The Daily Brief – 13th June 2018

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The Daily Briefs are a comprehensive update of current affairs for the day. If you’d like to receive updates for current affairs every day, you’ll need to subscribe by entering your email address at the right side of this page.
1. Generation Safe & Healthy
The World Day against Child Labour is observed every year across the world on June 12. It was launched by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 2002 to focus attention on the global extent of child labour and the action and efforts needed to eliminate it. This year, with the theme of ‘Generation Safe and Healthy’, The World Day Against Child Labour (WDACL) and the World Day for Safety and Health at Work (Safe Day) shine a spotlight on the global need to improve the safety and health of young workers and end child labour. This joint campaign aims to accelerate action to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 8.8 of safe and secure working environments for all workers by 2030 and SDG target 8.7 of ending all forms of child labour by 2025.
2. Nepal-Bharat Maitri Irrigation Project
India today resealed to Nepal Rs 99.2 million for installation of 2,700 shallow tube well irrigation systems in 12 districts — Saptari, Sarlahi, Rautahat, Bara, Parsa, Chitwan, Nawalparasi, Rupendehi, Kapilvastu, Dang, Kailali and Kanchanpur. India’s Ambassador to Nepal Manjeev Singh Puri handed over a cheque to Secretary at the Ministry of Energy, Water Resources and Irrigation Sanjay Sharma at Singha Durbar as final payment for the Nepal-Bharat Maitri Irrigation Project, according to a statement issued by the embassy. With this payment, the Government of India has released a total of Rs 227.6 million to the Government of Nepal for implementing the project.
  1. India will host first military exercise of the BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) Countries in September 2018 in Pune, Maharashtra. The theme of the exercise includes counter-terrorism in semi-urban terrain and cordon and search. The main aim of this military exercise is to promote strategic alignment among the member-states and to share best practices in the area of counter-terrorism. BIMSTEC is the sub-regional group of seven countries India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka from South Asia and Myanmar, Thailand from South East Asia.
  2. The Haryana Government raised the upper age limit for entry into the government service from 40 to 42 an official spokesperson said. The spokesperson said a circular to this effect has been addressed to all administrative secretaries, heads of departments, commissioners of Ambala, Hisar, Rohtak and Gurgaon divisions, all chief administrators and managing directors of all boards, corporations and public sector undertakings, deputy commissioners, sub-divisional officers (Civil) and registrars of all the universities by the chief secretary.
  3. National Institute for Transforming India, also called NITI Aayog announced creation of 3000 additional Atal Tinkering Labs under the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM).For this purpose, 3000 additional schools have been selected for the establishment of Atal Tinkering Labs (ATLs), bringing the total number of ATL schools to 5441. These schools will receive a grant of Rs 20 lakh in the next five years to establish ATLs for nurturing innovation and entrepreneurial spirit among secondary school children.
  4. Former CBI chief Joginder Singh, who oversaw investigation of several high-profile cases, including Bofors scam and Bihar’s fodder scam, died on Friday aged 77 years. The 1961 batch IPS officer of Karnataka cadre was chosen to head the premier investigative agency when H D Deve Gowda was the Prime Minister. Singh, who joined the police service at the age of 20, rose to take charge of the CBI on July 31, 1996 when it was probing a large number of sensitive cases, including Bofors, fodder scam, securities scam, the JMM MPs bribery scandal, Rs 133 crore urea scam, telecom deals by the then Union Minister Sukh Ram, among others.
  5. The Maharashtra Government wants an abandoned airstrip on the outskirts of Mumbai to be made operational for regional flights under the Centre’s UDAN scheme. The Kalyan airstrip was constructed by the erstwhile British government during the World War II and was abandoned soon afterwards. “We will have to rehabilitate more than 3,000 families in nine villages under which the airstrip falls,” a government official said.   Under the UDAN scheme, the Centre provides viability gap funding to airlines which operate flights linking small airports.
  6. A team from the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, has spotted for the first time a distant planet six times bigger than Earth and revolving around a Sun-like star about 600 light years away. Both the planet and the star have been named EPIC. With this discovery, India has joined a handful of countries which have discovered planets around stars. PRL is national research institute for space and allied sciences, supported mainly by Department of Space (DST) of Government of India. The discovery was made using a PRL-designed spectrograph, PARAS. EPIC 211945201b (or K2-236b) is the name given to the planet by the discovery team led by PRL’s Abhijit Chakraborty. The host star is named EPIC 211945201 or K2-236.

    Supreme Leader of North Korea Kim Jong-un and President of the United States of America Donald Trump at the U.S.-North Korea Summit held in Singapore.
  7. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un pledged to move towards complete denuclearisation, while the US promised to provide security guarantees to North Korea. Following it, US President, Donald Trump announced that he is halting the annual US-South Korean military drills and wanted to remove the 28,500 US troops stationed in South Korea as a deterrent against North Korea.
  8. The PMK (Paattali Makkall Katchi) MP and former Union Health Minister, Anbumani Ramadoss demanded a CBI inquiry into the alleged preference given to the foreigners in cadaver transplant, over Indian patients. While the Tamil Nadu Health Minister, C. Vijaya Baskar denied the allegations and informed the Assembly that heart transplants were offered by hospitals to the foreigners only after going through the wait list of Indian patients registered in the system.
  9. The Chief Minister of Odisha, Naveen Patnaik announced that each and everyone visiting any government health institution from district to sub-centre level in Odisha will be provided all health services free of cost. Further, under the Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana, secondary and tertiary cashless healthcare assistance will be provided up to Rs 5 lakh per family per annum.
  10. Indian Cricket team captain Virat Kohli received the prestigious Polly Umrigar Trophy (Cricketer-of-the-year) award at the BCCI Annual Awards function in Benguluru for two consecutive seasons 2016-17 and 2017-18. It is the third time Indian Skipper, Kohli received the Polly Urmigar award for the best International Cricketer. While Indian Spinner, Ravichandran Ashwin was given the Dilip Sardesai award, Aunshuman Gaekwad and Sudha Shah received the C.K. Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award.

Quiz for the Day:

1. When was the World Day Against Child Labour launched by ILO?





2. What is the upper age limit for entry in to government services in Haryana state?





3. What was the name given to the first planet and star discovered by PRL?





4. Which among the following state government vowed to provide free medical services?





5. Who received the Dilip Sardesai award at BCCI annual awards ceremony 2018?





6. Under which of the following scheme the Centre provides viability gap funding to airlines which operate flights linking small airports?









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