The Daily Brief – 28th July 2018

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1. 2018 Ramon Magsaysay Award: Among six winners of 2018 Ramon Magsaysay Award, often referred to as Asian version of the Nobel Prize, two are Indians- Bharat Vatwani and Sonam Wangchuk. Others are are Youk Chhang (Cambodia), Maria de Lourdes Martins Cruz (East Timor), Howard Dee (Philippines) and Vo Thi Hoang Yen (Vietnam). The winners will each receive certificate, medallion bearing image of late Filipino leader Ramon Magsaysay and cash prize. They will be conferred with award during formal presentation ceremony at Cultural Centre in Philippines in August 2018.Established in 1957, Ramon Magsaysay Award is awarded annually to individuals or organizations from Asia region for their altruistic and philanthropic service.
2. The 2nd Young Superintendent of Police Conference was inaugurated by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi on July 26, 2018. The purpose of 2-day conference, organized by Bureau of Police Research & Development (BPR&D) with a theme of “Predictive Policing and Contemporary Challenges for Indian Police Forces”, was to create awareness among young SPs and Commandants regarding latest technologies. BPR&D established in 1970 is nodal national police organisation to study, research and develop on subjects and issues related to policing.
3. On 26 July 2018, the 19th anniversary of Kargil Vijay Diwas was celebrated across India to commemorate the success of Operation Vijay and remember brave sacrifice of Indian soldiers during 1999 India-Pakistan Kargil War. The war took place between May and July of 1999 in Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir.
4. Internet search engine giant Google at its Cloud Next 2018 conference held in San Francisco unveiled two new Artificial Intelligence (AI) chips aimed at helping customers develop and deploy intelligent connected devices at scale. They are Edge TPU and Cloud IoT Edge. AI is branch of computer science concerned with making computers behave like humans. In contrast to normal hardware and software, AI enables a machine to perceive (i.e. to think) and respond to its changing environment.
5. Union Government has announced that Prime Minister’s Research Fellows (PMRF) Scheme will be open to all potential researchers from 2019 and not limited to candidates from IISc, IITs, NITs, IIEST and IISERs. The decision was made after Government failed to find adequate number of candidates for PMRF this year. Only 135 fellowships were finally offered against 1,000 positions. The scheme was announced in the Budget Speech 2018-19. It will be implemented for period of seven years beginning 2018-19 at total cost of Rs. 1650 crore.
6. The Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2018 has been passed by Lok Sabha.  The Bill provides for the prevention, rescue, and rehabilitation of trafficked persons and seeks to establish National Anti-Trafficking Bureau to investigate trafficking cases.  It also provides for the setting up of Anti-Trafficking Units (ATUs) at district level which will deal with the investigation, prevention, rescue, and protection of victims and witnesses.
7. West Bengal state assembly dominated by Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress Government has unanimously passed resolution to change state’s name to ‘Bangla’ in all three languages – Bengali, Hindi and English. The name change will only become official when resolution gets approval from Union Home Ministry and Parliament passes Bill. The main reason cited by State Government for changing name of West Bengal to Bangla is that whenever there is meeting of all states, West Bengal figures at bottom of the list, as it is prepared according to alphabetical order.

   

8. Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) party on July 26, 2018 emerged as the single largest party after the Pakistan Elections 2018 that were held on July 25, 2018.  With just the half of the votes counted, PTI secured 119 seats in the National Assembly. The majority mark in the National Assembly is 137 seats. However, Pakistan’s election commission has not yet released official final results. One of the top Pakistan’s election official said that there is no conspiracy behind the delay in announcing official results. According to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), the delay in announcing the official results is due to a technical issue with the Results Transmission System (RTS).Check out the CLATGyan Test Series 2019 : 30 Simulated Online Tests + Personal Mentor | Run entirely by the students of NALSAR University of Law.

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