Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams

17 December 2015

:: NATIONAL ::

Leaving aside GST government wants to pass other bills

• After more than two weeks of trying to mollify and co-opt the Congress into helping it clear the Goods and Services Tax Bill, 2014, the government appeared to have turned a corner in its strategy and has decided to try and push other Bills.

• Next strategy will be drawn after December 19, the day Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi will appear before a Delhi court in the National Herald case.

• In the Rajya Sabha, where the Treasury does not enjoy a majority, the government countered the Congress’s protests by moving the SC/ ST Bill that made provisions for stricter punishment in case of atrocities against them.

Government wants Juvenile committing heinous crimes to be tried as adults

• Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi feels the intelligence reports of a “Kashmiri militant” radicalising the juvenile accused in the Delhi gang rape in a correctional home vindicates her stand that law should treat as adults those aged 16- 18 accused of heinous crimes.

• Criticising the delay in the passage of the Bill in the Ra- jya Sabha after it was passed by the Lok Sabha, she said: “It’s really shameful of the Rajya Sabha that they don’t let this pass”.

• This has been lying in the Rajya Sabha for over a year now. In the meantime, crime in this segment of 16-18 has become the largest amount of crime.

• And the victims of this group are only children. How can we protect those seven-year-olds and three- year-olds and four-year- olds.

Helium balloons to be used by Google for data connectivity

• Chennai-born Google CEO, 43-year old Sundar Pichai, had some anxious moments during the recent floods in the city as he was unable to reach his family members.

• Google’s Project Loon that uses helium-filled balloons to provide data connectivity in remote areas could be of great help.

• People are figuring out the right model for providing aerial data connectivity without towers and optic fibre cables.

• Google is hoping to launch the Loon project in India and wants to start testing for it soon, but the government has flagged some concerns.

• The proposed frequency band to be used in the project Google’s Loon Project is being used for cellular operations and it will lead to interference with cellular transmissions.

Due to lack of consensus SC appointed Lokayukta

• Annoyed with the lack of consensus among constitutional authorities in Uttar Pradesh, the Supreme Court on Wednesday invoked its extraordinary powers to assume authority and appoint the State’s Lokayukta.

• In a rare display of flexing its extraordinary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to enforce its own orders in order to do “complete justice”, the Supreme Court for the first time in its history appointed a Lokayukta after slamming the “failure” of the constitutional authorities of the State to comply with its orders.

• A Bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi appointed for- mer high court judge Justice Virendra Singh as Uttar Pradesh’s Lokayukta after ex- pressing its annoyance at how the U.P. government failed to meet the Supreme Court deadline.

PSLV C-29 launched six satellites

• ISRO launched six Singapore satellite in PSLV C-29, this was the fourth stage of PSLV rocket.

• The test to restart the fourth stage of the PSLV rocket would help the country in its future launches while attempting to launch multiple satellites in different orbits.

• According to IS- RO chairman A.S. Kiran Ku- mar, “The four second firing test is a success. This test will help when we launch multiple satellites with a single rocket but want to place them in different orbits.

• ISRO’s PSLV C-29 rocket lifted of from the first launch pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre here and in about 21 minutes, it placed all six Singapore satellites in the intended or- bit before it commenced its ‘coasting’ to prepare for the test.

• Besides the primary payload 400-kg weighing TeLEOS-1 - Earth observation satellite, ISRO placed in orbit VE- LOX-CI (123 kg) micro-satellite, VELOX-II (13 kg) 6U- Cubesat technology demonstrator, Athenoxat-1 nano-satellite; Kent Ridge-1 (78 kg) micro-satellite and Galassia (3.4 kg) 2U-Cubesat.

• All the six Singapore satellites were put into orbit some 21 minutes after the lift-of at an altitude of 550 km.

Defence minister says India ready to join fight against IS

• India is willing to participate in military operations against the Islamic State (IS) if it is a United Nations-sanctioned operation carried out under the U.N. flag, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said in the first formal response of the Narendra Modi government on the issue.

• India is one of the most active participants in U.N. peacekeeping operations around the world, but it prefers to participate in peacekeeping missions rather than peace enforcements.

• Despite the traditional preference for peacekeeping, India has lost 157 soldiers in U.N. operations until now.

• In 2003, despite intense pressure and a U.N. resolution approving peacekeeping operations, India did not send troops to Iraq after Sad- dam Hussein was toppled by a U.S.-led coalition.

• Since the terror attacks in Paris by IS supporters, the global community has scram- bled to defeat the outfit militarily and also find ways to cut of funding to terrorist organisations.

Rural landholding almost halved over 20 years

• The average rural Indian household is a marginal landowner, growing mainly cereals on a small patch of land and reliant on groundwater for irrigation.

• Over 80 per cent of rural households have marginal landholdings of less than one hectare (10,000 square metres) and just seven per cent own more than two hec- tares, data on household land ownership from the National Sample Survey Office show.

• Tribal people are over-represented among the landless, Scheduled Castes among marginal land-owners, and forward castes among medium and large landholders, the data show.

• Across the country, in every State, landholdings have decreased in size, almost halving in the last 20 years; in 1992, the average rural house- hold was a small landholder with over one hectare of land, as compared with a marginal land-holder as of 2013 with 0.59 hectares of land.

• Migration is relatively rare among agricultural households, but is highest among households with marginal landholdings unable to provide the family much income; over 75 per cent of all migrants come from marginal landowning households.

World Bank gives big loan to Clean India drive

• To help India ensure that all its citizens in rural areas have access to improved sanitation to end open defecation by 2019, the World Bank has approved a $1.5-billion loan for a support operation project of Swachh Bharat, a sanitation campaign launched by the Union government..

• This will support SBM- Gramin, the rural component of the campaign, over five years with a programme which links funds to the results.

• World Bank data show that of the 2.4 billion people who lack access to improved sanitation worldwide, over 750 million live in India, 80 per cent of them in rural areas.

• More than 500 million of India’s rural population continue to defecate in the open, suffering from preventable deaths, illness, stunting, harassment and economic losses.

:: BUSINESS ::

India’s investment climate better: Cisco

• The investment environment in the country has improved significantly in the past 18 months, enabling businesses to focus more on performance rather than worrying about factors such as an unpredictable tax regime and interest rates.

• India is one of the fastest growing markets for Cisco, where it invests about $1.7 billion annually.

10th WTO Ministerial Conference- Nairobi

• Nations must not overload the current agenda with “new issues” as there are still many outstanding matters such as protection of poor farmers' interests and food security rights.“The manner and haste with which important negotiating meetings are being convened does not inspire confidence

• Round may have run into obstacles, but it is in the collective interest of all the nations to continue to work on all pillars, keeping intact the Round's development dimension, which is improving the trade prospects of developing and poor countries.

• India wanted the Nairobi meet to re-affirm the Doha Development Agenda and all Ministerial Declarations and Decisions taken since 2001, when the Doha Round was linitiated

• India is concerned over the fact that the reduction in the massive subsidization of the farm sector in developed countries which was the clear cut mandate of the Doha Round talks is now not even a subject matter of discussion

• Recognising these concerns, the G-33 has strongly argued the case for an effective Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) for developing countries and for changing the rules relating to public stockholding for food security purposes

• G-33 is a coalition of 48 nations including India and China, which has been taking up the issue of developing countries getting considerable flexibility in limiting market opening of agriculture sector. SSM is a trade remedy mechanism that will allow developing countries to hike duties temporarily to counter the import surge and price falls in farm products.

• Developed countries, citing the slow progress of the ongoing Doha Round negotiations, want the Round to be either brought to an end during this ministerial conference, or its ambit to be expanded by including ‘new’ issues of their interest and what they call are the latest challenges facing global trade.

• These include global value chains, e-commerce, labour, environment, competition policies, investment pacts and state-owned enterprises, on all of which the rich nations have much superior standards / rules than the developing and poor countries. Developing and poor countries feel these standards rules might become non-tariff barriers, hurting their exports.

• Developing and poor countries want rich countries to drastically reduce their trade distorting farm subsidies, while simultaneously seeking adequate flexibility in reducing their own farm export subsidies.

• Rich countries, on the other hand, have sought greater commitments from emerging markets such as India on undertaking greater commitments on farm export subsidies. India had sought additional flexibility for developing countries so that they can provide such more subsidies on some products, while reducing subsidies on other products.

Public equity investments touch a record high

• Private equity investments in India touched a record high of $17.5 billion in 2015 across 685 deals, breaching the previous high of $14.7 billion recorded in 2007, a PwC report

• The silver lining for India is that the rest of the BRIC’s are not doing too well at the moment and India’s macros are looking good, with the current account and fiscal deficit at acceptable levels, relatively stable rupee, inflation at sub 5 per cent and most importantly in a declining interest rate regime, which should encourage private investment as demand picks up

• The other sectors, which outperformed this year were, financial services and healthcare, which contributed deals worth $2.4 billion and $1.58 billion, respectively

Ban on diesel cars to hit automakers

• The Supreme Court’s decision banning registration of diesel vehicles with engines of 2000 cc and higher capacity in the National Capital Region is “unfortunate”, as the move will hit the nascent recovery in the industry

• The companies that are likely to be most impacted by the decision are luxury car manufacturers such as Mercedes Benz and Jaguar Land Rover, besides makers of sport utility vehicles like Mahindra and Mahindra, Tata Motors and Toyota.

• The ban creates an environment of uncertainty and will severely impact our expansion plans and future investments put in place for the Indian market

• Delhi NCR, which is one of the biggest luxury car markets in India, contributes about 7 per cent of the overall passenger vehicle sales. The contribution of diesel vehicles is about 2-3 per cent of the overall industry volumes

• SIAM said while the decision would certainly hurt some segments of the automotive industry, it would, however, not bring about any perceptible improvement in the air quality of Delhi.

:: SPORTS ::

Manoj Prabhakar selected as Afghanistan bowling coach

• Former India all-rounder Manoj Prabhakar will assist the Afghanistan team as a bowling coach. His appointment runs until theT20 World Cup to be held in India next year.

Djokovic and Serena top 2015

• Djokovic ended 2015 with 11 titles, 82 wins and just six defeats in a haul which included three of the four Majors the Australian and US Opens and Wimbledon.

• Djokovic won six of the nine Masters and topped it off with a fourth successive end-of-season World Tour Finals triumph in London.

• Djokovic won six of the nine Masters and topped it off with a fourth successive end-of-season World Tour Finals triumph in London.

• Serena Williams was the standout player of 2015, winning five titles in all, including the Australian and French Open and Wimbledon.

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