Notes:
The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has recently constituted a committee on fair market conduct, which will be headed by former Lok Sabha secretary and law secretary T K Viswanathan. The panel will have representations from SEBI, mutual funds, brokers, audit firms, stock exchanges, data analytics firms and legal firms. The committee has been tasked with suggesting improvements to the existing SEBI norms, including on insider trading and Fraudulent and Unfair Trade practices (FUTP). It has been specifically asked to look at trading plans, handling of price-sensitive information during takeovers and aligning of insider-trading rules with provisions of the Companies Act. The committee has also been tasked with suggesting short-term and medium-term measures for improved surveillance of the markets, as well as issues of high-frequency trades and harnessing of technology and analytics in surveillance. The committee will submit its report within 4 months.

Notes:
Dhirendra Swarup, who was a public interest director at the BSE, has been appointed as the new chairman of the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). He succeeded Sudhakar Rao. Swarup is a former Chairman of Pension Funds Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) and has over four decades of experience across finance, budgeting, public debt management, public policy and pension reforms. He was also chairman of the Cash and Debt Management Committee of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) from 2000 to 2003.

Notes:
Peter O’Neill has been re-elected as the new Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea (PNG) for a second five-year term with a healthy majority, 60 to 46 by a newly elected parliament. He is the leader of the People’s National Congress and represents the constituency of Ialibu-Pangia.

Notes:
The Union Government has launched the 2nd AGRI-UDAAN programme in New Delhi on August 4, 2017 to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in agriculture. It will mentor startups and help them connect with potential investors. The program focuses on catalyzing scale-up stage food and agribusiness startups through rigorous mentoring, industry networking and investor pitching. The 6 month program is a unique platform for scale up stage innovators, entrepreneurs and startups in the Food and Agribusiness sectors. The applications will be available at www.aidea.naarm.org.in. Top 40 startups will be shortlisted and allowed to pitch in front of panel of evaluators during cohort finalization programme. Out of these about 8 to 12 startups will be selected for final cohort for capacity building workshop. The AGRI UDAAN has organised by NAARM, a-IDEA and IIM-A, CIIE in partnership with Caspian Inpact Investment and supported by DST.

Notes:
Manju Kumari from India has won the bronze medal in 59kg category with a 2-0 victory over Ilona Prokopevniuk of Ukraine in the Junior World Wrestling Championship in Tampere, Finland on August 3, 2017.

Notes:
The Maharashtra government has constituted a committee under the chairmanship of senior IPS officer Rashmi Shukla to suggest measures to ensure safety of women working in the Information and Technology sector. The committee will suggest measures that can be undertaken to ensure safety of women working in the IT sector. This information was given by the state government to Bombay High Court. The government also sought four weeks’ time to file a detailed affidavit on long-term steps it was contemplating to enhance women’s safety. The court has taken up the PIL ‘suo motu’ (on its own) on the issue of women’s safety in the state. In January 2017, a woman software engineer working with Infosys was allegedly killed by a security guard on the company’s premises in Pune.

Notes:
The Maharashtra Government has launched two online portals MahaDBT and MahaVASTU to streamline the process of Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) and to bring in more transparency in construction sector. With this, Maharashtra has become the first state in India to launch such a system that will provide direct benefits with Aadhaar authentication. The MahaDBT portal is an Aadhaar-authenticated electronic mechanism that will enable direct transfer of benefits for over 40 schemes currently implemented. MahaDBT’s design is based on central government’s direct transfer benefit scheme and Aadhaar will be mandatory to claim benefits through this portal. On the other hand, MahaVASTU portal is an online building permission management system, through which construction approvals will be sanctioned with full transparency.

Notes:
Mohammad Mustafa, a 1995 batch IAS officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre, has been appointed as the new Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI) for a period of 3 years. At present, he is the joint Secretary in Department of Financial Services. SIDBI is an independent financial institution aimed to aid the growth and development of micro, small and medium-scale enterprises (MSME) in India and is headquartered in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.

Notes:
The 7th Meeting of BRICS Trade Ministers was held in Shanghai, China from August, 1-2, 2017. From India, the 6-member delegation led by Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman , along with Ambassador J.S. Deepak, PR to WTO participated in the meeting. The trade ministers of BRICS nations discussed trade facilitation, economic and technological cooperation, capacity building and the multilateral trade system in the meeting. And, adopted the following documents at the conclusion of the meeting: 7th BRICS Trade Ministers’ Joint Statement, BRICS trade in services cooperation roadmap, BRICS e-commerce cooperation initiative, BRICS IPR cooperation guidelines, etc.

Notes:
The Pin Valley National Park is located within the Lahaul and Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh. The Park forms a natural habitat for a number of endangered animals such as snow leopard and Siberian ibex with its snow laden unexplored higher reaches and slopes.