18th February 2015 Daily Current Affairs Updates

1) Payments Corporation developed unified payment interface for mobile banking:

--> National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the umbrella organisation for retail payment system in India, has taken up the initiative of implementing ‘unified payment interface’ to simplify and provide a single interface across all systems.

--> “The new interface is designed to enable all account holders to send and receive money from their smartphones with a single identifier – Aadhaar number, mobile number, virtual payments address – without entering any bank account information,” NPCI said at a conference.

--> The unified payment interface will make possible paying and receiving payments as easy as swiping a phone book entry and making a call on mobile phone. 

2) PM Modi inaugurated Aero India 2015:

--> Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 18 February 2015 inaugurated Aero India 2015 in Bengaluru and made a strong pitch for increasing defence preparedness.

--> Aero India is a biennial event held at the Air Force Station Yelahanka (Bengaluru) during February.

--> The organizer of Aero India is Defence Exhibition Organisation (DEO), an arm of the Ministry of Defence and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

3) Foreign Secy included in Space Commission:

--> For the first time, the Foreign Secretary has been made a member of the Space Commission, which was reconstituted last week following the appointment of a new chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

--> The Space Commission is the highest policy-making body for matters related to space exploration in INdia and is headed by the chairman of ISRO.

4) Legendary filmmaker Ramanaidu died:

--> Legendary film producer Daggubati Ramanaidu (79) passed away in Hyderabad on 18 February 2015.

--> He produced over 150 films in most of the Indian languages with Telugu topping the list.

--> Considered as an icon of film industry, he introduced several film personalities through his Suresh Productions.

--> Recipient of Dada Saheb Phalke Award for lifetime achievement in 2009 and also Padma Bhushan in 2012 in recognition of his contribution to Indian cinema, Ramanaidu also holds the record for producing highest number of films in the world.

5) Snapdeal acquired luxury goods portal Exclusively:

--> Online marketplace Snapdeal has acquired luxury fashion portal Exclusively.com for an undisclosed amount.

--> With this acquisition, the city-based firm that gets a little over $1 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) from its fashion business expects this figure to touch $2 billion by the end of the current calendar year.

6) Airtel, UNICEF pact to provide education content in Africa:

--> Bharti Airtel has partnered with UNICEF to provide health, education and youth-focussed content to its customers in 17 African countries.

--> The company said this partnership aims at improving African population's access to health and education-related information whilst pushing forward various innovative projects supported by UNICEF.

7) Delhi airport ranked best by Airport Council International:

--> Delhi Airport has been adjudged the best, among the world's most performing airports in the 25-40 million passengers per annum category by the Airport Council International (ACI), with Mumbai Airport also figuring in the top five list.

--> Indira Gandhi International Airport won the annual Airport Service Quality (ASQ) award, which recognises and rewards the best airports in the world based on Geneva-based ACI's ASQ passenger satisfaction survey.