Current Affairs For Bank, IBPS Exams - 08 April, 2014

Current Affairs For Bank, IBPS Exams

Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula has placed the spotlight on NATO. Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine was a wake-up call for the 28-member western alliance.
Since the end of the Cold War, the western alliance has been trying to redefine its mission.
Poland and Romania are NATO members that border Ukraine on the west. Russia has amassed thousands of troops on its border on the other side of Ukraine, prompting some western experts to say an incursion into Eastern Ukraine is likely.
As a result of Russia’s military intervention in Crimea, NATO has suspended all civilian and military cooperation with Moscow. NATO officials say they will review their relationship with Moscow in view of Russia’s actions.

The move to grant in principle approval for Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) to travellers from 180 countries to India will boost tourism in the country,according to the tourism Secretary Parvez Dewan.
Travelling to India will be made easy once the ETA to visit the country becomes operational.
ETA will allow foreign travellers to apply for a visa from home and receive an online confirmation in five working days, is expected to become operational by October. Barring eight prior reference countries, which include Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria and Sri Lanka, government has decided to give e-visa to all the 180 countries.
India had considerably relaxed its visa regime and expanded the Visa-on-Arrival (VoA) scheme.
India launched the VoA scheme in January 2010 for citizens of five countries – Finland, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand and Singapore — visiting India for tourism purposes. The scheme was later extended to six more countries in January 2011.

The tectonic plates of earth took around one billion years to form.The outermost layer of earth, or lithosphere, was weakened by movement in viscous layers below it. Around four billion years ago, cooler parts of crust of earth were pulled downwards into the warmer upper mantle and it damaged the surrounding crust. It continued until the weak areas formed plate boundaries.
To investigate how the plates formed, Bercovici and Yanick Ricard of University of Lyon in France developed a computer model of earth's crust as it may have existed billions of years ago.
The model included a low-pressure zone at the base of the crust which caused a piece of the crust to sink into the upper mantle - mimicking conditions thought to have occurred early in the earth's history.
As the process repeated over time, it created a large tectonic plate with an active subduction zone.
Prior studies suggested the age of the plates based on evidence of subduction gathered from minerals preserved in ancient rocks.
In geology, subduction is the process that takes place at convergent boundaries by which one tectonic plate moves under another tectonic plate and sinks into the mantle as the plates converge.
The oldest such specimens are four-billion-year-old zircons found in the Jack Hills of Australia that appear to have formed at temperatures and pressures that are indicative of subduction.

Spain’s young MotoGP world champion Marc Marquez has been appointed the newest Laureus Ambassador.
Marquez, the youngest ever MotoGP world champion, at 20 years 266 days, a feat for which he received the Laureus World Breakthrough of the Year Award last month, was welcomed into the Laureus Family by motor cycle legend and Laureus World Sports Academy member Mick Doohan.