Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams - 11 July 2022

::National::

Supreme Court sentences Vijay Mallya to 4 months in jail in contempt case

The Supreme Court sentenced fugitive economic offender Vijay Mallya to four months in jail in a contempt of court case for not honestly disclosing his assets and secretly transferring $40 million to his family members. Mallya will undergo the jail term as and when he is brought back to India.
A bench, headed by Justice Uday U Lalit, also directed Mallya to deposit $40 million with the court within four weeks, along with an interest of 8% per annum, failing which the court said attachment proceedings shall begin.
The bench, also comprising justices S RavindraBhat and PS Narasimha, emphasised that Mallya did not show remorse at any stage of the proceedings and that it is necessary to impose adequate punishment to uphold the majesty of the law.
Mallya was held guilty of contempt of court by an order in May 2017 for wilful disobedience of its order to come clean on all his assets and not disclosing $40 million he had received from British liquor major Diageo Plc following his resignation as Chairman of United Spirits Limited in February 2016. The money Mallya received from Diageo was transferred to his three children and estranged wife. The Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, prescribes a maximum punishment of imprisonment for six months.
Mallya faces a raft of charges relating to financial irregularities at Kingfisher Airlines. He is also being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate for alleged financial crimes.
The 2017 verdict had come on a plea by a consortium of creditors led by State Bank of India, which argued that Mallya disobeyed court orders by making “vague and unclear disclosure of his assets” and by transferring a $40 million payment from Diageo to his family members. Mallya’s plea to reconsider the conviction under the contempt charge was also dismissed by the apex court in August 2020.

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::International::

Dozens feared trapped after Russian strike on Ukraine apartment building

Rescuers picked through the rubble of an apartment building in eastern Ukraine searching for two dozen people, including a child, feared trapped after a Russian rocket strike on the five-storey building killed 15 people.
President VolodymyrZelenskiy's chief of staff, AndriyYermak, said the attack in the town of ChasivYar in the Donetsk region was "another terrorist attack" and Russia should be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Rescuers used a crane to lift a concrete slab and their hands to dig through the debris on Sunday, while dazed residents who survived the Saturday evening attack retrieved personal belongings and told stories of their miraculous escape.
"We ran to the basement, there were three hits, the first somewhere in the kitchen," said a local resident who gave her name as Ludmila.
"The second, I do not even remember, there was lightning, we ran towards the second entrance and then straight into the basement. We sat there all night until this morning." Another survivor, who gave her name as Venera, said she had wanted to save her two kittens.
"I was thrown into the bathroom, it was all chaos, I was in shock, all covered in blood," she said, crying. "By the time I left the bathroom, the room was full up of rubble, three floors fell down. I never found the kittens under the rubble."
Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, calling it a "special military operation" to demilitarise Ukraine and rid it of nationalists.
One woman was seen walking out of the destroyed building carrying an ironing board under her arm, an umbrella and a plastic shopping bag. Others simply watched rescue efforts, fearing the worst as the dead were removed.
Russia abandoned an early advance on the capital Kyiv in the face of fierce resistance bolstered by Western arms.
Its military campaign is now focused the south and the eastern Donbas region, which is made up of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. The Kremlin wants to hand control of this industrial heartland to pro-Russian separatists who have declared independence from Kyiv.
Russia's defence ministry said its forces had destroyed two hangars near the Donetsk town of Kostyantynivka holding the U.S.-made M777 howitzers, which it said had been used to shell residential areas of Donetsk.

::Economy::

Cong removes Michael Lobo from post of Leader of Opposition in Goa Assembly

In a fresh trouble for the opposition Congress in Goa, the party on Sunday said five of its 11 MLAs in the state have gone "incommunicado", and accused two of these legislators - Michael Lobo and former chief minister DigambarKamat - of "conspiring" and "hobnobbing with the ruling BJP to engineer a split" in the grand old party's legislative wing.
The party also removed Lobo from the post of Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, which has 40 members.
The announcement about the legislators going incommunicado and the sacking of Lobo from the post was made by the party's Goa desk in-charge Dinesh GunduRao here late Sunday evening, on the eve of the assembly session.
The development comes amid speculation that some Congress MLAs may cross over to the saffron party. Exactly three years ago on this day, a group of 10 MLAs from the Congress had left the party and switched over to the BJP.
The development also comes close on the heels of the political turmoil in neighbouring Maharashtra, where the ruling Shiv Sena split following a rebellion by senior leader EknathShinde, who became the chief minister after UddhavThackeray resigned from the top post in the last week of June. Shinde and his supporting MLAs had gone "incommunicado" on June 20-21 before moving to Surat and then to Guwahati.
"Lobo and Kamat were hatching a conspiracy by hobnobbing with BJP to engineer a split in the Congress. Therefore, the party has decided to remove Lobo from the post of the Leader of Opposition. Action will be taken against both Lobo and Kamat," Rao alleged.
In the PramodSawant-led dispensation, the ruling BJP has 20 MLAs, and the government also enjoys the support of five others - two from the MaharashtrawadiGomantak Party (MGP) and three Independents. The grand old party had won 11 seats in the assembly polls held in February this year.

Almost 4.5 million UK families are under serious financial difficulties

The number of UK households facing acute financial strain has risen by almost 60% since October and is now higher than at any point during the coronavirus pandemic, a survey found.
The abrdn Financial Fairness Trust and researchers at the University of Bristol estimated that 16% of households, or 4.4 million, are in “serious financial difficulties” and a further 20% are “struggling” to get by.
The findings illustrate the growing toll being taken by the worst cost of living crisis in a generation. The squeeze is set to intensify in October, when another spike in energy bills is expected to see inflation top 11%.
The pressure on the government to do more to help comes amid a period of political turmoil after Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced to resign last week. In May, his government announced an extra £15 billion ($18 billion) in cost of living support but calls are growing for additional aid to be announced well before a successor for Johnson is chosen.
“Times are tough for everyone, but it’s those on the lowest incomes who are particularly feeling the effects of rising prices,” said MubinHaq, chief executive officer of the trust. “Wages have largely stagnated and are no longer keeping pace with inflation; and social security is lower in real terms than it was over a decade ago.
A more comprehensive and longer-term plan is urgently needed to ensure living standards do not sink even further.”
More than half of those polled for the Coronavirus Financial Impact Tracker consider their financial circumstances to be worse than during the early pandemic. When the same question was asked in October, only a third thought their situation had deteriorated.
The report published Monday described the lengths many are going to in order to save money.
Steps to save on energy bills this year include bathing and cooking less, while more than a fifth of casual workers had stopped or reduced pension contributions. Single parents, social renters and households with children are being hit hardest.
“It’s particularly worrying that people are potentially storing up future financial problems for themselves,” said Sharon Collard, a professor at the University of Bristol.

::Science and tech::

Webb Space Telescope - Hubble's $10 bn successor - has its targets

NASA said Friday the first cosmic images from the James Webb Space Telescope will include unprecedented views of distant galaxies, bright nebulae, and a faraway giant gas planet.
The US, European and Canadian space agencies are gearing up for a big reveal on July 12 of early observations by the $10 billion observatory, the successor to Hubble that is set to reveal new insights into the origins of the universe.
"I'm looking very much forward to not having to keep these secrets anymore, that will be a great relief," Klaus Pontoppidan, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSI) that oversees Webb, told AFP last week.
An international committee decided the first wave of full-color scientific images would include the Carina Nebula, an enormous cloud of dust and gas 7,600 light years away, as well as the Southern Ring Nebula, which surrounds a dying star 2,000 light years away.
Webb has also carried out a spectroscopy -- an analysis of light that reveals detailed information -- on a faraway gas giant called WASP-96 b, which was discovered in 2014.
Nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth, WASP-96 b is about half the mass of Jupiter and zips around its star in just 3.4 days.
Next comes Stephan's Quintet, a compact galaxy 290 million light years away. Four of the five galaxies within the quintet are "locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters," NASA said.

::Sports::

Novak Djokovic's resilience never in doubt, says coach Ivanisevic

GoranIvanisevic said he never doubted Novak Djokovic's resilience after the Serb beat Nick Kyrgios in the Wimbledon final to win his 21st Grand Slam title and turn around a year that began with him being deported from Australia.
Djokovic won the Australian Open, French Open and Wimbledon titles in 2021 but was unable to defend his Melbourne Park crown due to his refusal to get vaccinated against Covid-19.
The Serb was deported on the eve of the hardcourt major and his coach Ivanisevic said it had been a real setback for the entire team.
"(It was) a tough year, especially for him, but also for us that were close to him," Ivanisevic told reporters on Sunday. "People, after that they never come back to tennis or to anything.
"We all expected for him (to say) after a couple of weeks, 'okay, forget about Australia, let's go back and practice.' It did not happen like that. It took a long time ...