Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams

12 June 2016

:: National ::

Union to form committees for environmental fallout of vehicular pollution

• The Union government has agreed to form committees to suggest measures to mitigate the environmental fallout of vehicular pollution in the country.
• The committees will help the States and the Centre strike a balance between their transport and environmental requirements.
• The National Green Tribunal had banned diesal vehicles over 10 years from Kerala.
• The Tribunal had also banned the State from registering diesel powered vehicles having more than 2-litre engine capacity in Kerala. The Kerala High Court has since stayed the orders.
• As per the motor vehicles rules, the government had collected advance tax for 15 years on all diesel vehicles registered in the State since 2007.
• The implementation of the NGT order to ban those over 10 years would entail repaying the owners an estimated Rs. 300 crore.
• Moreover, the order would cripple the State’s transport sector. More than 4,000 KSRTC buses and lakhs of private vehicles would go off the roads. Movement of people and goods would be negatively impacted.
• Travel would prove to be costlier for the common man. So would transport of goods.
• The Centre required Kerala to shift more to CNG, biofuel and electric hybrid powered motor vehicles in the long run.

Election for 27 seats of Upper house concluded

• For Rajya Sabha polls the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) help the Congress win two seats — one in Madhya Pradesh and another in Uttarakhand.
• In Uttar Pradesh, where elections were held for 11 seats, the BJP won just one seat.
• The victors in U.P. included party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav’s one time alter ego Amar Singh and Beni Prasad Verma, both of whom returned to the party recently, and senior leader Reoti Raman Singh.
• The Congress’s Kapil Sibal also trounced the BJP-backed independent socialite Preeti Mahapatra with the help of the BSP.
• In Madhya Pradesh, the BJP’s M.J. Akbar and Anil Dave sailed through.
• Earlier, 30 of the total 57 seats in the current round of biennial elections to the Upper House were decided without a contest.
• In Karnataka, the Congress won three seats. The fourth seat in the State was won by Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Nirmala Sitharaman.
• Rajasthan saw the BJP’s Union Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu, party Vice President Om Prakash Mathur, former RBI official Ram Kumar Sharma and Harsh Vardhan Singh emerge victorious.

Raw footage of JNU found authentic

• The raw footage of the February 9 JNU event, on which a sedition case was registered against JNUSU president and two others, has been found to be authentic by the CBI forensic lab.
• The raw footage , obtained from a Hindi news channel, was sent to the CBI forensic lab here for examination along with camera, memory card, a CD containing the clip, wires and other equipment.
• Earlier, Delhi police had sent four clips to the Gandhinagar-based Central Forensic Science Laboratory which in its report, in May, had said that they were genuine.
• Police maintained that the FIR was registered on the basis of the raw video footage, obtained from a news channel on a CD, and not on the clippings that were aired on TV channels.

:: Science and Tech ::

Study suggests France flood are related to Global warning

• Torrential rains which caused flooding in France recently bore the unmistakable fingerprint of climate change.
• Global warming, especially in the last 50 years, had almost doubled the likelihood of the kind of three-day downpour that burst the banks of the Seine and Loire rivers, they calculated.
• At the very least, the probability of such an extreme rainfall event had increased by more than 40 percent.
• The Seine hit its highest water mark in three decades, while overflowing tributaries forced evacuations and left tens of thousands of people without power in nearby towns.
• In southern Germany, heavy rains also caused flash flooding that swept away houses and cars. At least 18 people were killed in four European countries.
• Unlike for France, the evidence was not strong enough to establish a direct link between warming and the destructive rainfall in Germany, the researchers said.
• This does not mean that climate change did not play a key role, only that observations failed to line up with the models well enough to draw similarly robust conclusions.
• Part of the explanation lies in basic physics. A warmer atmosphere can hold — and discharge — more water. So far, man-made warming has increased Earth’s average surface temperature by about one degree Celsius.
• On current trends, that temperature is set to rise by another 2.0 degree Celsius, even taking into account national pledges made by virtually all the world’s nations last year to slash carbon pollution.

:: International ::

Bangladesh Government started Nationwide crackdown on ultra's

• Bangladesh police have arrested more than 3,000 people in a sweeping nationwide crackdown following a spate of gruesome murders, as the Prime Minister vowed to catch “each and every killer”.
• Those detained include 37 suspected Islamist militants and hundreds of potential criminals who previously had warrants out against them, as well as several hundred ordinary arrests, police said.
• Bangladesh is reeling from a wave of brutal killings that have spiked in recent weeks, with religious minorities, secular thinkers and liberal activists the chief targets.
• The Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) is one of the main domestic militant outfits blamed by the government, which rejects claims from Islamic State group that they are behind the killings.
• Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told a meeting of her ruling Awami League party on Saturday that police would stamp out the violence.
• However, Bangladesh opposition parties immediately accused the police of using the crackdown to suppress political dissent.
• Police detained some 350 people in the country’s second-largest city of Chittagong and its surrounding areas.
• In recent days an elderly Hindu priest was found nearly decapitated in a rice field, while a Christian grocer was hacked to death near a church, with Islamic State group claiming responsibility for the killings.
• A Hindu monastery worker was found hacked to death on Friday in the northwestern district of Pabna.

Thirteen top Britain scientists against Brexit

• Thirteen of Britain’s top scientists signed a letter backing the campaign to remain in the EU after a dramatic new poll boosted the momentum behind the Brexit campaign less than two weeks before the June 23 referendum.
• Nobel Prize winners including Peter Higgs — after whom the Higgs Boson is named — and geneticist Paul Nurse said the loss of research funding would be one consequence of leaving the bloc.
• “Science thrives on permeability of ideas and people, and flourishes in environments that pool intelligence, minimise barriers, and are open to free exchange and collaboration.
• “The EU provides such an environment and scientists value it highly.”
• An online ORB poll for The Independent newspaper sent sterling falling after indicating that 55 per cent of Britons want to leave the EU, compared to 45 per cent who want to stay.
• An average of the last six opinion polls by academics at the What U.K. Thinks project indicates the race is tied, with each side on 50 per cent.
• Elsewhere on Saturday, Germany’s top selling weekly magazine Der Spiegel urged British voters: “Please don't go!” in a special pre-referendum issue.

:: Business and Economy ::

Remittances take a hit due to falling oil prices

• Remittances by non-resident Indians (NRIs) fell 87 per cent in April due to a slide in oil prices, data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) showed.
• Total NRI deposits fell to $302 million in April this year. The deposits stood at $2,406 million in the year-ago period, according to the data.
• The biggest fall was registered in the Non-Resident (External) Rupee Account (NR(E)RA) category, which saw inflows decreasing to $203 million in April. It was $2,200 million in the year-ago period.
• Introduced in 1970, NR(E)RA is a rupee account and the NRIs can remit money to India from their funds abroad.
• For 2015-16, NRI deposits had recorded a growth of 13.5 per cent to $15,977 million, the data showed.
• Sixty per cent of the India’s remittances come from Gulf countries, which suffered the most due to decline in crude oil prices.
• Crude oil prices in April were about $48 per barrel compared with $67 per barrel in the same period of the previous year. While crude oil prices have hardened to $50 recently, on a year-on-year basis it is still lower.
• The country’s current account deficit (CAD) narrowed to 1.3 per cent of GDP in the third quarter of the current financial year as against 1.5 per cent in the same period last year, mainly due to lower trade deficit.
• The CAD was at $7.1 billion in the third quarter of 2015-16 compared with $7.7 billion in the third quarter of 2014-15 and $8.7 billion in the second quarter.

The government is signing long term crude deals at discounted prices

• The government is leveraging its position as world’s fastest growing economy and one of the world’s biggest energy consumers to secure sweetened energy deals globally by renegotiating gas contracts, signing long term crude deals at discounted prices and buying oil equity.
• Petronet LNG Limited, India’s largest gas importer would have at least saved $8 billion or Rs 50,000 crore over the life of the contract at current oil prices by re-negotiating a gas deal with Qatar’s RasGas.
• “Our Prime Minister visited Qatar recently, and we all know that we have to honour long-term contracts and it’s very difficult to renegotiate such contracts."
• "We were buying gas $14 per mmBtu from Qatar, after negotiations we are now getting gas at $6 per mmBtu. India’s energy security is now considered with prime importance in the international markets,” said petroleum minister.
• India’s growing geopolitical influence globally and tumbling oil prices and a global gas glut are compelling exporters to offer better deals to retain their share in the global energy trade, benefiting Indian energy firms.

Among the 12 Major Ports, Mormugao Port occupied the top slot

• Mormugao Port Trust, V.O. Chidambaranar Port Trust and Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust have been labelled as best performers for 2015-16 by the Shipping Ministry for achieving the Results Framework Document targets for 2015-16.
• Among the 12 Major Ports, Mormugao Port occupied the top slot after posting 41.23 per cent growth in cargo volume for 2015-16 over the corresponding year-ago period.
• V.O. Chidambaranar Port recorded 13.68 per cent higher growth compared to last year, while Kolkata Port Trust showed a variation of 8.43 per cent.
• They were ranked second and third respectively in handling consignments, according to a Shipping Ministry statement.
• Paradip Port Trust scored over others in efficiency parameters. It reduced the vessel turnaround time by 36 per cent from 7.01 days in 2014-15 to 4.50 days during 2015-16.

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