Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams - 11 March 2022

::National::

Railways to declare revised NTPC results in first week of April
The Railways will be declaring the revised non-technical popular categories (NTPC) recruitment results in the first week of April, the ministry announced, two months after it set up a a high-level committee to examine the concerns of irregularities raised by NTPC candidates, in January this year.
Hindustan Times had reported that the ministry agreed to accept the aspirants’ demand that results be declared on an individual basis, thus giving an opportunity to 250,000 students over those students who had passed the CBT (computerised based test), who number about 368,000.
Railways in a statement said, ”It has now been decided that unique candidates will be shortlisted (as per notification) 20 times, pay level wise, for second stage Computer Based Test (CBT) for NTPC. Revised results of all pay levels to be declared by the first week of April.”
“The candidates already announced as qualified will continue to remain qualified. NTPC (Level-1) will be a single stage exam. There will be no second stage CBT,” the ministry added.
The aspirants demanded that authorities count candidates who applied for multiple categories for just one category so that more aspirants get the opportunity to take the tests.
The ministry also announced that the second stage CBT (for pay level 6) will be held in May 2022. However, the date of second stage CBT for other pay levels was not declared.
The CBT will be conducted by the Railway Recruitment Cell (RRC) for Level 1 (track maintainer grade-IV, helper/assistant) aspirants, Railways stated. “Maximum available capacity is recommended to be used, to significantly reduce the number of shifts involved for each RRC and to speed up the examination process. Percentile based normalization, which is simple and easy to understand, will be used wherever the number of shifts involved are more than one,” a railways official said, adding that CBT for Level 1 is planned to be held, tentatively, from July onwards.

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::International::

Covid study finds 18 million deaths, three times official tally

The pandemic’s death toll may be three times higher than official Covid-19 records suggest, according to a study that found stark differences across countries and regions.
As many as 18.2 million people probably died from Covid in the first two years of the pandemic, researchers found in the first peer-reviewed global estimate of excess deaths. They pointed to a lack of testing and unreliable mortality data to explain the discrepancy with official estimates of roughly 5.9 million deaths.
“At the global level, this is quite the biggest mortality shock since the Spanish flu,” said Christopher J.L. Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, where the study was conducted. Covid drove a 17% jump in deaths worldwide, he said in an interview. The flu pandemic that began in 1918 killed at least 50 million people.
The findings, published in the Lancet medical journal, focused on excess deaths to avoid under-counting and assess the extent of the pandemic’s devastation. While deaths continued to accumulate, the scientists compared the mortality between Jan. 1, 2020 and Dec. 31, 2021 to comparable data for the prior years.
The evidence suggests the mortality surge is a direct result of Covid-19, the researchers said. But some deaths may also have occurred indirectly, they said, caused by a lack of access to health care and other essential services during the pandemic, or from behavioral shifts that led to suicide or drug abuse.
“Studies from several countries, including Sweden and the Netherlands, suggest Covid-19 was the direct cause of most excess deaths,” said Haidong Wang, an associate professor of health metric sciences at the Seattle-based institute, in a statement. “Understanding the true death toll from the pandemic is vital for effective public health decision-making.”
Improving data on deaths can give governments a clearer picture of how best to direct efforts to protect their citizens, said Jennifer Ellis, who leads the Data for Health program at Bloomberg Philanthropies that works with low- and middle-income countries to strengthen information gathering. Bloomberg Philanthropies is the charitable organization set up by Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News’ parent Bloomberg LP.

::Economy::

Goldman Sachs becomes first major Wall Street bank to quit Russia

Goldman Sachs Group Incsaid it was closing its operations in Russia, becoming the first major Wall Street bank to exit the country following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
Operating in Moscow has been increasingly difficult for Western financial institutions amid international sanctions against Russia and banks have been weighing whether to remain or leave. While European banks are the most highly exposed to the country, U.S. banks still have significant exposure, totaling $14.7 billion according to Bank of International Settlements data.
"Goldman Sachs is winding down its business in Russia in compliance with regulatory and licensing requirements," the bank said in an emailed statement.
A source familiar with the situation said Goldman would wind down the operations rather than exit them immediately. The loss due to the exit would be immaterial, the source said.
In its annual filing earlier, the bank had disclosed a credit exposure to Russia of $650 million.
Shares of Goldman Sachs fell 1.5% to $328.58 in early trading. Up to the close of trading on Wednesday, GS had fallen 12.8% this year.
The biggest exposed U.S. bank is Citigroup Inc, which said on Wednesday it was operating its Russian consumer business on a more limited basis while sticking with its previous plans to divest the franchise.
Other U.S. banks operating in Russia include JPMorgan , which declined to comment on what its plans were.

PNB Housing Finance to raise up to Rs 2,500 cr via rights issue

PNB Housing Finance (PNB HFC) plans to raise up to Rs 2,500 crore in equity by issuing shares through rights issue to meet capital adequacy norms and support business growth.
Its board gave a nod for the proposal to raise capital at a meeting held today. It would communicate issue price, entitlement ratio and timing in due course, the company informed the stock exchanges. On Wednesday, its stock closed 0.6 per cent higher at Rs 420.35 per share on BSE.
Its capital adequacy ratio (CAR) stood at 21.59 per cent with tier I of 18.9 per cent at end of December 2021.
In October 2021, PNB HFC dropped plans for a preferential issue of equity shares to raise Rs 4,000 crore from a group of investors led by private equity fund Carlyle. The protracted litigation and uncertainty over approvals led to calling off the deal.
Public sector lender Punjab National Bank, as promoter, held 32.57 per cent stake in the HFC at end of December 2021.
Last week, India Ratings had flagged risks from elevated delinquency levels at PNB HFC and said it was essential for mortgage lender to raise equity capital to maintain adequate buffers to absorb credit costs. It affirmed "AA" rating on non-convertible debentures issued by the company and maintained a negative outlook.
Raising equity capital would strengthen PNB HFC’s position in mobilising cost-effective liability, aiding in competitive pricing of loans. Although deleveraging has reduced the financial risk, the asset-side risk remains elevated, the rating agency said.

::Science and tech::

C-DAC installs "Param Ganga" supercomputer at IIT Roorkee

The supercomputer infrastructure installed at various Institutes across the country have helped the R&D community to achieve major milestones, objectives and products for scientific and societal applications, according to the Ministry of Electronics & IT
The National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) which is being steered jointly by Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeiTY) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and implemented by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, has progressed significantly. The four major pillars of the NSM, namely, Infrastructure, Applications, R&D, HRD, have been functioning efficiently to realize the goal of developing indigenous supercomputing eco system of the nation.
C-DAC has been entrusted the responsibility to design, development, deployment and commissioning of the supercomputing systems under the build approach of Mission. The Mission plans to build and deploy 24 facilities with cumulative compute power of more than 64 Petaflops. Till now C-DAC has deployed 11 systems at IISc, IITs, IISER Pune, JNCASR, NABI-Mohali and C-DAC under NSM Phase-1 and Phase-2 with a cumulative compute power of more than 20 Petaflops. Total 36,00,000 computational jobs have been successfully completed by around 3600 researchers across the nation on the NSM systems to date. The supercomputer infrastructure installed at various Institutes across the country have helped the R&D community to achieve major milestones, objectives and products for scientific and societal applications, according to the Ministry of Electronics & IT.
Under the build approach, C-DAC is building an indigenous supercomputing ecosystem in a phased manner, which is leading to indigenously designed and manufactured supercomputers. It has designed and developed a compute server “Rudra" and high-speed interconnect “Trinetra" which are the major sub-assemblies required for supercomputers.
NSM Platform for Genomics and Drug Discovery.
Urban Modelling: Science Based Decision Support Framework to Address Urban Environment Issues (Meteorology, Hydrology, Air Quality).
Flood Early Warning and Prediction System for River Basins of India.
HPC Software Suite for Seismic Imaging to aid Oil and Gas Exploration.
As part of its tireless journey of success, NSM has now deployed “PARAM Ganga", a supercomputer at IIT Roorkee, with a supercomputing capacity of 1.66 Petaflops. The system is designed and commissioned by C-DAC under Phase 2 of the build approach of the NSM. Substantial components utilized to build this system are manufactured and assembled within India along with an indigenous software stack developed by C-DAC, which is a step towards the Make in India initiative of the Government. Availability of such a supercomputer will accelerate the research and development activities in multidisciplinary domains of science and engineering with a focus to provide computational power to user community of IIT Roorkee and neighbouring academic institutions.

::Sport::

Premier League: Focused Chelsea battle to 3-1 win at lowly Norwich

Chelsea put their off-pitch worries to one side as they beat a plucky Norwich City side 3-1 to consolidate third place in the Premier League at Carrow Road.
The players at Chelsea, whose Russian owner Roman Abramovich has been placed under sanctions by the British government, did not appear to let the controversy affect them as they swept aside struggling Norwich who look headed for relegation.
Chelsea took the lead after three minutes with a TrevohChalobah header and soon doubled the advantage when Mason Mount fired home before Kai Havertz wrapped up the win near the end. Norwich had pulled a goal back with a TeemuPukki penalty.
Chelsea, whose fans sang Abramovich's name throughout the match, are on 56 points from 27 games and moved eight points clear of Arsenal, who are fourth but have two games in hand. Norwich stayed bottom on 17 points.