17 May 2019 - Daily Current Affairs

South Korea has abandoned its bid to stage Asian Cup Football tournament in 2023, leaving the sole other bidders China with a free run to become hosts.
The Korea Football Association (KFA) had pulled out to strategically focus on a joint bid with North Korea to host the Women's World Cup in the same year.
The KFA announced the joint bid in March, but diplomatic contacts between Pyongyang and Seoul have since dwindled with North Korea-US nuclear talks deadlocked.
The host will be designated on 4 June 2019, before the 69th FIFA Congress, in Paris, France.

Note:

The 2023 AFC Asian Cup will be the 18th edition of the AFC Asian Cup, the quadrennial international men's football championship of Asia organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC).
The tournament will involve 24 national teams after its expansion of the 2019 AFC Asian Cup.

Source: AIR News

The World Telecommunication and Information Society Day (WTISD) is observed every year on 17th May to mark the anniversary of the signing of the first International Telegraph Convention (ITC) and the creation of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
The WTISD raise awareness of the possibilities that the use of the Internet and other information and communication technologies (ICT) can bring to societies and economies, as well as of ways to bridge the digital divide.
The 2019 theme of WTISD is “Bridging the standardization gap”.

Former Prime Minister of Australia Bob Hawke (89-years) passed away.
He was the longest-serving Prime Minister (Labor Party) served from 1983 to 1991.
He is also accredited to create Australia’s universal healthcare system ‘Medicare’.

Source: BBC

Justice Arjan Kumar Sikri (former judge of Supreme Court of India) has been appointed Chairperson of the News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA).
He succeeds Justice R.V. Raveendran who completes his term on 25^th May 2019.
The NBSA is a self-regulatory body that implements the Code of Ethics & Broadcasting Standards and Guidelines for its member news broadcasters.

Source: Business Standard

The Indian delegation led by Information and Broadcasting Secretary ‘Amit Khare’ met Film Commissioners of participating countries at Cannes Film Festival.
The delegation highlighted the opportunity of utilizing the abundant talent pool of skilled professionals and technicians and projected the possibility of India emerging as a major post-production hub.
The focus of the discussion was the exploration of co-production opportunities with the participating countries and forge opportunities of collaborations for films.
During the meeting, Israel proposed India to be the focus country in Jerusalem Film Festival, 2020.

Source: AIR News

The 11th Joint Consular Committee meeting between India and Iran took place in New Delhi.
Both sides discussed the early conclusion of Agreement on Mutual Legal Assistance on civil and commercial matters and extending the longer duration of e-Visa for each other nationals on reciprocity.
The meeting provided an opportunity to review the status of ongoing cooperation in consular and visa related issues and to discuss ways and means to further expand people to people contacts and promote friendly exchanges between India and Iran.

Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone (AMTZ) has organized a one-day workshop on Organ Bio Printing at the Kalam Convention Center, AMTZ Campus in Visakhapatnam.
The workshop aims to strengthen Indo-Australian Cooperation and achieve the development of the 3D printing industry in both countries.
The workshop explored 3D printing, an innovative technology that covers all medical disciplines and offers new opportunities in diagnostics and therapy.

Note:

An artificial organ is an engineered device or tissue that is implanted or integrated into a human — interfacing with living tissue — to replace a natural organ, to duplicate or augment a specific function or functions so the patient may return to normal life as soon as possible.

Source: The Hans India

The military drill ‘Exercise Bull strike’ was conducted to showcase joint operations capability of the armed forces.
During the exercise, the army personnel got the chance to display their prowess by undertaking company level airborne operation at Teressa island, Andaman Nicobar.
170 troops from three services carried out para drop operations in a Combat Free Fall and Static Line mode.

Source: DD news

China has broadened its block of online encyclopedia Wikipedia to include all language editions.
According to a report by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), China has started blocking all language editions of Wikipedia last month.
China's online censorship apparatus 'Great Firewall' blocks a large number of foreign sites in the country, such as Google, Facebook and The New York Times.
Wikipedia is a multilingual online encyclopedia with exclusively free content based on open collaboration through a model of content editing using web-based applications such as web browsers, called wiki.

Note:

Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001, by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger.
It is the largest and most popular general reference work on the World Wide Web and is one of the most popular websites by Alexa rank as of April 2019.

Source: BBC

The Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) has launched the ‘BSE StAR MF’ app to enable more participation and help mutual fund distributors process transactions faster.
BSE StAR MF is the exchange's mutual fund platform which helps distributors purchase and redeems mutual fund units on behalf of their clients.
The launch of the app would further provide the comfort of doing business to our 24,000 members.

Note:

The ‘BSE StAR MF’ app can be downloaded from the Google Play Store. Once the app is downloaded, the sign up can be done by providing the member identification number

Source: The Economic Times

Nainital Bank fails to fully automate the non-performing asset (NPA) identification process, despite specific directions issued in this regard.
The Nainital Bank Limited (a subsidiary of Bank of Baroda) is a scheduled commercial bank founded in 1922 by Govind Ballabh Pant
In 1975, the government-owned Bank of Baroda (BOB) acquired a 98.6% (around 99%) stake in the bank and made it a subsidiary.
The Nainital Bank Limited is registered as a scheduled commercial bank with Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

Source: Economics times

Indian digital wallet company Paytm has tied up with American card company Citibank to launch a credit card called ‘Paytm First Card’.
The card will offer minimum assured one per cent “universal unlimited cashback” on all transactions to customers along with no restrictions on earning categories.
Paytm First Card will have an annual fee of Rs. 500, with the facility of a full waiver of annual fee on spends exceeding Rs 50,000 per year.
It is the first card of its kind card launched in India by Citi as well as the first white-label credit card to offer unlimited one per cent cash-back.

Source: The Hindu Business Line