The Daily Brief – 16th January 2017

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• Tamil Nadu government has launched a mobile application Pinakin to provide information of famous tourist destinations in the state. The app will provide information on other major tourist destinations in Tamil Nadu.
• China has handed over two ships to the Pakistan to safeguard the strategic Gwadar port and trade routes under the ambitious China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). These ships have been named as Hingol and Basol, after two rivers near Gwadar. They will be part of Pakistan Navy and are equipped with state-of-the-art guns. They will be used to protect the sea-lanes in the Arabian Sea.

  

• The Border Security Force (BSF) has launched operation Sard Hawa at the western international border of Rajasthan to check the instances of infiltration due to the dense fog in the area. The purpose of this 14 days operation (from 15 to 28 January, 2017) is to keep hawk’s eye on the international border and to motivate patrolling jawans.
• The RBI Note Mudran printing press located in Mysuru (Karnataka) has broken all its past record by printing highest number of currency notes in December 2016. A total of 10.9 million notes were printed on a single day
• Veteren actor Rishi Kapoor’s autobiography titled “Khullam Khulla: Rishi Kapoor Uncensored” was released.
• The Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MOCI) has launched a mobile application named “SEZ India” under its broader e-Governance initiative to help the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Units and Developers. It will help the SEZ Units and Developers to find information easily and track their transactions on an online system.
• The new Adoption Regulations have come into force from today. An official release said, the regulations, which have replaced the Adoption Guidelines, 2015, will further strengthen the adoption programme in the country by streamlining the process. Transparency, early de-institutionalisation of children, informed choice for the parents, ethical practices and strictly defined timelines in the adoption process are the salient aspects of the Adoption Regulations 2017. The regulations framed by the Central Adoption Resource Authority as mandated under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 was notified on the 4th of this month.
• Facebook to introduce new tools in Germany to help combat the spread of fabricated news stories. The world’s largest social network has said, it would enable German users to flag potentially false stories. The stories will then be passed to third-party fact-checkers and if found to be unreliable, will be marked in users’ news feeds as “disputed”.
• In Gujarat, the three-day Gunotsav-an exercise of assessing over 34 thousand schools began from today. Chief Minister Vijay Rupani today launched the 7th edition of Gunotsav.  This drive is aimed at assessing the quality of education imparted to students of Class 1 to 8 of the government-run primary as well as grant-in-aid schools across the state. ‘Gunotsav’ is the brainchild of Narendra Modi, who started the exercise in 2009 during his tenure as Gujarat CM.
• Sports Minister Vijay Goel today inaugurated Khelo India National level Competitions in New Delhi. Around one thousand participants from over 25 states are participating in swimming, cycling and wrestling competitions.  The Minister said a National portal for Sports Talent Search will be launched in this month by his Ministry.