Daily Current Affairs, 01st August 2018

1) Health Ministry Signs MoU With Ministry Of Electronics And Information Technology

•National Health Agency (NHA) under Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the apex body for the implementation of Ayushman Bharat-National Health Protection Mission (AB-NHPM), and Common Service Centres (CSC) scheme under the Digital India Programme, have signed an MoU to provide information and eligibility validation services to beneficiaries, especially in remote areas. 

•J P Nadda, Minister of Health and Family Welfare and Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for Law and Justice & Information Technology presided over the MoU signing ceremony. As the benefits under AB-NHPM are based on entitlement and not on enrolment, over 3 lakh CSCs spread across the rural India can become the key point of information for potential beneficiaries and help in validating their entitlement. 

2) Gopalkrishna Gandhi To Get 24th Rajiv Gandhi National Sadbhavana Award

•Gopalkrishna Gandhi has been chosen for the 24th Rajiv Gandhi National Sadbhavana Award for his contribution in promoting communal harmony, peace and goodwill. Gopalkrishna Gandhi is a former governor of West Bengal. 

•He will be presented with this award at an event on 20th August 2018 at Jawahar Bhawan in Delhi. The award contains a citation and a cash prize of Rs 10 lakh. The award is presented on the birthday anniversary of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. 

3) E-Aksharayan, Desktop Software Launched By IT Ministry

•The IT ministry launched a desktop software e-Aksharayan in a conference for Indian Languages Technology Industry ‘Bhashantara’, in New Delhi. The objective is to enable editing and printing of text in scanned documents. The software e-Aksharayan was launched in 7 Indian languages.

•They are namely: Hindi, Bangla, Malayalam, Gurmukhi, Tamil, Kannada & Assamese. This software would scanned printed Indian language documents into a fully editable text format in Unicode encoding.

4) RBI Hikes Repo Rate By 25 Bps To 6.5%, Raises Inflation Projection

•In 3rd Bi-monthly Policy Statement, the Reserve bank of India’s (RBI’s) monetary policy committee (MPC) raised policy rates by 25 basis points to 6.5% on account of inflationary pressures arising due to hike in minimum support price. 

•The committee has increased the policy repo rate under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) by 25 basis points to 6.5%. Consequently, the reverse repo rate under the LAF stands adjusted to 6.25%, and the marginal standing facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate to 6.75%. 

•RBI also raised the average inflation projection for the second half of the year to 4.8% from 4.7% in June. The central bank expects inflation to edge higher to 5% in the first quarter of next fiscal year. The policy statement also cited the implementation of minimum support price hike as the primary factor stoking inflation this year. The government has fixed the MSP at 150% of the cost of production of all kharif crops. 

5) UN E-Government Index: India Ranks 96th, Denmark Tops

•India has jumped 22 places to 96th rank to break into the top 100 of the United Nation’s E-Government Development Index (EGDI) 2018. Denmark, with an index value of 0.9150, topped the 2018 E-Government Development Survey. The E-Government survey is released by the United Nations in every two years. The 2018 edition was titled as 'Gearing E-Government to Support Transformation towards sustainable and resilient societies'.

•India, which was ranked 118 in 2014, jumped 11 places to be ranked 96 in 2018. The EGDI is a composite index based on the weighted average of three normalised indices:
1. Telecommunications Infrastructure Index (TII),
2. Human Capital Index (HCI),
3. Online Service Index (OSI).

6) Neeraj Chopra Wins Gold Medal At Savo Games In Finland

•Indian javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra won a gold medal in the Savo Games in Lapinlahti, Finland. Neeraj Chopra made a throw of 85.69 metres and won the gold medal. 

•Chao-Tsun Cheng of Chinese Taipei made a throw of 82.52m and won a silver medal. Chao-Tsun Cheng is the only Asian to have thrown the javelin to a distance more than 90m.