The Daily Brief – 1st October, 2016

The Daily Briefs are a comprehensive update of current affairs for the day. To know more about them, read this. If you’d like to receive updates for current affairs every day, you’ll need to subscribe by entering your email address at the right side of this page. The previous Briefs can be accessed at the archives here. Also, check out our mock tests!

• With the objective of giving a push to manufacturing and industrial activity in the newly created state of Andhra Pradesh, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) announced special tax concessions under the Income Tax Act to seven districts in the state to boost manufacturing and industrial activity. The concessions are being extended under the Andhra Pradesh Re-organisation Act, 2014.

• India has won the hockey Asia Cup after defeating Bangladesh at the match at the tournament, being held in Dhaka. Hardik Singh was named the Man-of-the-Match, while Pankaj Kumar Rajak was named the Best Goalkeeper of the tournament.
• Sania Mirza and Barbora Strycova made the final of the WTA Wuhan Open beating second seeds Hao-Ching Chan and Yung-Jan Chan.
• A day after Indian special forces struck terror launch pads across the Line of Control, Pakistan continued to maintain that there had only been an escalation of firing at the LoC.
• The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) will ask all telecom operators to submit reports on the number of call failures on their network on a daily basis.
• Google will open a new ‘Cloud Region’ in Mumbai that will help offer its cloud platform services to developers and enterprise customers in India. Expected to be live in 2017, the local region in India will help make Google cloud platform services even faster for Indian customers.
• According to the recent publication released by the Botanical Survey of India (BSI), Tamil Nadu accounts for the highest number flowering plants in the country. Tamil Nadu is followed by Kerala and Maharashtra.
• The Union Finance Ministry has decided that sports infrastructure will be included under the harmonised master list of infrastructure sub-sectors.
• Sportstar and Twitter have come together to launch two new initiatives for sports fans who love connecting to athletes on Twitter and enjoy their trivia.
• The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) reached an agreement to cut oil production for the first time since 2008 after an informal meeting in Algiers, Algeria. The OPEC is an intergovernmental organization of 14 oil-exporting developing nations that coordinates and unifies the petroleum policies of its member countries. The OPEC members are Algeria, Angola, Libya, Nigeria and Gabon (from Africa); Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia (the de facto leader) Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates (from Asia); Ecuador and Venezuela (from Latin America).
• European Union ministers approved the ratification of the Paris Agreement at a historic meeting of the Environment Council in Brussels. This decision brings the Paris Agreement closer to entering into force. The 28 EU member nations together account for close to 12 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Their addition will take the cumulative emissions of ratifying parties well beyond the 55 per cent minimum required for the treaty to enter into force. The European Commission said that once approved by the European Parliament next week, the EU will be able to deposit its ratification instrument before national ratification processes are completed in each member state.
• The UN has noted that without more donor support the emergency caused by Boko Haram will become the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Nigeria-born Islamist group Boko Haram has waged a brutal insurgency in the country’s northeast, with violence spreading more recently to western Cameroon as well as the south of Chad and Niger.
• Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft is now headed for a mission-ending crash into the comet it has stalked for two years, a dramatic conclusion to a 12-year odyssey to demystify our Solar System’s origins. Rosetta was a space probe built by the European Space Agency launched on 2 March 2004. Along with Philae, its lander module, Rosetta performed a detailed study of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.
• Two Van Gogh masterpieces stolen in Amsterdam 14 years ago have been recovered by organised crime investigators in Italy. The announcement was made by the Van Gogh museum.
• One of the biggest dinosaur footprints ever recorded has been unearthed in the Gobi Desert. This offers a fresh clue about the giant creatures that roamed the earth millions of years ago. A joint Mongolian-Japanese expedition found the giant print, which measures 106 centimetres long and 77 centimetres wide. The fossil is believed to be the footprint of the Titanosaur.

Today’s Quiz