Current Affairs: August 17

Rajras Current Affairs August 17

NEWS: Food causes WPI inflation to rise to 23-month high

• WPI inflation rose to 23 month high of 3.6%
• WPI- Wholesale Price Index
• Importance: Captures increase in price of products at wholesale level.
• Who releases WPI: Office of the Economic Adviser in the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Ministry of Commerce & Industry is responsible for compiling WPI and releasing it.
• The new WPI series with 2004- 05 as the base year has 676 items in the commodity basket.
• The 676 items in WPI are included in three categories, where each of the categories has different weight.
  • Primary Articles – 20.12%
  • Fuel and Power – 14.91%
  • Manufactured Products – 64.97%
    

    

NEWS: Sedition case filed against Amnesty International

• Acting on complaint by Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), police charged Amnesty International India under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code (Sedition).
• Why: Amnesty organized a program that sought to project the human suffering of the Kashmir conflict.
• What is Amnesty International?
  • Non-governmental organization focused on human rights
  • Amnesty works to draw attention to human rights abuses and campaigns for compliance with international laws and standards.

NEWS: First National Conference of Investigating Agencies was held in New Delhi

• The Bureau of Police Research and Development (BPR&D) and National Investigation Agency (NIA) organized the conference.
• The purpose of this conference was to provide an annual national platform to all the officers of law enforcement agencies.
• The agenda of conference included:
  • Discussion on latest laws and judgements and their implications for investigation and prosecution.
  • Deliberation on new legislation and criminal law amendments for meeting new challenges in investigation.
  • Adoption of latest technology in forensic sciences
  • Sharing of best practices that should be followed by different investigation agencies

NEWS: India climbs 15 points in GII

• GII: Global Innovation Index
• Cornell University, INSEAD, and the World Intellectual Property Organization, in partnership with other organizations and institutions, publishes GII.
• GII 2016 Theme: “Winning with Global Innovation”.
• India climbed 15 spots, from 81 last year, to 66.
• Switzerland, Sweden, UK, U.S., Finland and Singapore lead the 2016 rankings.
  

  

NEWS: China launches QUESS satellite

• China launched world’s first quantum satellite named Quantum Experiments at Space Scaler (QUESS)
• China’s launch center (Shriharikota): Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the northwestern province of Gansu.
• Satellite has been nicknamed Micius, after a 5th century BC Chinese philosopher and scientist who is credited as the first one in human history conducting optical experiments.
• It is designed to establish hack-proof quantum communications by transmitting un-crackable keys from space to the ground.
• Quantum Stuff: Satellite will communicate using the principle of ‘quantum entanglement’, an act of fusing two or more particles into complementary ‘quantum states’.

Other NEWS:

• Researchers have warned that Banana could well be wiped out globally in just 5 to 10 years by fast-advancing fungal diseases called the Sigatoka complex.
• Bihar becomes second state to ratify GST Amendment Bill, 2014. Earlier, Assam became the first state to ratify the bill.
• Prominent Punjabi writer, novelist and short story writer and Jnanpith awardee Gurdial Singh passed away at Bathinda, Punjab yesterday.
• Union Bank of India (UBI) in August 2016 launched an Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) based mobile app named- *99# Mobile Application.