Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams

17 October 2015

:: National ::

NJAC ruling setback to parliamentary sovereignty,centre

• A ‘surprised’ government called the Supreme Court’s Friday move to strike down the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act a setback to parliamentary sovereignty.
• The SC opted for the collegium system for appointment of judges to the higher judiciary, prompting the government to say that the apex court has gone above Parliament and people’s will.
• The minister, a lawyer by profession and a former law minister, said the NJAC “was a part of judicial reforms that was exercised after deep consideration”. “We will go through the judgment and come out with a structured response,” Prasad told reporters.
• Earlier, law minister Sadanand Gowda said he will go through the text in detail and consult Prime Minister Narendra Modi, legal experts and others. The minister insisted that the act represented the will of the people as it was backed by all the members in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
• “The will of the people can be represented through the Parliament, through the legislature only, it cannot be brought to the notice of the whole world by some other means. We brought the will of the people. 100 per cent of the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha have supported the bill, 100 per cent. Voters who have voted...are represented by Parliament members. 20 state legislatures have supported the bill..,” he said.

:: International ::

US budget gap for 2015 at $439 billion,

•  The US budget deficit for 2015 has fallen to its lowest level in eight years, spurred by gains in tax revenue that outpaced greater government spending.
•  The Treasury Department says the deficit in the just-completed 2015 budget year fell to USD 439 billion from USD 483 billion in 2014. It is equal to 2.5 per cent of the economy, the smallest proportion since 2007, and below the average of the past 40 years.
•  The figures come as budget battles in Washington are intensifying.
•  Congress and the White House face an early November deadline to raise the nation's borrowing limit.
•  Lawmakers are also seeking a separate agreement with the Obama administration on a budget to keep the government open past a December 11 deadline.
  

White House launches anti-bullying campaign in Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu

•  The White House has teamed up with a Sikh and an Asia Pacific community group to launch a public awareness campaign to address bullying in six languages including Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu.
•  The resources for the "Act To Change" campaign are also available in Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese as one out of three in the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community does not speak English fluently.
•  The initiative launched, in partnership with the Sikh Coalition and the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment, will also feature video testimonials of AAPI celebrity athletes, artists, and entertainers.
•  "Growing up, sometimes people made me feel like an outsider; I was the perfect storm of nerdy, gay, and Indian American," wrote Maulik Pancholy, a member of the President's Advisory Commission on AAPI discussing the campaign.
•  In the AAPI community, this problem is often complicated by cultural, religious, and linguistic barriers that can keep AAPI youth from getting the help they need, he said.
•  In addition to raising awareness, the campaign encourages AAPI youth and adults to share their stories, engage in community dialogues, and take action against bullying.
•  The campaign website, ActToChange.org, includes video and music empowerment playlists, and encourages one to "Take a Pledge" to join the #Act To Change movement and stand up against bullying.
•  The Sikh Coalition has also launched a new anti-bullying awareness video. The short five-minute film was developed for community members to share on social media to raise awareness to the challenges that Sikh children face when confronting this problem.

:: Miscellaneous ::

16 shocking facts about global hunger on World Food Day

•  It’s World Food Day, a time to draw attention to the millions of people who endure poverty and chronic hunger and promote action from the rest of the world.
  Here’s what you need to know.

1.  About 795 million people are undernourished around the world – that’s one in nine people on earth.
2.  Around 780 million of those people live in developing regions.

Almost a quarter of people in sub-Saharan Africa are undernourished

3.  In sub-Saharan Africa, just under one in every four people is estimated to be undernourished. In fact, the number of undernourished people even increased by 44 million between 1990–92 and 2014-16.
4.  But it’s Asia that has the most hungry people. Estimates for 2014-16 are that 281 million people in Southern Asia are undernourished, which is only a very slight reduction since 1990.
5.  Poor nutrition causes 45% of all deaths of children under the age of five.
6.  Around 3.1 million children die every year from poor nutrition.

In Zambia 60% of people live below the poverty line (OBED ZILWA/AP)

7.  In sub-Saharan Africa, there has been very limited progress in reducing both undernourishment and the numbers of children being underweight in the last 25 years.
8.  There are wide differences across regions. Some, like Latin America and Eastern Asia, have made rapid progress in reducing hunger. But Central Africa and Western Asia are moving in the other direction, there’s actually a higher proportion of undernourished people now than in 1990-92.
9.  If female farmers had the same access to resources as men, the number of hungry people in the world could be reduced by 100-150 million, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).
10.  There is actually enough food in the world today for everyone to have nourishment for a healthy life.

North Korea has struggled to provide enough food for its population (Wong Maye-E/AP)

11.  Vitamin A deficiency affects 140 million children and is the leading cause of child blindness across developing countries.
12.  Some 20 million children are born mentally impaired because their mothers had an iodine deficiency during pregnancy.
13.  Around half of all pregnant women in developing countries are anaemic, which causes 110 deaths during childbirth each year.
14.  Before the current crisis, Syria was classified as a middle-income country. Today, more than 50% of Syrians live below the poverty line.
15.  BY 2050 hunger and child malnutrition could increase by up to 20% as a result of climate-related disasters, according to the WFP.
16.  Emergencies, often given a lot of media coverage, account for less than 8% of victims of hunger.

Sweden may ‘become world’s first cashless nation’

• Sweden is on track to becoming the world's first cashless society, thanks to the country's embrace of information technology as well as a crackdown on organized crime and terror, according to a new study.

• Niklas Arvidsson, a researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, said that the widespread and growing embrace of the mobile payment system, Swish, is helping hasten the day when Sweden replaces cash altogether.

• In a country where bank cards are routinely used for even the smallest purchases, there are less than 80 billion Swedish crowns in circulation, a sharp decline from just six years ago, when 106 billion Swedish crowns were in circulation.

• The rest is socked away in people's homes and bank deposit boxes, or can be found circulating in the underground economy.

• The result of collaboration between major Swedish and Danish banks, Swish is a direct payment app that is used for transactions between individuals, in real time.

• The service's direct collaboration with Bankgiro and Sweden's national bank, Riksbanken, is a critical factor in its success, researchers said.

• But if Swish starts to be used on a larger scale and grow to include retail transactions and e-commerce, Arvidsson said it is likely the country's entire payment system infrastructure will have to be revamped.
  With digital giro systems, early electronic payment services and other advances in online financial services, Swedish banks have been early adopters of advanced IT systems, he said. Besides simplicity and lower costs, digital payments also add transparency to the nation's payment system.

• Several banks in Sweden already have 100 per cent digitalised branches that will simply not accept cash.

• The transformation would present serious challenges for those who are unfamiliar with computers and mobile phones — mainly older people living in rural areas.

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