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- The government recently appointed heads of 10 Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), including the first woman to head one of the 20 premier B-schools in the country. The IIMs that got new directors are in Bodhgaya (Bihar), Sirmaur (Himachal Pradesh), Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), Trichy (Tamil Nadu), Nagpur (Maharashtra), Sambalpur (Odisha), Raipur (Chhattisgarh), Rohtak (Haryana), Ranchi (Jharkhand) and Bangalore. Prof Neelu Rohmetra of Jammu University is the first woman to be appointed director of an IIM at Sirmaur. She specialises in HRD and cross-culture management.
- After its successful launch on Android, the Bharat Interface for Money, or BHIM, an app, has been finally launched on the iOS platform. With its debut on iOS, it is currently supporting over 35 banks and is currently available in Hindi and English, unlike the Android version which supports other regional languages as well.
- The Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) is forming an advisory committee on financial technology or fintech-related issues, which would look at safeguards that can be put in place to facilitate crowdfunding of ‘genuine’ ventures and mobilise more household savings into the financial markets.
- Ola’s chief financial officer Rajiv Bansal, who left Infosys to work at the ride-hailing service, has quit after spending over a year at the firm. Ola has named senior vice president Pallav Singh as the interim CFO.
- India beat Pakistan by 9-wickets to win the T20 Blind World Cup at Bengaluru’s M Chinnaswamy Stadium. Prakash Jayaramaiah was named man of the match.
- The world’s oldest steam locomotive in operation, the 162 year old Fairy Queen, has been re-inducted into service by the Indian Railways.
- The US and Japanese military have successfully tested the Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA missile defence system by intercepting a medium-range ballistic missile target in space for the first time.
- 12th January is commemorated as Darwin Day, after the birth anniversary of Charles Darwin. This year was the 207th birth anniversary. Darwin is known for his theory of evolution on the origin of life forms.
- The British government is on track to trigger the Brexit process by the end of March, after the legislation authorising the government to start negotiations passed through the House of Commons without any amendments. The legislation will now pass to the House of Lords, which will consider it when it returns from recess on February 20. In the end, 494 MPs from the Labour and the Conservatives voted in favour of the legislation, with 52 Labour MPs rebelling alongside others from the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Nationalist Party.
- Scientists have used decades-old radioactive glass, found blanketing the ground after the first nuclear test bomb explosion, to examine theories about the Moon’s formation about 4.5 billion years ago. Researchers from the University of California San Diego in the U.S. examined the chemical composition of zinc and other volatile elements in the glass that resulted from the 1945 plutonium bomb explosion. The analysis found similarities between the trinitite and lunar rocks.
The title should be 12th February and Darwin Day is also “12th February”.