The Daily Brief – 31st January, 2017

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The Daily Briefs are a comprehensive update of current affairs for the day. To know more about them, read this. 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. The previous Briefs can be accessed at the archives here. Also, check out our mock tests!

  • Superseding two seniors in the running for the job, Amulya Kumar Patnaik, a 1985-batch IPS officer, was appointed the next Delhi Police Commissioner. Having become the police chief at a relatively younger age of 57, Mr. Patnaik will have one of the longest tenures till January 2020 when he is scheduled to retire. He replaces Alok Kumar Verma, who was appointed as the CBI Director.
Indira Jaising
  • In what may come as a huge relief to former Additional Solicitor of India, Indira Jaising, the Bombay High Court has ordered the domestic accounts of her NGO The Lawyers Collective be de-freezed.
  • Reliance Defence and Engineering Ltd (RDEL) has signed Rs. 916 crore contract with the Defence Ministry for design and construction of 14 fast patrol vessels for Indian Coast Guard. RDEL is a wholly-owned arm of Reliance Infrastructure Ltd (RInfra).
  • Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley tabled the Economic Survey 2016-17 in the Parliament’s budget session. The survey has been prepared by chief economic adviser in the finance ministry, Arvind Subramanian. It projects the economy to grow in the range of 6.75% to 7.25% in the fiscal year 2017-18.
  • The Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) has launched a climate change programme to conduct a study to assess the status, distribution and conservation of Pheasants and Finches in the Central Himalayas.
  • The Union Finance Ministry has agreed to contribute partially to a new dedicated railway safety fund named as ‘Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh’ in the upcoming Union Budget 2017-18.
  • India’s first dedicated space observatory, ASTROSAT has captured the rare phenomenon of a small six-billion-year-old vampire star preying on a bigger celestial body. The vampire star phenomenon is observed when a smaller star sucks material (mass and energy) out of the bigger companion star, causing its eventual death. It is also called a blue straggler as the small star becomes bigger, hotter and bluer, giving it the appearance of being young, while the ageing companion burns out and collapses to a stellar remnant. Astrosat is India’s first dedicated multi-wavelength space observatory launched in September 2015. It is one of the major scientific missions of ISRO after the highly acclaimed Chandrayaan-I and Mangalyaan.

Today’s Quiz

  1. Who has been appointed as the new director of the CBI?





2. Name the NGO founded by Indira Jaising, whose accounts were recently frozen for violations of the FCRA.





3. _____ has signed Rs. 916 crore contract with the Defence Ministry for design and construction of 14 fast patrol vessels for Indian Coast Guard.





4. Who is currently serving as the Chief Economic Adviser?





5. ___ is India’s first dedicated multi-wavelength space observatory.