Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams

14 December 2015

:: National ::

Future of earth is secured after paris deal feels world leaders

• U.S. President Barack Obama said it is a big step forward in securing the planet for future generations and said the agreement showed what was possible when nations stood together.

• Paris pact agreement represents the best chance we've had to save the one planet we've got. I believe this moment can be a turning point for the world,” he said.

• As a result of the climate agreement, we can be more confident the earth will be in better shape.

• The agreement represents “a huge step forward in securing the future of the planet,” British Prime Minister David Cameron said, adding that it showed what “unity, ambition and perseverance can do.”

Binding agreements in Paris deal

• The Paris Agreement on climate, adopted by the member countries of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, creates an enhanced transparency framework that requires all countries to submit a national inventory of greenhouse gas emissions arising from human activity using standardised methodologies accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

• External monitoring of the national pledge on climate action to “track progress made in implementing and achieving the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)”, a technical review of the emissions data submitted, and participation in a facilitative, multilateral consideration of progress are among the provisions in the Agreement, all of which are significant for India.

• In the voluntary pledge — the Intended NDCs (INDCs) — submitted to the UNFCCC, India lists investments in agriculture, water resources, coastal regions, health and disaster management, besides major goalssuch as reducing emissions intensity of the GDP by 33-35 per cent over 2005 levels by 2030.

• Although India's INDC includes a caveat that the country will not be bound by any sector-specific mitigation, and only aims at achieving better overall energy efficiency reflected in lower intensity, the measurements pre-scribed under the transparency framework clearly stipulate that the national inventory should be “by source.”

• One of the provisions in the Paris Agreement that India was not comfortable with during the negotiations pertains to submission of an NDC every five years. The public Indian position throughout the talks was that it had submitted its INDC for the period between 2021 ad 2030.

• Article 4, however, mandates that each country should, in five-year cycles, prepare, communicate and maintain an NDC.

• The Paris agreement revises the architecture of climate system with the means of differentiation that looks forward, not back. It provides for robust financial and technological support for the poor and developing countries with a strong participation of the private sector.

EPFO increases its ranking in pension funds across world

• The retirement savings managed and overseen by the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) are set to cross the Rs.10 lakh-crore mark this month, making it the eleventh largest pension fund in the world

• EPFO is al-ready India's second largest non-banking financial institution with only Life Insurance Corporation of India having a bigger kitty.

• Globally, pension funds are one of the largest pools of capital with a long-term horizon for investments. The 300 largest pension funds in the world together had over 15 trillion dollars under management in 2014, rising by 3 per cent from a year ago, according to a re-cent report by Towers Watson, a consulting firm

• After years of resistance, EPFO started investing in equities this year. It has al-ready invested over Rs3,200 crore in the stock mar-ket. While the Union Finance Ministry has allowed non-government provident funds to invest up to 15 per cent of their fresh accretions into equities, the EPFO has decided to make a cautious start, allocating 5 per cent of its net inflows into stocks.

Big boost for sustainability of Eastern Ghats

• In a major boost to the sustainable development of the Eastern Ghats, with special focus on its fragile environment, the United Nations University has sanctioned a Regional Centre of Expertise (RCE) to Tirupati.

• The RCE- Tirupati will be part of the Foundation for Environmentally Sustainable Development with Focus on health, education, awareness and livelihoods, which will have RamamurthiRallapalli, formerly Vice-Chancellor of Sri Venkateswara University, as its Chairman.

• The project was cleared by Ubuntu Alliance of twelve agencies, including the UNESCO, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations University and the World Conservation Union (WCU)

• Out of the 127 RCEs spread across the globe, there are only five in India viz., the RCE-Srinagar, working on western Himalayas, the RCE-Guwahati on Eastern Himalayas, the RCE-Chandigarh on wetland ecosystems, the RCE-TERI (Goa) on Youth empowerment and energy and the RCE-Kodagu on traditional knowledge and tribal communities of Western Ghats.

• The RCE- Tirupati will work on a mix of features like Eastern Ghats, coastal communities, marine ecosystem and biodiversity

• The centre aims at capacity building in target groups such as schools and colleges and creating awareness among the forest, tribal and coastal communities on the importance of bio-resources, their judicious use and conservation, focus on ecotourism by providing livelihood for forest fringe dwellers and marine coastal communities, making development and management sustainable

:: International ::

Women elected in first ever participation in Saudi Arabia

• Saudi Arabians voted 17 women into public office in municipal elections in the conservative Islamic kingdom on Saturday, the first to allow female participation

• The election was the first in which women could vote and run as candidates, a landmark step in a country where women are barred from driving and are legally dependent on a male relative to approve al-most all their major life decisions

• Under King Abdullah, who died in January and who announced in 2011 that women would be able to vote in this election, steps were taken for women to have a bigger publicrole, sending more of them to university and encouraging female employment

:: Science and Technology ::

PSLV C-29 launch on Dec 16

• Space scientists of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) are all set to launch the PSLV C-29 rocket from the Sriharikota space centre in Nellore district here on December 16 at 6 p.m

• Through this launch, ISRO will be sending six satellites belonging to Singapore. Of these, the TeLEOS-1 will be the main satellite which weighs 400 kg and it is meant for remote sensing applications for commercial purposes

Use of Colistin has raised

• Five years after an antibiotic resistant superbug was traced to India, the mar-ket size of colistin , the last antibiotic that can work on resistant infections ,has more than doubled in the country.

• Usage of the last-resort drug has shot up in hospitals 91 lakh units (one unit is one injection vial), estimated at Rs. 80 crore, was sold in 2015, up from units valued at Rs. 30 crore three years ago.

New system of Desalinisation developed

• With desalination that involves converting saline sea water to potable water being out of reach currently for the shallow pockets of the government, researchers of Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have hit upon the idea of utilising copious solar energy in the South to reduce the costs of the process.

• The Department of Electronic Systems Engineering at IISc, have developed a solar hybrid desalination system that works for saline and brackish water

:: India and World ::

Nuclear partnership between India and Japan will move forward

• The civilian nuclear deal between India and Japan which has been under negotiation since 2010 finally might move beyond the “nullification clause” which had been the major condition that Japan refused to compromise on in the previous rounds of negotiations.

• However, complex legislative negotiation in Tokyo will determine how fast both sides can finalise the draft of the civilian nuclear energy treaty

• In view of the several steps that India has already taken in the field of nuclear safety and nuclear fuel reprocessing, Japan has not insisted onany “nullification clause” during the latest round of negotiations.

• It is this relaxation of some of the past rigidity which paved the way for the MoU on the principles of negotiation exchanged during the latest visit by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to India.

• The specificity of the Japan-India civil nuclear negotiation is its commercial aspect. Because of the commercial aspect, Mr. Abe is under pressure from Japanese nuclear energy giants like Toshiba and Hitachi, who own American nuclear energy firms like Westinghouse and GE.

• In brief, Mr Abe will have to free Japanese nuclear companies so that the American companies can benefit from energy deals with India, as without that, the India-U.S. nuclear deal remains unfulfilled too.

• Finalisation of the deal will signal an irreversible change in the international civilian nuclear market of which India is poised to be a major consumer.

• But for now, it is for Mr Abe to con-vince the Japanese parliament that the time for civil nuclear deal between India and Japan has finally arrive

:: Business and Economy ::

India gets U.S. Civil societies support on WTO

• India's demand that the World Trade Organization take steps, on a priority basis, to safeguard the interests of poor farmers as well as the food security programmes in developing countries has received support within the U.S

• Several prominent U.S.-based civil society organisations including World Food Program USA, Oxfam America and ActionAid USA have asked Washington to agree to support the developing countries' demands on food security and poor farmer issues

• The developed world, including the US, is learnt to be keen on introducing 'new' is-sues (such as e-commerce, global value chains, labour, competition and environment) of their interest during the Nairobi meet, instead of taking forward the ongoing Doha Round negotiations, which has a ‘development' agenda

• India is one of the leadingdeveloping countries wanting the Nairobi meet to take up on priority negotiations on an effective Special Safeguard Mechanism (or SSM, a trade remedy allowing developing countries to temporarily increase duties to counter sudden import surges or price falls of farm items, thereby protecting poor farmers), and a permanent solution to the issue of public food stock-holding in developing countries for food security purposes.

• India has also sought a drastic reduction of 'trade distorting' farm subsidies of the developed countries.

FICCI and ASSOCHAM for implementation of GST

• Trade lobbies, including CII, FICCI, Assocham, PHD Chambers, and traders body, the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), have for the first time issued a joint appeal to the political fraternity “to give safe passage to the Constitution Amendment (122nd) Bill.

• An earlier attempt by India Inc in May to persuade parliamentarians to pass the GST Bill during the Monsoon Session went in vain.

• The industry, through an online petition had urged “all political parties to have a collaborative and consultative process in the Parliament and allow the Parliament to function, to debate and legislate.” The initiative has since then received support of over 63,000 people, including top industrialists.

• The government and industry is keen that the bill is approved in the ongoing winter session of Parliament so as to meet the rollout date of April 1, 2016.

• The bill was cleared by Lok Sabha in May and now is stuck in Rajya Sabha, where the ruling NDA is in a minority.

:: Sports ::

Nadal and Federer played in Delhi

• Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal’s rivalry is so special that any contest between the two is likely to attract a decent crowd even in a remote corner of the globe.

• No wonder, ecstatic fans thronged the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium as the two legends came face to face in the second edition of the International Premier Tennis League (IPTL) here on Saturday.

• Nadal won the contest 6-5(4), leaving a bigger impression than Aces’ 30-19 triumph on the day. Earlier, Nadal and Rohan Bopanna beat Federer and Marin Cilic 6-4 to seal it for the host.

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