Daily GK Update: 19th December 2015

United States has lifted a 40-year ban on oil exports, marking a historic shift for the booming US oil industry.
The ban was first imposed in 1975 as the United States was reeling from the 1973-1974 Arab oil embargo. Arab members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries had banned oil exports to the United States in retaliation for Washington’s support of Israel during the Arab-Israeli war.
With the end of the ban, all 9.2 million barrels produced in the United States a day and the 490.7 million barrels stockpiled commercially are available for export.

Reserve Bank of India, RBI, has launched the quarterly ‘Inflation Expectations Survey of Households’ for December 2015.
The survey seeks qualitative responses from households on price changes in the next three months as well as in the next one-year and quantitative responses on current, three-month ahead and one-year ahead inflation rates.
The apex bank also launched the December 2015 round of the Consumer Confidence Survey (CCS). It has been carrying out the survey on a quarterly basis since June 2010.
The survey targets at capturing subjective assessments of around 5,400 respondents across six metropolitan cities — Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi.

Jharkhand Assembly has passed Single Window Clearance Bill, 2015 along with five others bills. The Bill was passed, with four amendments, after hour-long debate on it in the Assembly.
The treasury bench, however, did not agree to any amendment in Factory (Jharkhand Amendment) Bill and it was passed without any amendment.
The passing of Single Window Bill is significant in creating new environment of investment in the state.

Jeff Williams was appointed as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Apple Inc. The post of COO of the company had been lying vacant since Tim Cook’s ascension to position of Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc in 2011.
Williams has been working with Apple Inc for about 17 years.
He played a key role in Apple’s entry into the mobile phone market with the launch of iPhone. He continues to supervise development of Apple’s first wearable product Apple Watch.

Noted writer and theatre artiste Chatla Sriramulu passed away at Secunderabad, Telangana following a brief illness. He was 84.
He was instrumental in the establishment of popular literary and cultural organization Rasaranjani which is dedicated to the field of theatre arts.
He acted in and directed more than 100 plays and wrote several books on a wide range of subjects. He was awarded as the Best Actor twice by Andhra Nataka Kala Parishad and was also a recipient of Union Government’s Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1982.

The Open Government Partnership (OGP) selected Indian-origin World Bank official Sanjay Pradhan to lead the organization.
Pradhan will help ensure that OGP continues to succeed in its mission to promote government transparency, accountability and responsiveness to citizens.
Currently vice president for Change, Leadership and Innovation at the World Bank Group, Pradhan will assume the new charge by mid-2016.
Open Government Partnership is an international organization promoting multilateral initiative.

The three-day long 2nd World Internet Conference was concluded at Wuzen in China. Wuzen is located in Zhejiang Province in eastern China.
The conference was held with theme An Interconnected World Shared and Governed by All—Building a Cyberspace Community of Shared Destiny.
It was jointly organized by the Cyberspace Administration of China and the People’s Government of Zhejiang Province.
The conference focused on facilitating strategic-level discussions on global Internet governance, cyber security, the Internet industry as the engine of economic growth and social development, technological innovation and philosophy of the Internet.