Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 09 April 2016

:: NATIONAL ::

BCCI says courts interference is violation of Fundamental rights

• The Board of Control for Cricket in India charged the Supreme Court with crossing judicial limits by interfering in its private affairs, like internal management, flow of finances, prompting the court to ask the BCCI if it is “refusing to be reformed.”

• The BCCI’s aggressiveness in court came on top of weeks of underlying tensions following sweeping changes recommended by the Supreme Court’s committee headed by former Chief Justice of India R.M. Lodha in the membership patterns of the Board, its structure, elections and bar on Ministers in cricket administration to usher in transparency and accountability in Indian cricket.

• The BCCI, represented by senior advocate K.K. Venugopal, said any interference in its basic character and functioning was a violation of its fundamental rights under Article 19 (1) (c) (right to form associations) of the Constitution.

• “This is a private body and can arrange its matters in whatever way it wants. Memberships are part of internal management. In case of complaints, approach the Registrar, Co-operative Societies or the police station or the court” BCCI said

• Chief Justice Thakur shot back, saying the Supreme Court was not interested in controlling table tennis or football or khokho or kabbadi.

• “Every single penny you hold in trust is for the benefit of the game and for those who play and for the millions of cricket lovers who pay you to watch the game...Are you not accountable to them? Are you refusing to be reformed,” Chief Justice Thakur asked.

• The Chief Justice asked why the Board was against the Lodha committee’s recommendation to have a nominee from the Comptroller and Auditor-General’s office on board.

• The court said the Lodha panel’s recommendations were not meant to shrink the stature of the BCCI but to help it perform its public functions in the best way.

Meenam month celebrated in Kerala

• Watched by hundreds of devotees and admirer,, the ‘anavalpidi’ (catching the elephant’s tail) ritual was held at the Umayanallur Sree Balasubramanya Swamy temple precincts.

• The ritual is held on the sixth day of the annual festival of the temple during the Malayalam month of ‘Meenam’. After a bath, the tusker is brought to the ‘anathottil’ of the temple. This is an occasion when the tusker is free from fetters.

• A crowd of devotees run after it desperately attempting to catch the elephant’s tail. As though it is aware about it, the tusker races for about 100 meters with its tail lifted as high as possible.

• The event gives an impression that the tusker is being chased by the crowd. In the process, many succeed in getting hold of the elephant’s tail.

• The ritual is a symbolic gesture of the childhood pranks of the siblings, Lord Ganesha and Lord Subramanyan.

Hindu calendar new celebrated across India (Register and Login to read Full News..)

Shan-E-Punjab express becomes first train with CCTV (Register and Login to read Full News..)

:: International ::

Srilanka and China looking for rapid infrastructure development

• Looking beyond the current difficulties in reviving a stalled multi-billion dollar project, Sri Lanka and China are now defining a new blueprint, based on rapid infrastructure development, to rail their growing ties for the future.

• Mr. Wickremesinghe called on Chinese President Xi Jinping. Following talks with Prime Minister Li, both countries affirmed that the $1.4 billion Colombo Port City project had their support, but “technical details” needed to be ironed out before construction could resume.

• On the Colombo port, both sides agreed to further speed up the overall and comprehensive resumption of work on this project.

• The announcement to resume the work has been made by the Sri Lankan side, but now we will go into further technical details.

• Chinese officials also made it plain that they were now engaged in a dialogue with the Sri Lankans to carve out a new plan that will steer Beijing-Colombo ties.

• The opportunity to advance the relationship has arisen following the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war and China’s adoption of its 13th five-year plan along with its Going Abroad strategy.

• In tune with Colombo’s aspirations, the two Prime Ministers agreed to prioritise the construction of an industrial park at Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port.

• The focus on infrastructure has resulted in the signing of a preferential buyer credit loan agreement for the construction of an extension of section two of the Southern Highway.

• The Southern Highway is a 126km-long expressway that runs from Colombo to Matara on the southern coast of the island.

• Both sides have also agreed to advance their FTA negotiations, with the year-end as the target to achieve tangible results.

• Chinese officials said Sri Lanka is “very willing” to participate in China’s Belt and Road initiative so as to re-establish Sri Lanka’s position as the trade hub in the Indian Ocean.

Pope says Catholic Church to revamp response to modern family life

• Pope Francis has called for the Catholic Church to revamp its response to modern family life, striking a delicate balance between a more accepting tone towards gay people and the defence of traditional church teachings on issues such as abortion.

• In a landmark papal document entitled Amoris Laetitia (Joy of Love), the Pope outlined his vision for the church on family issues, urging priests to respond to their communities without mercilessly enforcing church rules.

• The apostolic exhortation concludes a two-year consultation which saw bishops twice gather in Rome to debate issues affecting the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.

• In comments likely to be welcomed by some LGBT organisations, Pope Francis urged the church to “reaffirm that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while ‘every sign of unjust discrimination’ is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence.”

• But the Pope stopped short of pushing for a change in church doctrine.

• Following lengthy debate about the role of remarried divorcees in the church, who are not allowed to take holy communion, Pope Francis did not call for the rules to be changed but said such parishioners must be made to feel part of the church.

Maldives President to visit India next week (Register and Login to read Full News..)

:: Science and Technology ::

Heart beat and thinking process work together says study

• The fluctuations of your heartbeat may affect your wisdom, according to a new study which suggests that heart-rate variation and thinking process work together to enable wise reasoning about complex social issues.

• The study extends previous work on cognitive underpinnings of wise judgement to include consideration how the heart’s functioning impacts the mind.

• The new study is the first to show that the physiology of the heart, specifically the variability of heart rate during low physical activity, is related to less biased, wiser judgement, researchers said.

• Human heart rate tends to fluctuate, even during steady-state conditions, such as while a person is sitting.

• Heart-rate variability refers to the variation in the time interval between heartbeats and is related to the nervous system’s control of organ functions, they said.

• Researchers found that people with more varied heart rates were able to reason in a wiser, less biased fashion about societal problems when they were instructed to reflect on a social issue from a third-person perspective.

Scientists developed technology to read and interpret genomes

• Scientists have developed a novel technology that allows them to read and interpret the human genome, a breakthrough that may pave the way for new drug targets to treat many genetic diseases.

• The computational method, called TargetFinder, can predict where non-coding DNA — the DNA that does not code for proteins — interacts with genes.

• This technology helps researchers connect mutations in the so-called genomic “dark matter” with the genes they affect, potentially showing new therapeutic targets for genetic disorders.

• Genes can be separated from their enhancers by long stretches of DNA that contain many other genes.

• Most genetic mutations that are associated with disease occur in enhancers, making them an incredibly important area of study.

• Scientists originally believed that enhancers mostly affect the gene nearest to them. The new study showed that, on a strand of DNA, enhancers can be millions of letters away from the gene they influence, skipping over the genes in between.

• They discovered several patterns that exist on the loops that connect enhancers to genes. This pattern accurately predicted whether a gene-enhancer interaction occurred 85 per cent of the time.

• The new computational approach is a much cheaper and less time-consuming way to identify gene-enhancer connections in the genome.

• The technology also provides insight into how DNA loops form and how they might break in disease.

India to buy surveillance drones from US (Register and Login to read Full News..)

:: Business and Economy ::

More than 500 crore FDI proposals cleared

• An inter-minister panel on Friday cleared 10 foreign direct investment (FDI) proposals worth Rs.505 crore, including that of Singapore-based Helix Investment.

• Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB), chaired by Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das, has approved 10 proposals out of 18 on the agenda.

• Helix Investment Pte proposal worth Rs.475 crore was approved by the Board.

• Of the 18, two proposals were rejected and 4 including that of Sharekhan was deferred.

Various reforms still needed to implement smart city programme (Register and Login to read Full News..)  

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Sources: Various News Papers & PIB

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