current affairs 11 May 2015

KV Thomas renominated as Chairman of Public Accounts Committee

• Prior to KV Thomas, senor BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi was chairman of PAC for four consecutive years during 15th Lok Sabha (2009-2014).

About Public Accounts Commission (PAC)

• It is constituted every year and consists of 22 members – 15 from Lok Sabha and 7 from Rajya Sabha.
• Speaker usually appoints the Chairman of the PAC. It should be noted that a minister cannot be elected to as member of Committee
• The key function of PAC is to examine annual audit reports of Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) after they are tabled in Parliament by President.
• CAG usually submits 3 audit reports. They are audit report on appropriation accounts, audit report on finance account and audit report on public undertakings.

KV Kamath named as first President of New Development Bank of BRICS nations

About New Development Bank (NDB)

• BRICS group of nations comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in 2014 had inked a pact to set up NDB and emergency reserve fund.
• This agreement was signed during the 6th BRICS Summit being held in Fortaleza, Brazil.
• To begin with, the bank will start operating with $50 billion in initial capital with the five BRICS contributing $10 billion each.
• According to the pact, the capital of the bank will be divided equally among the five participating nations and initially it will focus on infrastructure projects member countries.
• The headquarters of the bank will be located in Shanghai, China and it will have a regional office in Johannesburg, South Africa.
• The chairmanship of the bank will be rotational and its first President will come from India for the first 5 years followed by Brazil and Russia

President Pranab Mukherjee inaugurates Namaste Russia festival in Moscow

• Namaste Russia will be six month long festival i.e. form May to November 2015
• This festival seeks to enhance and boost cultural bonds that build solid bridges of friendship and understanding between peoples of both countries

PM Narendra Modi inaugurates IISCO’s plant at Burnpur

•  IISCO Steel Plant in Burnpur near Asansol distrct of West Bengal.
• IISCO Steel Plant is a fully-owned subsidiary of Steel Authority of India (SAIL) and has the largest blast furnace in the country.

Dedicated E-Commerce Centre of India Posts launched in New Delhi

• The leading e-commerce customers, Yepme, Amazon, Snapdeal, Paytm etc are using this newly established e-commerce Centre for processing of their e-commerce parcels.
• It is capable of handling 30000 parcels (articles) per day. 
• It will also facilitate to collection of parcels from the e-commerce customers by processing and dispatching them within 24 hours to respective destination.