Current Affairs Current Affairs December 2018

 The third edition of women’s national boxing championships begins in Vijayanagara, Karnataka. Country’s top boxers will be vying for top honors as the tournament will be held at the JSW Sports-owned Inspire Institute of Sport. World Championship silver and bronze medallists boxers, Sonia Chahal, Lovlina Borgohain, Pinky Jangra and Nikhat Zarin will be trying to upstage one another in the race to claim the top honors.
Source- Business Standard

 India’s stylish opener Smriti Mandhana has been named as the International Cricket Council (ICC) Women’s Cricketer of the Year. The 22-year-old, who has also been named as the ICC Women’s ODI Player of the Year, achieved the feat by giving some exceptional performances throughout the year. She scored 669 runs at an average of 66.90 in 12 ODIs and 622 runs at a strike-rate of 130.67 in 25 T20Is from January 1 to December 31, 2018. She is currently ranked fourth in the ICC Women’s Players Rankings for ODI Batters and 10th in the ICC Women’s Players Rankings for T20I Batters.
Other Awards Conferred are:
  • Smriti Mandhana has won the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Award for the ICC Women’s Cricketer of the Year.
  • Australia’s wicketkeeper-batter Alyssa Healy voted ICC T20I Player of the Year.
  • England’s Sophie Ecclestone named ICC Emerging Player of the Year.
Source- ANI News

  Prime Minister Narendra Modi unfurled 150-feet tall tricolor to mark Netaji’s hoisting of the national flag 75 years ago in Port Blair. The three renamed islands of Andaman and Nicobar are:
  • Ross renamed as Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Dweep
  • Neil renamed as Shaheed Dweep
  • Havelock renamed as Swaraj Dweep.
  • To connect the islands with mainstream development, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a Lakshwadweep, Andaman & Nicobar industrial development policy. The Prime Minister also released a commemorative stamp, its first-day cover and a Rs-75 coin on this special day.
    Source- Press Information Bureau (PIB)

      Pakistan’s cabinet has approved the issuance of first-ever renminbi-denominated ‘Panda Bonds’ to raise loans from China’s capital markets, as the country moved a step forward to give the Chinese currency status at par with the US dollar. The Finance Ministry did not seek the Cabinet’s nod for the size of the bond, but it expects to raise $500 million to $1 billion in various tranches. The Philippines has also raised RMB1.46 billion through renminbi-denominated bonds.
    Source: The Business Standard

     Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s alliance won Bangladesh’s election with a thumping majority, the country’s Election Commission announced. It gave her a third straight term following a vote that the opposition rejected as rigged. The win consolidated Hasina’s decade-long rule over Bangladesh. The alliance dominated by her Awami League, seen as close to regional power India, won 287 of the 298 seats for which results have been declared, the commission said. There are 300 constituencies in the country. The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which boycotted the last poll in 2014, won just six seats.
    Source- The Economic Times

      ESAF small finance bank has got RBI approval to operate as a scheduled bank. This makes ESAF small finance bank (SFB) the fifth scheduled bank from Kerala. ESAF microfinance institution, started in 1992, was one among the ten applicants to receive approval from RBI to start banking operations in 2016.
    Source: The Economic Times

    Banks have seen a significant improvement in recovery of stressed assets helped by the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) and amendments in the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interests (SARFAESI) Act, during FY18, according to the RBI data. In the fiscal ended March 2018, banks recovered Rs 40,400 crore worth of bad loans as against Rs 38,500 crore recovered in FY17. The various channels through which lenders recovered their bad loans include the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), SARFAESI Act, debt recovery tribunals (DRTs) and Lok Adalats. While banks recovered Rs 4,900 crore of bad loans through the IBC, the amount recovered through SARFAESI was Rs 26,500 crore in FY18, the RBI said in its annual report on Trends and Progress of Banking in 2017-18.
    Source- The Economic Times

      The government has appointed Sudhir Bhargava as Chief Information Commissioner (CIC), along with four information commissioners. Mr. Bhargava was Information Commissioner in the CIC. An alumnus of St Michael’s High School in Patna and St Stephen’s College in Delhi, Mr. Sinha is a 1981-batch Indian Foreign Service officer who was the High Commissioner of India in the United Kingdom.
    Source: The Hindu

      The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation was awarded Best Capital City in the Solid Waste Management in the Swachh Survekshan 2018 rankings. The GHMC was also at the 27th place among 4,041 cities.
    Source: The Hindu

      Norman Gimbel, the Oscar and Grammy-winning lyricist, has passed away at the age of 91. Gimbel’s work included Killing Me Softly With His Song – recorded by Roberta Flack, the Fugees and others – and the theme to TV series Happy Days.  Norman Gimbel was born in Brooklyn. His early successes included the lyrics to Andy Williams’s 1956 hit single Canadian Sunset. In 1984 Gimbel was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
    Source- BBC News


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