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• On 8th November 2018, International Day of Radiology was observed throughout the world.


• In 2012, November 8 was marked as International Day of Radiology, as joint initiative of European Society of Radiology (ESR), Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) and American College of Radiology (ACR).


• This day marks the date of discovery of the existence of X-rays by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen in 1895.


• Main theme of International Day of Radiology 2018 is: Cardiac imaging.


• Also, November 8 is observed as World Radiography Day by the International Society of Radiographers and Radiological Technologists.

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• On November 8, 2018, to mark the celebration of Deepawali, United Nations Postal System issued stamps with Diyas lamps.


• India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Syed Akbaruddin acknowleged the gesture and the stamps have been made available at UN headquarters post office and online.


• The sheet in the denomination of USD 1.15 contains ten stamps and tabs featuring festive lights and the symbolic lamps.


• The background of the sheet features the United Nations Headquarters building illuminated with the message of “Happy Diwali”.

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• On November 5, 2018, UK India Business Council released its report named: ‘Beyond the Top 200-Effective International Collaboration for Indian Higher Education’.


• India’s rise to superpower status has been accelerated by the government’s efforts at new higher education policy. This would enable young Indians to receive the world’s best higher education in India.


• By 2030 India will have the largest number of people in the world of college-going age – a staggering 140 million.


• Currently there are 736 universities in India educating 28.6 million students.


• India will need at least another 1,500 institutions by 2030 to accommodate this huge influx of students.


• To become a 21st century global superpower however, India needs to place excellence, equal access, and employability at the centre of its Higher Education system.


• In a bid to collaborate with best institutions, Indian policy makers allow only “the top 200 in the world” to collaborate with the best Indian institutions.


• This however is not a suitable tool to judge foreign universities.

• On November 8, 2018, Meghalaya government announced Rs 378 crore investment in the second phase of Aqua Mission.


• It is the state’s flagship aquaculture mission aimed at cutting down fish imports into the hill state.


• The 2nd edition was announced by Fisheries Minister Comingone Ymbon at the 5th state aqua festival held here at the U Soso Tham auditorium.

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• On November 6, 2018, the Bombay High Court set up an ad-hoc (temporary) committee to look after day-to-day functioning of the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA).


• The committee will consist of : Umesh Khanwilkar, Navin Shetty, Shahalam Shaikh, Ganesh Iyer and CS Naik.


• Umesh Khanwilkar and CS Naik has been given restricted charge of the bank account of the MCA.


• The Committee has been directed to submit audited statement of income and expenditure with better particulars to this Court quarterly.


• Further, all major decisions regarding MCA have to be taken with the prior consent of the court.

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• Unemployment rate in India has increased to 6.9% in October 2018, the highest in 2 years, as per a study by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy.


• Labour participation rate, a measure of the proportion of adults willing to work, has declined to 42.4%, the lowest since January 2016.


• Estimated number of persons employed during October 2018 was 397 million. This is 2.4% lower compared to the 407 million persons employed in October 2017.


• Count of the unemployed persons actively looking for jobs almost doubled to 29.5 million in October 2018 from 14 million in July 2017 (and 21.6 million in October 2017).

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• On November 6, 2018, the Odisha government constituted a 3-member inter-ministerial committee to address issues raised by farmers.


• The committee will be headed by: Finance Minister Shashi Bhusan Behera.


• Other members of the committee are: Agriculture & Panchayatiraj Minister Pradeep Moharathy and Cooperative Minister Surjya Narayan Patro.


• Issues to be discussed are: welfare of the farmers and development of agriculture in the state.

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• On November 8, 2018, Reserve Bank of India announced it’s plan to establish an ombudsman for digital payments by March 2019.


• It would address increasing number of complaints currently being handled by the banking ombudsman.


• Earlier it issued instructions to mobile wallet issuers and non-banking payments entities to establish a publicly disclosed customer grievance redressal framework.

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• On November 8, 2018, Paytm partnered with two government departments in Karnataka for seamless payment experience.


• The 2 departments of Karnataka government are The Directorate of Electronic Delivery of Citizen Services (EDCS) and DPAR (Department of Personnel and Administrative Service).


• Further, Partm extended a cashback of 10 per cent for upto a maximum of Rs 20 per user on a minimum transaction amount of Rs 200 for payments.


• Additionally, the EDCS and DPAR (e-governance) had set up Bengaluru One centres in Bengaluru and Karnataka One centres in 17 cities of the State.

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• On November 8, 2018, Reserve Bank of India liberalised the rules governing external commercial borrowing for infrastructure firms in terms of both tenure and the hedging requirements.


• The modified norms states Reduction in minimum tenor for borrowing through the ECB route, from 5 years to 3 years.


• The average maturity requirement for mandatory hedging has been reduced to 5 years from earlier 10 years.


• These changes will facilitate infra companies to raise resources overseas.


• The ECBs with minimum average maturity period of 3 to 5 years in the infrastructure space will have to meet 100% mandatory hedging requirement.

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• On November 8, 2018, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and Alibaba Group (Alibaba) entered into a strategic partnership to support efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 – a world with zero hunger.


• To support efforts towards the goal of ending world hunger by 2030.


• The MOU was signed at Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou, China, by WFP’s Executive Director, David Beasley, and Alibaba Partner and Chairman of the Alibaba Foundation, Sun Lijun.


• Under the framework, Alibaba will provide its leading technology and resources to support the digital transformation of WFP’s operations.


• Alibaba Cloud the cloud computing arm of Alibaba, will collaborate with WFP to develop a digital “World Hunger Map” to monitor the status of global hunger.


• The visual “World Hunger Map” will leverage data insights to help WFP improve assessment and monitoring to increase efficiency and shorten emergency response times.


• Additionally, the parties also agreed to create a Digital Transformation Working Group to determine priorities, assess new opportunities, and review progress on projects.

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• On November 8, 2018, Moody’s Investor Service in its report titled ‘Global Macro Outlook 2019-20′ stated that Indian economy will slow down to 7.3%in 2019.


• Indian economy will expand 7.4 per cent in 2018, but the growth will slow down to 7.3 per cent in the next fiscal.


• The economy grew 7.9 per cent in the first half (January-June) of 2018, reflecting post demonetisation base effect.


• The downfall has been cited cause of the effect of domestic demand on higher borrowing cost due to rising interest rates.


• The benchmark rate would be raised through 2019, which will further dampen domestic demand which will in turn lead to low economic growth.


• This is why with real GDP will grow by 7.3 per cent in 2019 and 2020.


• However, the greatest downside risk to India’s growth prospects stem from concerns about its financial sector.


• A prolonged liquidity squeeze for non-bank financial institutions could lead to a sharper slowdown in credit growth.


• On a global level, global economic growth will slow in 2019 and 2020 to a little under 2.9 per cent from an estimated 3.3 per cent in 2018 and 2017.


• Trade and geopolitical frictions between the US and China will persist for some time which will weigh on the global trade growth.

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• On 6th November 2018, Rohit Sharma became the first batsman to score four Twenty20 International (T20I) centuries.


• He achieved this feat in 58 balls during the second T20I match against the West Indies at the Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee International Cricket Stadium in Lucknow.


• He has surpassed the record of New Zealand’s Colin Munro who had scored three centuries.


• He has also surpassed Virat Kohli to become the highest run-scorer of India in T20Is.


• Overall, Rohit Sharma is the second-highest run-scorer now with 2203 runs in T20Is behind New Zeland’s Martin Guptill with 2,271 runs.

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• On 6th November 2018, Arunima Sinha was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Strathclyde of United Kingdom in Glasgow, Scotland.


• She has been awarded for her inspirational achievements in mountaineering. She is 30 years old.


• In 2013, she became the world’s first woman amputee to climb Mount Everest. She is a former Indian national Volleyball player. Her left leg was amputated below the knee after being thrown from a train while resisting a robbery.

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• Marathi actor Jayant Sawarkar will be awarded the Maharashtra government’s Natvarya Prabhakar Panshikar Lifetime Achievement award in the field of theatre.


• Also, Tabla artist Vinayak Thorat will be awarded the Sangeetacharya Annasaheb Kirloskar Lifetime Achievement.


• Both the awards consist of cash prizes of Rs 5 lakh, citation and memento each. Dates for the presentation of the awards have not yet been announced.


• Jayant Sawarkar started his career in Marathi theatre as a backstage artist. His role as a clown in “Samrat Singh” fetched him fame.


• Vinayak Thorat has accompanied top artists like Jitendra Abhishekhi, D Datar, Mogubai Kurdikar, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi, etc.

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• On November 8, 2018, Mathematician and Super 30 founder Anand Kumar was awarded ‘Global Education Award’.


• This was awarded by Malabar Gold & Diamonds’, flagship company of Malabar Group, a leading Indian business conglomerate.


• He was honoured for his “pioneering”contributions to the field of education.


• His selection was done from a list of 100 names working in the field of education by a 12-member jury.

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• On 6th November 2018, a new world record was set as 3,01,152 diyas were lit on the banks of River Sarayu, during Deepostav 2018, in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh.


• Deepostav 2018 was organised by Uttar Pradesh government on the occasion of Diwali. It has entered the Guinness Book of Records for lighting 3,01,152 earthen lamps.


• Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and South Korean first lady Kim-Jung Sook were present while achieving this feat. They also performed ‘aarti’ with the earthen lamps.


• Yogi Adityanath also announced that a new airport will be named after Lord Rama, and a medical college will be named after Raja Dashratha in Uttar Pradesh.

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• On November 8, 2018, Justice (Retd) of Gauhati High Court, Pranoy Kumar Musahary, was sworn in as the chairperson of Meghalaya’s first Lokayukta.


• Upon appointment, he urged the Conrad Sangma government to speed up the appointment of 4 other members of the Lokayukta.

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• On November 8, 2018, electric car pioneer Tesla named Robyn Denholm, chair of the company replacing Elon Musk.


• Denholm , prior to this appointment was the chief financial officer with Telstra.


• She has been an independent director of Tesla since 2014 and heads its audit committee.


• Musk had to resign as Tesla chairman under a September arrangement with US regulators to settle fraud charges.

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• China has unveiled a replica of its first permanently crewed space station, which will replace the International Space Station.


• The replica was displayed at the Air Show China 2018 held in Zhuhai, China. The core module was 17 metres in length. It weighed 60 tonnes.


• 3 astronauts will be permanently stationed in the orbiting lab. The crew will conduct biological and microgravity research.


• Assembly would be completed around 2022. The station will have a lifespan of nearly 10 years. It would be open to all countries to conduct science experiments.


• International Space Station is a collaboration between the United States, Russia, Canada, Europe and Japan.


• It weighs 400 tonnes. It has been functioning since 1998. It would retire in 2024.

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• On November 8, 2018, the Women and Child Development Ministry launched an online marketing portal named: “Mahila-E-Haat” for promoting women farmers and entrepreneurs.


• For unique organic products of the women farmers and entrepreneurs from across the country.


• It will serve as an e-platform to bring them together and promote the achievements of women farmers.


• It was launched during the 5th “Women of India National Organic Festival, 2018”.

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• On 6th November 2018, Bhajan singer Vinod Agrawal passed away following a short term illness, in New Delhi.


• He was 63 years old. He was born in 1955 in New Delhi. He was a popular singer of devotional songs. He was known for his idiosyncratic and versatile style.

• On 6th November 2018, K P Srivastava, a former PTI (Press Trust of India) journalist, passed away following a short term illness.


• He was 93 years old. He joined PTI as a reporter in Lucknow in 1950s. He became editor of PTI in 1980s.
  
• He also served as a Special Correspondent of PTI. After his retirement, he was the press advisor to former Prime Minister Chandrashekhar.