Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams - 09 April 2022

::National::

PMK presses for new law on Vanniyar quota

Days after the Supreme Court verdict that struck down Tamil Nadu law providing 10.5% internal reservation to the Vanniyar community, caste-based party Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK) called on chief minister M K Stalin to discuss the further course of action.
On Friday, a delegation led by PMK leader and former Union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss submitted a request to Stalin to bring a new law for the quota and thanked him for announcing that the Tamil Nadu government would ensure 10.5% reservation for the community. He made the announcement at the state assembly on Thursday.
“Though the 2021 Act was brought by the AIADMK, the government engaged senior counsels Rakesh Dwivedi, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Mukul Rohatgi and P Wilson to effectively argue the case since it was the DMK that had ensured 20% reservation for MBCs (Most Backward Classes),” Stalin said in the assembly on April 7. “But both the Madras High Court and the Supreme Court struck down the reservation as the AIADMK government brought the legislation in haste. The SC cited a clear lack of data.” Stalin had said that the state would consult legal experts on the matter.
After meeting Stalin at the state secretariat in Chennai, Ramadoss told reporters that the PMK’s general body held an emergency meeting on Sunday over the matter. “We passed a resolution in the meeting that a seven-member committee headed by me will meet the CM and urge him to draw in the positive aspects from the SC verdict and take the next steps,” Ramadoss said.
He added that the SC has said that it can be justified to use data to prove the backwardness of Vanniayars, thereby necessitating the quota and the state has the powers to do this. “We have data now but we need more data and collate it,” he said. “With that very soon, we asked the CM to bring in a fresh legislation in the assembly.”

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::International::

Trump Jr. text shows ideas to overturn 2020 election: Report

Donald Trump Jr. texted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows two days after the 2020 presidential election with strategies for overturning the result if Trump's father lost, CNN reported.
The text was sent two days before Joe Biden was declared the winner, according to CNN. It reportedly laid out strategies that then-President Donald Trump's team pursued in the following months as they disseminated misinformation about election fraud and pressured state and federal officials to assist in that effort.
The cable news network reported that Trump Jr.'s text made “specific reference to filing lawsuits and advocating recounts to prevent certain swing states from certifying their results.” It also suggested that if those measures didn't work, lawmakers in Congress could dismiss the electoral results and vote to keep President Trump in office.
Trump Jr.’s lawyer Alan S. Futerfas, in a statement Friday to CNN, said: “After the election, Don received numerous messages from supporters and others. Given the date, this message likely originated from someone else and was forwarded.”
Separately on Friday, Ali Alexander, a conservative activist who helped found the “Stop the Steal” movement, said he had received a subpoena to provide testimony to a federal grand jury as part of the Justice Department’s wide investigation into the insurrection.
In a statement through his attorney, Alexander said the subpoena was seeking information about the “Save America Rally” that was held at the Ellipse — hosted by the pro-Trump nonprofit organization called Women for America First — which thousands had attended before a surge of Trump supporters stormed into the Capitol on Jan. 6.

::Economy::

RBI monetary policy signals change in stance for June 2022

The first monetary policy review meeting for FY2023 was rather eventful, coming in the backdrop of an easing of the pandemic and a flaring up of geopolitical tensions. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) maintained status quo on the repo rate and kept the stance accommodative, in line with our expectations. However, it normalised the width of the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) corridor to pre-pandemic levels by introducing the Standing Deposit Facility (SDF) at 3.75% as the floor rate, in place of the fixed rate reverse repo (FRRR), which was kept unchanged at 3.35 per cent. This move would enable the central bank to absorb liquidity without providing any collateral, augmenting its toolkit.
Interestingly, the Committee pointedly modified its comments around the stance, clearly stating that it would focus on the withdrawal of accommodation going ahead. The decision on the stance was unanimous, unlike the past few policy reviews.
Presciently, the monetary policy document chose to prioritise inflation over growth in its outlook statement, in contrast with the previous policy documents, wherein the commentary on growth preceded inflation. Given the consistency in the sequencing of commentary seen in the past policy statements, this signals a shift in the ordering of the MPC’s concerns. This corresponds to the changes in the economic landscape following the Russia-Ukraine conflict, with inflationary pressures at the fore following the spike in global commodity prices.

::Science and tech::

All-private astronaut team lifts off on landmark launch to space station

A SpaceX rocket ship blasted off on Friday carrying the first all-private astronaut team ever launched to the International Space Station (ISS), a flight hailed by industry executives and NASA as a milestone in the commercialization of low-Earth orbit.
The four-man team selected by Houston-based startup Axiom Space Inc for its landmark debut spaceflight and orbital science mission lifted off at 11:17 a.m. EDT (1517 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Live video webcast by Axiom showed the 25-story-tall SpaceX launch vehicle - consisting of a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket topped by its Crew Dragon capsule - streaking into the blue skies over Florida's Atlantic coast atop a fiery, yellowish tail of exhaust.
Cameras inside the crew compartment beamed footage of the four men strapped into the pressurized cabin, seated calmly in their helmeted white-and-black flight suits moments before the rocket soared toward space.
If all goes as planned, the quartet led by retired NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria will arrive at the space station on Saturday, after a 20-hour-plus flight, and the autonomously operated Crew Dragon will dock with the orbiting outpost some 250 miles (400 km) above the Earth.

::Sports::

Tiger Woods 'proud' of himself after battling to equal 19th at Masters

Tiger Woods fought back from a poor start in the second round at the Masters on Friday, earning a mini victory of sorts by making the halfway cut at his first tournament since a career-threatening car crash. Though a distant nine strokes behind leader Scottie Scheffler, Woods goes into the weekend equal 19th at one-over-par 145 at Augusta National.
It would not be a bad spot for any 46-year-old, much less someone whose career seemed in jeopardy when he was badly injured in single-car rollover last February.
"I'm proud of the fact that my whole (support) team got me into this position," he said.
"We worked hard to get me here to where I had an opportunity."
It seems extremely unlikely that he will earn a sixth Green Jacket on Sunday -- he was placed no worse than sixth after 36 holes in each of his previous wins -- but he was hardly ready to throw in the towel.
"Hopefully I'll have one of those light bulb moments and turn it on in the weekend and get it done," he said.