likelihood of default. An agency may rate the creditworthiness of issuers of debt obligations, of debt instruments, and in some cases, of the servicers of the underlying debt, but not of individual consumer. 8

9 Current Affairs September 2016 ebook 9 NOBEL PRIZE 2016 ANNOUNCED Nobel Prizes 2016 were announced by the Nobel Assembly from 3 October to 13 October The prizes were announced in different sections, namely Physics, Chemistry, Physiology, Literature, Peace and Economics NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE Bob Dylan on 13 October 2016 won the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. Dylan was bestowed with the precious award for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition. WHO IS BOB DYLAN? Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, artist and writer. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when his songs chronicled social unrest, although he repudiated suggestions from journalists that he was a spokesman for his generation. His early songs such as Blowin' in the Wind and The Times They Are a-changin became anthems for the American civil rights and anti-war movements. His lyrics have incorporated various political, social, philosophical and literary influences. His accomplishments as a recording artist and performer have been central to his career, but songwriting is considered his greatest contribution. Since 1994, he has published six books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. As a musician, he has sold more than 100 million records, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. 9

10 Current Affairs September 2016 ebook 10 He has also received numerous awards including eleven Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and an Academy Award. The Pulitzer Prize jury in 2008 awarded him a special citation for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power. He is the first American to win the prize since novelist Toni Morrison, in ABOUT NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has produced the most outstanding work in an ideal direction in the field of literature. The Prize has been awarded since It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in A Literature Nobel Prize laureate earns a gold medal, a diploma bearing a citation, and a sum of money. The amount of money awarded depends on the income of the Nobel Foundation that year. In 2015, Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize in Literature "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time." 2016 SVERIGES RIKSBANK PRIZE IN ECONOMIC SCIENCES Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom were on 10 October 2016 awarded the 2016 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for their contributions to contract theory. They have developed a contract theory, a comprehensive framework for analysing many diverse issues in contractual design, like performance-based pay for top executives, deductibles and co-pays in insurance and the privatisation of public-sector activities. 10

11 Current Affairs September 2016 ebook 11 The new theoretical tools created by Hart and Holmstrom are valuable to the understanding of real-life contracts and institutions, as well as potential pitfalls in contract design. BENGT HOLMSTROM'S THEORY In the late 1970s, Bengt Holmstrom demonstrated how a principal should design an optimal contract for an agent, whose action is partly unobserved by the principal. Holmström s informativeness principle stated precisely how this contract should link the agent s pay to performance-relevant information. Using the basic principal-agent model, he showed how the optimal contract carefully weighs risks against incentives. Later, Holmstrom generalised these results to more realistic settings, namely: when employees are not only rewarded with pay, but also with potential promotion and when individual members of a team can free-ride on the efforts of others. OLIVER HART'S THEORY In the mid-1980s, Oliver Hart made fundamental contributions to a new branch of contract theory that deals with the important case of incomplete contracts. Hart s findings have shed new light on the ownership and control of businesses and have had a vast impact on several fields of economics, as well as political science and law. His research provides new theoretical tools for studying questions such as which kinds of companies should merge, the proper mix of debt and equity financing, and when institutions such as schools or prisons ought to be privately or publicly owned. Oliver Hart is a Professor of Economics at Harvard University, Cambridge, USA. While, Bengt Holmstrom is a Professor of Economics and Professor of Economics and Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. WINS 2016 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE The 2016 Nobel Peace Prize was on 7 October 2016 awarded to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos for his resolute efforts to bring the country's more than 50-year-long civil war to 11

12 Current Affairs September 2016 ebook 12 an end, a war that took away the lives of at least Colombians and displaced nearly six million people. After winning the award, President Santos said he will donate the money from the Nobel Peace prize to help the victims of the 52-year conflict in his country. The civil war in Colombia is one of the longest civil wars in modern times and the sole remaining armed conflict in the Americas. Earlier in August 2016, the Colombian government and the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed a peace accord to end more than five decades of conflict. Later in October 2016, the deal was rejected by Colombian voters in a referendum. PRESIDENT JUAN MANUEL SANTOS'S ROLE IN COLUMBIAN WAR President Santos initiated the negotiations that culminated in the peace accord between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas as he consistently sought to move the peace process forward. The accord was controversial; however he was instrumental in ensuring that Colombian voters were able to voice their opinion concerning the peace accord in a referendum. The outcome of the vote was not what President Santos wanted as a narrow majority of the over 13 million Colombians voted against the accord. Despite the "No" majority vote in the referendum, President Santos brought the bloody conflict significantly closer to a peaceful solution. His endeavours to promote peace thus fulfil the criteria and spirit of prize NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY The 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on 5 October 2016 was awarded to Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir James Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L Feringa. The trio was bestowed with the prestigious award for the design and synthesis of molecular machines. 12

13 Current Affairs September 2016 ebook 13 Jean-Pierre Sauvage is a French coordination chemist. Sir James Fraser Stoddart is a Scottish chemist. He works in the area of supramolecular chemistry and nanotechnology. Bernard L Feringa is a synthetic organic chemist, specializing in molecular nanotechnology and homogenous catalysis. DEVELOPMENT OF WORLD'S SMALLEST MACHINES Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir James Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L Feringa have developed molecules with controllable movements, which can perform a task when energy is added. The first step towards a molecular machine was taken by Jean-Pierre Sauvage in 1983, when he succeeded in linking two ring-shaped molecules together to form a chain, called a catenane. The second step was taken by Fraser Stoddart in 1991, when he developed a rotaxane. He threaded a molecular ring onto a thin molecular axle and demonstrated that the ring was able to move along the axle. Bernard Feringa was the first person to develop a molecular motor. In 1999, he got a molecular rotor blade to spin continually in the same direction. Using molecular motors, he has rotated a glass cylinder that is times bigger than the motor and also designed a nanocar. The 2016's Nobel Laureates in Chemistry have taken molecular systems out of equilibrium's stalemate and into energy-filled states in which their movements can be controlled. ABOUT NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in The first Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded in 1901 to Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff for his discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 was awarded jointly to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar for mechanistic studies of DNA repair. 13

14 Current Affairs September 2016 ebook NOBEL PRIZE IN MEDICINE The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet on 3 October 2016 decided to award the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Yoshinori Ohsumi. Ohsumi is bestowed with the prize for his discoveries of mechanisms for autophagy. He discovered and elucidated mechanisms underlying autophagy, a fundamental process for degrading and recycling cellular components. WHAT IS AUTOPHAGY? Autophagy is the natural, destructive mechanism that disassembles, through a regulated process, unnecessary or dysfunctional cellular components. It allows the orderly degradation and recycling of cellular components. During this process, targeted cytoplasmic constituents are isolated from the rest of the cell within a double-membraned vesicle known as an autophagosome. The autophagosome then fuses with a lysosome and the contents are degraded and recycled. Three different forms of autophagy are commonly described as macroautophagy, microautophagy and chaperone-mediated autophagy. The name autophagy was coined by Belgian biochemist Christian de Duve in WHO IS YOSHINORI OHSUMI? Yoshinori Ohsumi is a Japanese cell biologist specializing in autophagy. He is a professor in Tokyo Institute of Technology's Frontier Research Center. He received the Kyoto Prize for Basic Science in ABOUT NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the fields of life sciences and medicine. 14

15 Current Affairs September 2016 ebook 15 It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will. As of 2015, 106 Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine have been awarded to 198 men and 12 women. The first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded in 1901 to the German physiologist Emil von Behring for his work on serum therapy and the development of a vaccine against diphtheria. The first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was Gerty Cori, who received it in 1947 for her role in elucidating the metabolism of glucose. The 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded for discoveries concerning novel therapies against river blindness, lymphatic filariasis and malaria to William C. Campbell, Satoshi Omura and Youyou Tu NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS The 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics was on 4 October 2016 one half awarded to David J Thouless and the other half jointly to F Duncan M Haldane and J Michael Kosterlitz for theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter. David J Thouless is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. While, F. Duncan M. Haldane is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics at Princeton University, USA and J Michael Kosterlitz is the Harrison E. Farnsworth Professor of Physics at Brown University, USA. All three will jointly share the 8 million Swedish kronor prize. DISCOVERIES OF ALL THREE LAUREATES All three Laureates used topological concepts in physics for their discoveries. In the early 1970s, Michael Kosterlitz and David Thouless overturned the then current theory that superconductivity or suprafluidity could not occur in thin layers. 15

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