Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams

15 November 2015

:: National ::

Terrorist attacks killed 130 in France

• In a deadly terror strike similar to Mumbai on November 26, 2008, suspected Islamic State gunmen launched a coordinated assault on Paris late on Friday night, leaving 129 dead and 352 injured.

• This was the worst terror attack in France's history far bigger than the shooting inside the Charlie Hebdo newspaper office in January, which killed 12 and injured 11.

• French President Francois Hollande announced that he held the IS responsible for the attack and France considered it “an act of war”. He announced a state of emergency, the first in France since 2005, and the deployment of 1,500 soldiers.

• The attack was carried out on six locations, one being the French national stadium Stade de France where France and Germany football teams were playing a friendly before an 80,000-strong crowd.

• Mr. Hollande, who was among the spectators, was evacuated immediately following security protocol. As many as 89 people were killed in the attack at the Bataclan Theatre during a concert by the band Eagles of Death Metal.

• The gunmen entered the 1,500-seat venue and began shoot-ing without warning. The police said the assailants were killed. A Syrian passport was found on one of the attackers.

Islamic State poses danger to India as well

• With its global appeal, low-cost, high-impact tactics and swelling ranks, the Islamic State is turning out be the deadliest terrorist organisation of modern times, outranking groups such as Al-Qaeda.

• The Friday evening attacks in Paris, the earlier incidents in France, and the lone wolf attacks taking place in various countries, including Bangladesh, are warnings to India to be on alert to a wave of possible attacks in the coming days.

• While Indian agencies are ruling out any immediate threat, it is clear a new version of the IS style of attacks, very low cost, but high impact, is a high possibility in the country.

• The growing scale of IS attacks and the appeal of its twisted ideology are reasons enough to believe that the group could end up being the deadliest terrorist organisation in modern his-tory. Its brutality and scaleof attacks could soon eclipse those of Al-Qaeda, of which it was once a mere splinter group in Iraq.

• IS is not chasing grand attacks the way Al Qaeda did and is focussed on the immediate — to establish a caliphate, to take on enemies such as Shias and other minorities. However, its ability to attract so many followers in many countries means it is now a violent global ideology, though it may not be a cohesive global network.

Paris, Syria to dominate G-20 talks

• The Paris terror attacks have added fresh urgency to the scheduled talks on terror, a key theme on the agenda at the two-day Group of 20 Summit starting here on Sun-day.

• Leaders of the 20 major economies (G-20), including the U.S., China, Japan, Russia, Cana-da, Australia and Brazil, will dis-cuss climate change and global cooperation to unearth black money, but the talks are set to be dominated by the attacks in Paris and the war in Syria.

• The leaders will discuss terrorism and migrationat a working dinner on Sunday, but following the Paris attacks, the deliberations can be moved forward if such a proposal is moved by the Turkish presidency.

LPG subsidy likely to be limited to households below 10 lakh income

• The Union government is actively examining discontinuation of subsidies such as the one given on domestic LPG cylinders to all households having an annual income of Rs. 10 lakh and above.

• Union Minister for Urban Development, Housing and Poverty Alleviation M. Venkaiah Naidu said the government was also planning to give other subsidies such as the one on urea directly to farmers, instead of giving it to fertilizer companies.

• He also said that government should be given more time for their policies to show result on ground.

The sun shines on India's Aditya

• After a seven year long wait, Aditya, India’s first dedicated scientific mission to study the sun is likely to get a go-ahead from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) this week. The ambitious solar mission will study the sun’s outer most layers, the corona and the chromosphere, collect data about coronal mass ejection and more, which will also yield information for space weather prediction.

• The project costs approximately Rs 400 crores and is a joint venture between ISRO and physicists from Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru; Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune; Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, and other institutes.

• Though the project was conceptualised in 2008 itself, it has since morphed and grown and is now awaiting clearance with the government. It now aims to put a heavy satellite into what is called a halo orbit around the L1 point between the Sun and the Earth. This point is at a distance of about 1.5 million km from the earth. With the excitement about the Mars Orbiter Mission yet to settle down, this could be the next most complicated feat that ISRO has carried out till date.

• Though the project was conceptualised in 2008 itself, it has since morphed and grown and is now awaiting clearance with the government. It now aims to put a heavy satellite into what is called a halo orbit around the L1 point between the Sun and the Earth. This point is at a distance of about 1.5 million km from the earth. With the excitement about the Mars Orbiter Mission yet to settle down, this could be the next most complicated feat that ISRO has carried out till date.

• In a three-body problem such as this – with the earth and sun engaged in an elliptical orbit and a relatively very light, call it massless in comparison, satellite being placed in between – there are five so-called lagrangian points in space where the light, third body — in our case, the satellite — may be placed so that it can maintain its position with respect to the two others. One of these is the L1 point, which is about 1.5 million km from the earth.

PM's praise strengthens Imran's cause for education

• Imran Khan, a 37-year-old Sanskrit teacher dedicated to the cause of education and with no formal education in Information Technology (IT), has, in the past three years developed 52 Android apps in Hindi on topics varying fromGeneral Knowledge to Science to one on Rajasthan Administrative Services.

• Clicking on ‘Play Store' in the Android phone and searching for ‘gktalk' fetches a series of educational apps designed to assist students on varying topics. However, unlike other apps, these are in Hindi, are neatly designed and are free.

• A teacher at Alwar'sVarishthUpadhyay Sanskrit school, Mr. Khan is also a member of Alwar-based team EKTA which works towards strengthening elementary education.

• Further appreciating his efforts, BSNL, on directions of Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, shall now be providing free Internet to Mr. Khan.

India to push for inclusive view in G-20 summit

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who arrived here from London on Saturday evening to attend the two-day G-20 Summit, after completing his three-day U.K. visit, is scheduled to be the lead speaker at its inaugural session on Climate Change and Development.

• India's stated position is that the emphasis should rather be on clean technology, Economic Affairs Secretary and head of India's finance track delegation here at the G-20 Summit Shaktikanta Das told press persons. “India calls for balance between focus on climate change and development needs.

• Mr. Modi is also expected to emphasise that the commitment from the developed countries to make available from 2020 $100 billion of cli-mate finance every year to developing countries has to be ensured and a road map for this should be laid down over the next five years.

• On the IMF, India is concerned that the 14th round of reforms are pending, in the absence of ratification by the U.S. Congress, since 2010 which have also pushed the 15th round reforms that were to be taken up in January 2015.

:: International ::

Hollande vows to punish IS for attacks

• French President Francois Hollande vowed to attack the Islamic State group without mercy as the jihadist group claimed responsibility on Saturday for orchestrating the deadliest attacks on France since World War II.

• The Islamic State group's claim of responsibility appeared in Arabic and French in an online statement circulated by IS sup-porters. It was not immediately possible to confirm the authenticity of the admission, which bore the group's logo and resembled previous verified statements from the group.

• Officials said a Syrian passport was recovered from the remains of one suicide bomber outside the stadium and that a suicide bomber at the concert hall was identified as a young Frenchman flagged in the past for links with an Islamic extremist activity.

• Prosecutor's office spokes-woman Agnes Thi-baultLecuivre said authorities couldn't rule out the possibility that other militants involved in the attack remained at large.

• The violence raised questions about security for the millions of tourists who come to Paris and for world events routinely hosted in the normally luminous capital, where 1,500 troops were deployed to support police in restoring order and re-assuring a frightened populace.

Vienna talks agree on concrete calendar for transition in Syria

• The discovery of a Syrian passport on an attack-er in Paris has once again underlined the urgent need to begin a peace process in Syria which is facing a multi-cornered civil war since February 2011.

• The attacks in Paris took place even as high-power global diplomats like US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov were on their way to the Austrian capital of Vienna for talks over Syria.

• Interestingly, a day after the attacks in Paris, a French delegation of politicians and intellectuals met President Bashar Al Assad in Damascus dis-playing a healing touch of dialogue. Meeting the delegation, led by prominent French politician Thierry Ariani, Mr. Assad asked France to intro-spect over its policies over Syria.

• Following the attacks in Paris, Turkish newspapers spoke of the need for a joint strategy over Syria, but there are obvious differences among the countries backing rival fighters in Syria.

• Speaking to a group of journalists in Delhi last week, Turkey's Ambassador to India BurakAkcapar had said that the need of the hour is to have an inclusive government in Syria which can begin the process of normalisation in consultation with all sections of people.

:: India And World ::

Western Intelligence taps India for inputs on IS

• Ever since the Islamic State burst into the global stage in the summer of 2014, when it announced the establishment of a caliphate, Western intelligence agencies have been scrambling for information on the group and its sympathisers.

• One of the key sources of information for them, incidentally, is India because of several factors. The key factor is that Indian agencies have sizeable da-ta on Indians who have gone to the IS battlefields, or who were radicalised by IS handlers.

• Indian agencies have interrogated or accessed information about dozens of youths who have either been to Syria-Iraq or were intercepted while on their way to the Iraq-Syria battlefield.

• According to one source, 65 persons are undergoing de-radicalisation after being in touch with the IS, while an-other 55 could be under watch. About 20 are thought to be with the IS now, half a dozen are dead, and a couple of them have returned to India.

• European and U.S. intelligence agencies have been struggling to stop further flow of their residents to the IS. According to a French Senate report in April, of the over 3,000 European IS members, 1,430 are from France.

• A news report said that the French intelligence was monitoring another 1,570 people, and a further 7,000 are considered at risk of radicalisation.

:: Business And Economy ::

China's yuan takes another step towards SDR basket inclusion

• China’s currency, the yuan, took an-other step forward towards join-ing the elite group of global re-serve currencies on Saturday when the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) staff on Saturday recommended that the Chinese currency be included in the IMF's benchmark foreign exchange basket, a move that will indirectly benefit India as well.

• Managing Director of the IMF Christine Lagarde also endorsed the yuan's inclusion in the IMF's Special Drawing Rights basket.

• The staff of the IMF has today issued a paper to the Executive Board on the quinquennial re-view of the SDR (Special Drawing Rights). A key focus of the Board review is whether the Chinese renminbi (RMB), also meets the other existing criterion, that the currency be ‘freely usable', which is defined as being ‘widely used' for international transactions and ‘widely traded' in the principal foreign exchange markets.

• SDR are not a currency them-selves, but are a certain number of rights given by the IMF to countries who, in a crisis, can draw up-on any of the reserve currencies in the basket — currently the dollar, euro, yen and pound.

• The inclusion of the yuan in this basket has been endorsed by almost all of the major economies of the world, including Germany, Britain, France and Italy.

• The U.S. was historically cautious about this, but recently softened its stance in September when President Obama said the U.S. would support China's bid for inclusion in the SDR basket as long as it met the IMF's technical specifications, which it now has.

India aims to triple its steel production

• Union Minister for Steel and Mines Narendra Singh Tomar has said that the country is striving hard to achieve its target of tripling the current annual steel production of 100 million tonnes by 2025.

• Globally, the steel industry is going through a crisis with a fall in production by 2.3 per cent this year. However, India has been able to show a four per cent increase in production despite heavy imports from China.

• Four new large steel plants would be established in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand andKarnataka.

:: Sports ::

Saina enters final

• Defending champion SainaNehwal is just one step away from retaining her women’s singles title at the $700,000 China Open Super Series Premier badminton.

• The Olympic bronze medal-list on Saturday sealed the final spot after notching up a 21-13, 21-18 win over China's Yihan Wang, a 2011 World champion and 2012 London Olympics silver medal-list, in the semifinals.

• Up against one of her toughest rivals, who has beaten her nine times, Saina showed her prowess as she fought back from 2-4 down in the opening game and prevailed in a gruelling battle in the second to outclass Wang.

• The top-seeded Indian will next take on Olympic champion Li Xuerui of China, an opponent against whom she has lost nine times and the only wins coming during the 2012 Indonesia Open and Singapore Open Super Series in 2010.

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