Daily GK Updates - 12th December, 2015

NATIONAL UPDATES:

1. UNESCO designated Varanasi and Jaipur as members of Creative Cities Network: UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova, announced the designation of 47 cities from 33 countries as new members of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network. From India, Varanasi and Jaipur made it to the network in the categories, City of Music and City of Crafts and Folk Art respectively.

2. National Commission for Safai Karmacharis recommended making it a permanent and statutory body: National Commission for Safai Karmacharis presented its Annual Report 2014-15 to the Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Thawar Chand Gehlot. It recommended making the commission a permanent and statutory body with powers of civil court to lend it more credibility.

3. Prakash Kumar Singh appointed as the new chairman of Steel Authority of India Limited

4. India and Japan signed deals on bullet train, defence, civil nuclear energy: Taking their robust bilateral ties to a new level, both the countries inked a number of pacts in key areas of defence and nuclear energy as well as building of first bullet train network between Mumbai-Ahmedabad at a cost of about Rs 98000 crores.

5. India and Japan signed protocol to amend double taxation avoidance pact: Both the governments inked a protocol for amending the existing convention for the avoidance of double taxation and for the prevention of fiscal evasion with respect to taxes on income.

6. Culture Minister Mahesh Sharma inaugurates India-Laos conference in Delhi.

INTERNATIONAL UPDATES:

1. Myanmar launched its first UNESCO Biosphere Reserve Inle Lake: The Inle Lake was designated as UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in Paris in 2015. The Lake is situated in Taunggyi district in Myanmar’s eastern Shan State.

2. Alibaba agreed to buy 112-year old newspaper South China Morning Post of Hong Kong:  The agreement includes acquisition of SCMP Group’s other media assets, such as licenses to the Hong Kong editions of Esquire, Elle, Cosmopolitan and Harper’s Bazaar.

3. DuPont and Dow Chemical Company announced to merge to form DowDuPont: Both the companies are American chemical companies.

OTHER UPDATES:

SPORTS:

1. Elizabeth Susan Koshy clinched gold in 59th National Shooting Championships held in New Delhi: She won the Women’s 50m Rifle 3 Positions Gold.

2. Indian Cyclist Deborah Herold became World No.4 cyclist: She became the 1st Indian female cyclist to be ranked 4th in the World Elite Women Ranking for the 500m time trial event.

AWARDS:

3. Wipro won 2015 Aegis Graham Bell Award for innovation in IoT: Global software giant Wipro won the 2015 Aegis Graham Bell Award for developing a solution for the Internet of Things (IoT). The solution is named as Universal Data Parser (UDP).