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• On December 7, 2018, two day 175th Meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Companies (OPEC) Conference & one day 5th OPEC and Non OPEC Ministerial Meeting concluded in Vienna, Austria.


• The 175th meeting of the OPEC conference commenced on December 6, 2018, in Vienna, Austria.


• It was conducted under the chairmanship of OPEC President, HE Suhail Mohamed Al Mazrouei, the UAE minister of Energy and Industry and Head of its delegation.


• Qatar withdrew its OPEC membership with effect from January 1, 2019, HE Manuel Salvador Quevedo Fernandez, People’s Minister of Petroleum of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, was elected as the President of the conference for 1 year with effect from January 1, 2019.


• HE Mustapha Guitouni, Algeria’s minister of Energy, was elected as the Alternate President for the same period.


• Mr. Agustin Mba Okomo, Equatorial Governor of OPEC was appointed as the Chairman of Board of Governors for the year 2019.


• Mr. Etienne Lepoukou, Gabon’s Governor of OPEC was appointed as Alternate Chairman for the same period.


• The next Ordinary meeting will convene in Vienna, Austria in April 2019.

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• On December 7, 2018, Luxembourg became the first country to abolish all fares on public transport by 2019.


• The move of free public transport was done to enhance the traffic congestion scenario in Luxembourg City, which is one of the worst traffic congestion-hit cities in the world.

• On 07th December 2018, according to the Global Status Report on Road Safety, India tops in road deaths with 1.51 lakh road deaths in 2016 and globally the toll of road deaths increased from 1.25 million to 1.35 in a span of three years.


• The spike in road deaths globally has come as a shocker considering that the countries had pledged to halve their road deaths by 2020.


• The United Nations had declared the 2010-2020 as the Decade of Action for Road Safety.


• According to the report,at this rate, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) target 3.6 to halve road traffic deaths by 2020 will not be met.

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• On 6th December 2018 United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched a new framework named as UN Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact.


• The objective of new framework is to combat the scourge of international terrorism and coordinate efforts across the peace and security, humanitarian, human rights and sustainable development sectors.


• It is an agreement between the UN chief, 36 organizational entities, INTERPOL and the World Customs Organisation.


• The UN Office of Counter-Terrorism will act as the Coordination Committee and will oversee the implementation of the Compact.

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• On 06th December 2018, Lieutenant governors (LGs) and administrators of Union territories have been empowered by the central government to designate civil courts as special courts to adjudicate contracts relating to infrastructure projects.


• This comes under Section 20B of the Specific Relief Act, 1963 (47 of 1963).


• According to this the state government, in consultation with the chief justice of the high court, can designate one or more civil courts as special courts within the local limits of the area to exercise jurisdiction and to try a suit under this Act in respect of contracts relating to infrastructure projects.

• On December 5, 2018, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani approved 50-crore rupees to Science & Technology Innovation (STI) Fund for assistance in research and development.


• Gujarat thus became the first state in the country to create such a fund for high-end technology and innovation.


• The assistance will be for a maximum period of three years.


• Assistance up to Rs. 50-lakh will be provided to UGC and AICTE recognized central and state universities and colleges.


• Similar assistance have been provided under the Biotechnology Policy and IT Policy which will be implemented by Gujarat Council of Science & Technology (GUJCOST) as identified by Gujarat Government’s Science & Technology Department.

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• On December 5, 2018, speaking in the India Water Impact Summit 2018, Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation Minister Nitin Gadkari announced sanction of 254 projects worth over 24 thousand crore rupees under National Mission for Clean Ganga.


• Out of that, the government has earmarked 20 thousand crores for five years towards the Clean Ganga programme.


• And additional 3 thousand crore rupees next year under the programme has been sanctioned.


• Under this, the Ministry announced taking up construction of 197 ghats in five states, including Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.


• Over the span of 4 years, around five thousand crore rupees have been spent under NMCG.

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• On December 7, 2018, Export-Import Bank of India (Exim Bank) announced extension of credit facility of USD 500 million to Tanzania for water supply projects in the country.


• This is according to a MOU signed on May 10, 2018, between the EXIM Bank and Government of Tanzania.


• According to the RBI’s statement, of the total credit by Exim Bank goods and services of value of at least 75 per cent of the contract price shall be supplied by the seller from India and remaining 25 per cent of goods and services may be procured by the seller for the purpose of the eligible contract from outside India.


• Also, the agreement under the line of credit is effective from September 18, 2018.

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• On 08th December 2018,India retain its position as the world’s top recipient of remittances this year with its diaspora sending $80 billion back home. India is followed by China ($67 billion), Mexico and the Philippines ($34 billion each) and Egypt ($26 billion).


• The Bank estimates that officially recorded remittances to developing countries will increase by 10.8% to reach $528 billion in 2018, against a 7.8% growth in 2017.


• Global remittances, which include flows to high-income countries, are projected to grow by 10.3 per cent to $689 billion.


• Bangladesh and Pakistan both experienced strong upticks of 17.9 percent and 6.2 percent in 2018, respectively.


• For 2019, it is projected that remittances growth for the region will grow to 3.7 percent to $715 billion.


• Reducing remittance flows to three per cent by 2030 is a global target under Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10.7.

• On December 7, 2018, Australia surpassed Qatar to become the world’s leading exporter of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) for the first time.


• This was announced according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics which stated that Australia had exported 6.55 million tonnes of LNG in November 2018 compared to Qatar’s 6.27 million tonnes.


• LNG is Australia’s third-largest export commodity behind coal and iron ore.

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• On 7th December 2018 Australian batsman Shaun Marsh broke an unwanted 130-year-old record in Australian cricket when he ended up gifting his wicket for just 2 runs to Ravichandran Ashwin on Day 2 of the first Test between Indian and Australia in Adelaide.


• This was Marsh’s sixth successive single digit score and he became the first Australian among the top five Test batsman since 1888 who has made six single-figure scores in a row.


• The extent of his poor form can be understood from the fact that Marsh hasn’t been able to cross 40 runs in his last 13 innings. In fact, only five time out of those innings he has managed a score in double-digits.

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• On 08th December 2018, Bharti Enterprises chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal has received ESCP Europe’s highest honour ‘Doctor Honoris Causa’ for his innovative entrepreneurship and contribution towards philanthropy in the field of education.


• With this, Mittal has become the first Indian to be honoured with this recognition in ESCP Europe’s near 200 years history.


• Established in 1819, ESCP Europe is the world’s first business school, founded by a group of economic scholars and businessmen.

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• On December 6, 2018, Forbes released The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women of 2018.


• Four Indians who were featured in the list were IT stalwart Roshni Nadar Malhotra ranking 51st in the list, Biotechnology pioneer Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw ranking 60th, Media mogul Shobhana Bhartia at 88th position and Actor Priyanka Chopra at 94th spot.


• The list is topped by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.


• It is the eighth consecutive year and 13 times in total in the 15 years of the annual list she has topped.


• She is followed by UK Prime Minister Theresa May, for the second year in a row.

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• On December 7, 2019, Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Government of India was conferred the Skoch Award for National Significance at 54th SKOCH Summit on the State of Power, Oil and Gas and was organized by SKOCH Group in New Delhi.


• The award was received by Secretary, Ministry of New Renewable Energy Shri Anand Kumar.


• It was selected as the winner for its critical role in installing about 73 GW renewable energy capacity in the country.


• This provided one billion units of electricity in the country with 21 per cent of total installed capacity in the span of a year.

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• On 08th December 2018, Axis Bank inducted Amitabh Chaudhry as additional director on its board. He will replace incumbent Shikha Sharma whose fourth term has been curtailed by the RBI by nearly two-and-half years.


• The board also gave its nod for the reappointment of Samir Barua, Som Mittal and Rohit Bhagat as independent directors.


• Amitabh Chaudhry, the former MD and CEO of HDFC Standard Life Insurance Company, was in September named the MD and CEO of Axis Bank for a period of three years, with effect from January 1, 2019.

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• On 08th December 2018, Kirthiga Reddy, the former managing director of Facebook India, has joined SoftBank as its first venture partner at its $100 billion Vision Fund.


• She the first women coming on board in a company where the rest are all men.


• Reddy was Facebook’s first employee in India and served as the managing director for India and South Asia market until 2016, following which she relocated to the company’s US headquarters, serving as Managing Global Client Partner and Emerging Markets Lead.

• On December 7, 2018, the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC), chaired by PM Narendra Modi, appointed Krishnamurthy Subramanian as Chief Economic Advisor for a period of 3 years.


• He is currently serving as Associate Professor of Finance (with tenure) and Executive Director for the Centre for Analytical Finance at the Indian School of Business, a top business school in India.


• He would replace Arvind Subramanian who resigned from the post on 20 June 2018.


• His appointment comes barely 50 days before the Economic Survey released by GOI.


• He has done his MBA and PhD in Financial Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business under the advice of Professor and ex-RBI governor Raghuram Rajan.

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• On 8th December 2018, Vice President of India Shri M.Venkaiah Naidu released two books on the compilation of selected speeches made by the President, Shri Ram Nath Kovind in the first year of assuming the office.


• The books are titled as, “The Republican Ethic” in English and “Loktantra ke Swar” in Hindi.


• The occasion was also graced by Union Minister of External Affairs, Smt. Sushma Swaraj and the Minister of Information Broadcasting (IC), Col. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore along with other senior dignitaries.


• ‘The Republican Ethic’ is a collection of 95 select speeches in English categorized into eight subgroups — Addressing the Nation, diversity of India, window to the world, educating India, equipping India, dharma of public service, honoring our sentinels, spirit of the Law & acknowledging excellence.


• The book “Loktantra ke Swar” – is a collection of 109 speeches in Hindi which talks about different layers and levels of multifaceted largest democracy in the world – India and the building blocks of the book are equality, egalitarianism & education.


• The event was organized by the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting.