Current Affairs For Bank, IBPS Exams - 24 July, 2014

Current Affairs For Bank, IBPS Exams

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has warned telecom service providers against increasing call rates and other tariffs beyond the base (maximum) rates in a bid to pay off their debts.
Base rates or headline tariffs are the maximum call or service rates that a telecom operator can charge to its customers but normally companies charge less than these rates.
At present most of the telecom operators have fixed base rate at 2 paise per second. The regulator allows free hand to fix telecom call and service rates as it feels that competition in the market will keep control on tariffs.
Apprehensions over an increase in rates were spiked after TRAI recently released its recommendations on spectrum sharing and lowering of leased line rates that could lead to cost savings for mobile operators.
“I do not expect headline tariff to change. If they change, as and when they change, then the TRAI reserves the right to go back and look at it again if forbearance should be continued or not.” TRAI Chairman Mr. Khullar said.

Whistleblowers or people exposing corruption can get security from the government, The government has authorised Chief Vigilance Officers (CVOs) of ministries or departments of the Central Government as designated authority to receive any written complaint or disclosure on any allegation of corruption or misuse of office in respect of any employee working under them.
If the designated authority in the ministries or departments, either on the application of the complainant, or on the basis of the information gathered, is of the opinion that the complainant needs protection, the designated authority shall take up the matter with the Central Vigilance Commission for issuing appropriate directions to the authorities concerned.
The Commission, after receipt of such reference from the designated authority, takes up the matter with the Ministry of Home Affairs, the nodal agency, to undertake the responsibility of providing security cover to the genuine whistleblowers.

In the absence of a good bankruptcy code in India, Reserve Bank is working on a system to enable entrepreneurs seeking to exit insolvent business.
RBI have been thinking how to create a system so that people should voluntarily withdraw from an unattractive business.
While there is a talk of providing legal provision in the Companies Act in this regard, but the RBI would like to work on examining the regulatory framework for the voluntary withdrawal by the entrepreneur.
To identify stressed assets, RBI has established a Credit Central Repository of Information. It ensures that if a large borrower defaults with one bank, the information about the same is passed on to the other banks on quarterly basis.

The government is considering a proposal to reduce threshold limit for coverage of firms under the EPF Act to 10 persons, At present, all those firms employing 20 or more workers are covered by the retirement fund body Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) for providing a social security net.
The timeframe for implementing this proposal has not been fixed. The number of employees to be benefited from this proposal has not been worked out. And EPFO has no plan to bring unorganised workers under the provident fund scheme.
EPFO runs social security schemes including Employees’ Provident Fund Scheme 1952, Employees’ Pension Scheme 1995 and Employees Deposit Linked Insurance Scheme 1976 for the organised sector workers at present.

The use of pirated and counterfeit software products, often exploited to spread malware at a massive scale, can cause substantial productivity and economic losses to manufacturers and businesses, besides posing serious security risks and threats to the critical infrastructure of country, According to CERT-In
According to the study by independent forensic science lab Truth Labs, 65 per cent of the tested samples of DVDs and PCs with pre-installed software were found affected by one or more malware.
The majority of the malware identified in the samples enabled remote access and control by hackers followed by backdoors and keylogger which pose a threat to the privacy of the user.
The study indicated that many laptops supplied to government agencies have pre-installed pirated software, malware as a tool of cyber terrorism can even compromise the country’s critical infrastructure, apart from stealing data and denying service to users.