Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 15 August 2016

:: National ::

India and Pakistan exchanged salvos instead of the usual Independence Day greetings, with Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit calling for Kashmir’s freedom and India terming Islamabad’s policies on Kashmir “illegal” and “absurd”.
The government responded sharply. Minister of State in the PMO Jitendra Singh said Pakistan should end its “illegal occupation” of PoK.
“Our stand is very clear in the context of the J&K issue. If at all there is any outstanding issue with Pakistan, it is how to liberate the part of J&K which remains under the illegal occupation of Islamabad,” he said.
His response came soon after the Ministry of External Affairs termed Pakistan’s offer to send relief material to Kashmir as “absurd”.

At a time when India and Pakistan are engaged in a ‘war of words’, President Pranab Mukherjee asserted that there would no stepping back on New Delhi’s “neighbourhood first policy”.
In his televised address to the nation, on the eve of the sixty-ninth anniversary of Independence, Mr. Mukherjee also spoke about the attacks on “weaker sections which is against Indian ethos’’, and said that they should be dealt with firmly.
While maintaining that during his four years in office he had seen with some disquiet forces of divisiveness and intolerance trying to raise their ugly head.
Mr. Mukherjee said close bonds of history, culture, civilisation and geography provide the people of South Asia with an extraordinary opportunity to carve out a common destiny and to march together towards prosperity.
“This opportunity must be seized without delay. India’s focus in foreign policy will remain on peaceful co-existence and harnessing technology and resources for its economic development.”

China is set to launch the world’s first quantum communication satellite which boasts of hack-proof ultra high security features to prevent wiretapping and intercepts.
If the satellite works well, it will pave the way to a hack-proof communication system, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. It will launch the satellite in a matter of days.
In July 2015, a quantum-computing lab jointly established by Chinese Academy of Science and Chinese Internet giant Alibaba opened in Shanghai.

An IMF paper has raised question marks over the ability of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to target inflation through monetary measures.
It said the size of the formal financial sector is small in India and may undermine the effectiveness of interest rate changes on aggregate demand.
The IMF working paper assumes significance as the RBI has recently implemented an inflation-targeting regime that requires it to hit publicly announced targets for retail inflation, based on Consumer Price Index (CPI).
Under the new dispensation, RBI will be required to meet retail inflation target of 4 per cent, plus or minus two per cent over the next five years.
The interest rate from the next policy, due on October 4, will be decided by a six-member monetary policy committee (MPC) instead of the central bank governor.
It said that careful studies of the effectiveness of monetary transmission in low-income countries have often found monetary policy effects that are counterintuitive, weak or unreliable.

The Indian hopes of a tennis medal were dashed by the Czech Republic’s Radek Stepanek and Lucie Hradecka, even as Sania Mirza and Rohan Bopannatried their best to make a fight.
The bronze was a welcome medal Hradecka, who missed out in the women’s doubles this time after having won silver in the last edition with Andrea Hlavackova.
Sania and Bopanna were unable to lift their game at the crunch though they were superb in patches.
After the Indian pair had slid to 0-5, Bopanna managed a hold to avert a first-set bagel.
Sania served two double-faults in the 11th game and was broken after saving two breakpoints, leaving it to Hradecka to serve the match out.
The Czechs had one ace and four double-faults, to the two aces and six double-faults that India served up.
Stepanek and Hradecka converted five of 10 breakpoints while the Indian pair capitalised on two of four.