The Daily Brief – 13th October, 2016

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• The Centre has brought a final draft of the National Water Framework Bill, 2016 that stresses on managing water at the basin-level to resolve conflicts. The draft Bill pitches for establishing a River Basin Authority for each inter-State basin to ensure “optimum and sustainable” development of rivers and valleys.
•  Indian Oil Corporation plans to lay the nation’s longest LPG pipeline (1,987 km) from Gujarat coast to Gorakhpur in eastern UP.
• Aung San Suu Kyi will pay a state visit to India at the invitation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi from October 17 to 19.
• The death toll due to Japanese encephalitis (JE) increased to 48 in a span of four weeks in Odisha’s backward Malkangiri district. Hordes of pigs that carry the killer virus have been kept in enclosures and hundreds of pigs have been killed by the villagers to stop spread of the virus. Cooked food is being provided to pregnant and lactating women and malnourished ailing children.
• A fashion line dedicated to the Indian Army will be showcased at the French European Indian Fashion Week later this month in Paris.
• Researchers from Kolkata based Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) have produced cost-effective, metal-free cathodes using human hair for use in solar cells.
• The Union Cabinet has approved the establishment and operationalisation of Indian Institute of Management (IIM) at Jammu. It will become operational from the Academic Year 2016-17 at the transit or temporary campus at Old Government College of Engineering & Technology.
• The first World Tsunami Awareness Day will be celebrated on November 5, 2016 at the Asian Ministerial Conference for Disaster Risk Reduction (AMCDRR) 2016. The conference will organised from November 3 to 5, 2016 in New Delhi by the Union Government in collaboration with United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).
• The Union Cabinet has given its approval for signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between India and Hungary on cooperation in the field of water management.
• The Union Finance Ministry has constituted a high-level committee to consolidate the regulation of pension products. The committee would have representatives from all financial sector regulators SEBI, IRDA, RBI and PFRDA. Its mandate will be to look into the issue of bringing these companies which are offering pension plans under different regulators under the purview of PFRDA.
• Leander Paes and Andre Begemann made the semifinals of the $125,000 Challenger tennis tournament at Tashkent.

• Indian off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin reclaimed the number one spot in Test rankings for bowlers following a career-best match haul of 13 for 140 in the third Test against New Zealand in Indore.
• The UN General Assembly is set to formally appoint Portugal’s former Prime Minister Antonio Guterres as the next Secretary-General of the world body to replace Ban Ki-moon. The 15-nation Security Council had decided to send Guterres’s name to the 193-member General Assembly for final approval. Guterres 67, will succeed Ban as the 9th Secretary General when Ban’s tenure ends on December 31. Guterres term as the world’s top diplomat will be from January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2022. He was Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 and then had served as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees from 2005 to 2015. 
• A group of Hindus in Sri Lanka has launched the ‘Siva Senai’, an organisation to “protect Hindus from threats from other religious groups” on the island. A ceremony was recently held in Vavuniya, a Tamil-majority town located in Sri Lanka’s Northern Province. It was also clarified that the organisation had no links to the right wing political party, Shiv Sena in Maharashtra. The Siva Senai’s chief organiser is Maravanpulavu Sachithananthan.
• U.S. and Cuban officials are discussing joint efforts to preserve artefacts at Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway’s former Cuban estate.
• Scientists have recorded haunting sounds cast by Jupiter’s auroras, captured by NASA’s solar-powered Juno spacecraft during its first full orbit around the king of planets. The radio emissions cast by Jupiter’s auroras — light shows similar to the northern and southern lights on Earth — were recorded by an instrument, called Waves, as the Juno spacecraft travelled about 4,100 km above Jupiter’s swirling clouds. Those emission recordings were then converted into sound files by researchers at the University of Iowa.
• The International Day for Disaster Reduction (IDDR) is observed annually on 13 October across the world encourage citizens and governments to take part in building more disaster resilient communities and nations.
• The NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has developed a new high-tech electroactive bandage that uses electricity to significantly promote healing of injured wounds. The high-tech bandage creates an electric charge to promote the healing process of wounds in space especially in conditions of non-Earth gravity.

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