Current Affairs May 1, 2015

International Labour Day celebrated

International Labour Day is also known as May Day which is celebrated at international level to promote and encourage the international labour associations. It is celebrated all across the world every year on 1st May.

Project sanctioned to clean Ganga

National Mission for Clean Ganga has sanctioned a named project “Development of Area around Assi Ghat, Varanasi” under the National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA) at an estimated cost of Rs. 27crores. This project will be implemented by Government of Uttar Pradesh.

Fitch projected GDP  growth for India at 8% for current fiscal

International Credit rating agency Fitch has projected India's GDP growth rate will grow at 8% in this current fiscal year. Fitch report said that India's vulnerability has declined since 2013.

Prannoy Roy awarded with RedInk Lifetime Achievement Award

Prannoy Roy, the executive co-chairman of NDTV, was conferred the RedInk Award for lifetime achievement at a function in Mumbai last evening. Sreenivasan Jain of NDTV was presented 'Journalist of the Year' award. Arnab Goswami, Editor-in-Chief of Times Now, was honored with 'Impact Editor of the Year' award. News website Scroll.in was given 'the news start-up of the year' award. Awards were presented by the Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu.

Kapil Dev Tripathi took over as the new Oil Secretary

Kapil Dev Tripathi, senior IAS officer took over as the new Oil Secretary, coming in at a time when the sector is witnessing a lot of churning. He replaced Saurabh Chandra.

India and Japan signed agreement

The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology of India and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan have signed an agreement for cooperation in the field of Information & Communication Technology and Electronics. It was signed by Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Communication & Information Technology, India and Yoichi Miyazawa, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan.

Telecom companies cut roaming charges

Telecom companies, including Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and RCom, slashed their roaming rates weeks after regulator cut ceiling tariffs. The changes came into effect from today. Now mobile users will pay less for roaming. While in roaming, call rates will be cheaper by up to 40 per cent and SMS by up to 75 per cent. Telecom regulator TRAI on April 9 had reduced ceiling tariffs for national roaming calls and SMSes and mandated service providers to offer a special roaming tariff plan.

The regulator cut the maximum or ceiling rate that a telecom operator can charge for STD calls on roaming to Rs 1.15 per minute from Rs 1.50 per minute. Similarly, national SMS rate was reduced to 38 paise from Rs 1.50 per SMS. Also, an operator can charge a maximum 25 paise for each local SMS instead of Re 1 per SMS and a maximum 80 paise per minute for a local call instead of Re 1.