IMPORTANT CURRENT AFFAIRS OF FEBRUARY 22nd, 2018

IMPORTANT CURRENT AFFAIRS OF FEBRUARY 22nd, 2018

IMPORTANT CURRENT AFFAIRS OF FEBRUARY 22nd, 2018

1. India has been ranked 81st in the Global corruption perception index for 2017, released by Transparency International.
a. Last year, India was in the 79th place.
b. New Zealand and Denmark were placed the highest in the list.
c. Syria, South Sudan and Somalia were ranked lowest.
2. Japan has donated over 10,000 ballot boxes worth $7.5 million (over ₹48 crore) forCambodia's 2018 general elections.
3. Actor Kamal Haasan launched his political party 'Makkal Needhi Maiam' and hoisted a flag carrying the party's symbol in Tamil Nadu's Madurai.
a. The flag of Makkal Needhi Maiam Party depicts 6 hands holding onto each other with a six-pointed star in the middle.
4. The Jharkhand government has banned the Popular Front of India, claiming its members were "internally influenced by the ISIS".
5. Indian Air Force officer Avani Chaturvedi has become the country's first woman to fly a fighter jet solo, as she operated Russian-made MiG-21 aircraft in her first training sortie.
6. Microsoft is going to add support for email addresses in 15 Indian languages across its apps and services.
a. It would allow users to send or receive emails in local language email addresses for Outlook accounts on personal computers.
b. The 15 Indian languages supported for email address include Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.
7. India successfully conducted the first night trial of indigenously developed nuclear-capable surface-to-surface ballistic missile Prithvi-II.
8. The Grace Bay beach in the Turks and Caicos Islands has topped the 2018 Travellers' Choice Beach Awards by TripAdvisor.
a. The Baia do Sancho beach in Brazil and Varadero Beach in Cuba have been placed second and third respectively.
b. Note : The Agonda Beach in Goa was placed 18th on the list and was the only Indian beach in the top 25.
9. India and Canada have signed a bilateral agreement to support entrepreneurs and startups from both the countries.
a. Under this agreement, the governments of both the countries have partnered with startup accelerator Zone Startups India, which will identify 40 startups that will receive support. The program will especially focus on women entrepreneurs.
10. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has constituted an expert committee to look into the entire gamut of issues relating to classification of bad loans, effectiveness of audits andrising incidents of frauds.
a. Head of this Committee : Y H Malegam (Former member of Central Board of Directors of RBI).
11. Government  has constituted an Empowered Expert Committee (EEC) to select 20 Institutions of Eminence from among 104 institutions (public or private) that have applied for the status.
a. Head of this Committee : N Gopalaswami (Former Chief Election Commissioner (CEC))
12. The Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO)  lowered the interest rate to 8.55% for the financial year 2017-18, compared to 8.65% for 2016-17.
a. This is the second straight year that the provident fund body, which manages a corpus of over ₹11 lakh crore, has reduced the interest rate.
13. India's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI)  cautioned its cardholders ofpotential legal, financial and other risks associated with Bitcoin and otherCryptocurrencies.
a. However, the bank did not ban the use of its cards for such investments.
b. Important Note : Citibank India had already banned the use of its credit and debit cards towards purchase or trading of cryptocurrencies.
14. Goa CM Manohar Parrikar  presented the Rs 17,123-crore budget for 2018-19, an increase of 6.84 per cent over the ongoing fiscal, with a stress on education and job creation.
15. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced that KYC (Know Your Customer)verification of payments bank customers done by telecom companies is not permissible.
a. It has instructed payments banks to complete the KYC process independently through third parties.
b. This comes after Airtel was penalised by UIDAI for allegedly opening payments bank accounts without 'informed consent' of the users.