VINTAGE: Important Current Affairs of December 10, 2015

The UN General Assembly designated 9th December date as International Anti-Corruption Day in 2003 in order to raise awareness about corruption that has disastrous impacts on development throughout the world.
Theme of 2015 : Break the Corruption Chain
Top 10 most corrupted countries in the World are

Note : India ranked 85th out of 174 countries in the list of least corrupted countries and tied with Sri Lanka, Thailand, Philippines, Peru, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Zambia.

The 5th Heart of Asia conference on Afghanistan ended on 9th December with a commitment from member states to address the menace of terrorism and to foster close economic cooperation to stabilise the war-torn country.
Leaders and ministers from 14 member countries, including External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, 17 supporting nations and officials of 12 organisations attended the two-day meet at Islamabad that adopted the Islamabad Declaration which also called on all Afghan Taliban groups to enter into peace talks.

Imp : Theme of the meeting is "Heart of Asia-Istanbul Process: Enhanced cooperation for countering security threats and promoting connectivity in the Heart of Asia region."
14 Member states are : Pakistan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and UAE.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Pakistan to attend the SAARC Summit likely to be held in September 2016.

Imp: : This will be the first prime ministerial visit to Pakistan from India in 12 years.

US imposed restrictions on Visa free travel for people visiting countries like Syria and Iraq.
Parliamentary elections of Venezuela 2015 have won by opposition Centre-right Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition.

The MUD coalition has won the Election by taking 99 seats from 167 seats. And with this it has bit the ruling party United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) which current President is Nicolas Maduro.

Maharashtra has become first state to allow the members of state legislature to raise online questions in an effort to move towards complete digitization of the process.

The step is aimed at bringing the paper work to minimum.
Note : The experiment was tried for the first time before the ongoing winter session of the state legislature at Nagpur and it has received satisfactory response from the MLAs and MLCs.

The Parliament has passed the Negotiable Instruments (Amendment) Bill, 2015.

The Bill seeks to amend 'The Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881' and provides for filing of cheque bounce cases at a place where cheques are presented for clearance and not the place of issue.
The Bill intends to make cheque-bounce filing of cases more convenient for check payees (person who receives the cheque).

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on 9th December approved creation of buffer stock of pulses to deal with wide fluctuation in prices of pulses and check food inflation.

The buffer stock will be in place this fiscal itself.
As per decision, about 50 thousand tonnes of pulses will be procured from the kharif crop and one lakh tonne from the arrivals of current rabi crop.

Indian-American entrepreneur and philanthropist Frank Islam will be conferred with Uttar Pradesh Ratna Award to recognize his achievements and outstanding contributions in a foreign country.

Note : The UP Ratna award has been instituted to recognise achievements and outstanding contributions of NRIs who hail from the state.

Iran has successfully carried out test of medium range Ghadr-110 ballistic missile near the Chabahar, a port city in southeast of country along the Gulf of Oman.

The missile, known as a Ghadr-110, has a range of 1,800 – 2000 km, or 1200 miles, and is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

All England and World champion Carolina Marin beats India ace Saina Nehwal to win the Female Player of the Year award from BWF president Poul-Erik Hoyer in Dubai on Monday night.

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