1 August 2014 Current Affairs
2014 Ramon Magsaysay Awardees Announced
The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation announced that this year (2014) five individuals and one organization from Afghanistan, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the Philippines will receive Asia’s premier prize, the Ramon Magsaysay Award. The 2014 Awardees are:-
1) Saur Marlina Manurung (Indonesia) :- She was cited for “her ennobling passion to protect and improve the lives of Indonesia’s forest people” through jungle schools put up by her organization. An anthropologist by profession, she put up a “Jungle School” program for children of Indonesia’s Orang Rimba, or forest people.
2) Randy Halasan (The Philippines) :- He was chosen for the award for serving the indigenous Matigsalug tribe. He put in huge efforts in teaching the children of the Matigsalug tribe in one of the remotest mountain villages in Mindanao.
3) Hu Shuli (China) :- He is a Chinese investigative journalist whose work has led to the ouster of corrupt officials. He is the founder and former editor of ‘Caijing’ a business magazine famed for its groundbreaking investigative reporting that has had a profound impact on China.
4) Omara Khan Masoudi (Afghanistan) :- Masoudi was awarded for his courage in protecting Afghan cultural heritage. At great risk to his life, the deputy director of the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul led his colleagues in moving some of the museum’s most precious objects to safety during the Taliban’s assault on his country’s cultural treasures in the 1990s.
5) The Citizen Foundation (Pakistan) :- The Citizen Foundation, a non-profit organisation (NGO) in Pakistan founded by six business leaders, was recognized for building 1,000 schools over hundreds of cities and towns in the country with the world’s second highest number of children who are out of school.
6) Wang Canfa (China) :- Wang Canfa founded the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims, which has offered free legal services to thousands of people and provided environmental law training to lawyers and others.
SS Mundra Takes Charge As RBI Deputy Governor
Subhash Sheoratan Mundra, the Chairman & Managing Director (CMD) of Bank of Baroda (BoB), took over as the new Deputy Governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for a three-year term. With this appointment, Mundra will look after banking supervision, currency management, financial stability, rural credit, customer service and also the Reserve Bank’s human resources & security. He was appointed to fill the vacancy created by the KC Chakrabarty who in April 2014 took voluntary retirement. Chakrabarty resigned from the Deputy Governor post two months before his five-year tenure.