The Daily Brief – 11th January, 2017

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• The 21st National Youth Festival will commence from 12 January 2017 in Rohtak, Haryana. The Festival will conclude on 16 January 2017. The Festival is organised by the Department of Youth Affairs of Union Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. It is organised every year on the birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda.

• A leading global think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in the report- ‘India’s Expatriate Evacuation Operations’ has recommended putting in place a formal doctrine or emergency plan and developing standard operating procedures to facilitate evacuation of expatriates from conflict zones.

• India has announced a $100 million Line of Credit to Kenya for agricultural mechanisation after talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta.

• Clare Hollingworth, the legendary correspondent who first broke the news of the beginning of World War II, passed away on 10 January 2017 following a brief illness. She was 105.

• The Union Health Minister J. P. Nadda is set to introduce the measles-rubella vaccine (MR) from February 2017 in five states and Union territories in the Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) to provide preventive medications to every child born in India.

• Akhada, the authorized biography of Mahavir Singh Phogat-a former wrestler and a coach, was released in Chandigarh. The book tells the story of a man of tremendous fortitude, of a father who fought against all odds to train his daughters into Olympians Geeta Phogat and Babita Kumari.

• According to scientists, a new plate boundary may be forming on the floor of the Indian Ocean in Wharton Basin as a result of the 2012 earthquake that shook the Andaman-Sumatra region. The discovery was based on the study of seismic data recorded before, during and after the 2012 quakes and sea floor depth analysis by venturing into the ocean aboard a research vessel.

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated India’s first international exchange, India INX at the International Financial Service Centre (IFSC) of GIFT (Gujarat International Financial Tech) City Gandhinagar, Gujarat. India INX is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). It will enable Indian firms to compete on an equal footing with offshore firms. India INX will initially trade in equity derivatives, currency derivatives, commodity derivatives including index and Stocks. Subsequently, it will offer depository receipts and bonds once required infrastructure is ready.

• The Gujarat government launched India’s first student startup and innovation policy, and aims to provide Rs 200 crore in the form of grants to ideas developed by students. The policy aims to support over 1,000 innovation per year in the state and create pre-incubation support in all universities of the state.

• Researchers from Midwestern University have identified the function of the human appendix, often viewed as a vestigial organ with little-known use. They discovered that the human appendix has evolved at least 30 times and even possibly up to a maximum of 41 times throughout the mammalian evolution. It was found that species with appendix have higher concentrations of immune (lymphoid) tissue in cecum (part of the large intestines), thereby suggesting that appendix could serve as a secondary immune organ.

• Outgoing US President Barack Obama has selected four Indian-American scientists among 102 researchers for the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). They are Pankaj Lal from Montclair State University, Kaushik Chowdhury from Northeastern University, Manish Arora from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Aradhna Tripati from University of California, Los Angeles.

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