Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 16 June 2016

:: National ::

Govt clears countries first National civil Aviation policy

In a big push to its reform agenda,government approved the country’s first National Civil Aviation Policy for increasing air connectivity, allowing new domestic airlines to fly abroad quickly.
It also opened up the skies for European and South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) countries.
New airlines, such as Vistara and AirAsia, will no longer have to wait for five years before starting operations on international routes.
Start-up airlines can now fly abroad after operating at least 20 planes or 20 per cent of their total flying capacity, whichever is higher, on domestic routes.
According to a 2004 norm, which is also known as the ‘5/20 rule’, a domestic airline is allowed to go international only after flying for five years to domestic destinations and operating at least 20 aircraft.
India will have an open-sky policy for countries beyond the 5,000-km radius from Delhi on a reciprocal basis.
This means that airlines from European or Saarc countries will have unlimited access, in terms of number of flights and seats, to Indian airports, leading to increased flight frequencies with these countries.
While India has a full open-sky arrangement with the U.S., it has a near open-sky agreement with the U.K. with a restriction on the frequency of flights to and from Mumbai and Delhi.
As a part of its regional connectivity scheme, passengers will be charged Rs. 2,500 for an hour’s flight on regional routes by the airlines.
The government will provide support to fund airlines’ losses on such unserved routes “by a small levy per departure” on all domestic routes, except in remote ones and in north-eastern States.
It has grand plans to revive 50 airports in the next two years through the regional connectivity scheme.
However, it is yet to ascertain how it will mop up funds for providing the viability gap funding.

Apex court to decide about declaring Nilgiri, monkey and wild boar as vermin

A petition has been filed in the Supreme Court for quashing of three notifications of the Union government declaring nilgai, monkey and wild boar vermin for one year in Bihar, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
The application for urgent hearing was mentioned before the Vacation Bench of Justices Adarsh Kumar Goel and L. Nageswara Rao, which agreed to list it during the week.
“The impugned notifications have been passed in absolute disregard of the human-wildlife conflict plaguing the country and without any scientific survey backing them,” the petition said.

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:: International ::

US President hosts Tibetan spiritual leader

U.S. President Barack Obama hosted the Dalai Lama at the White House, a now familiar ritual that takes place off-camera and out of the public eye to avoid irking China.
Mr. Obama carried out what has become a political rite in Washington, spiriting the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader into the White House through the back door and prompting the usual Chinese denunciations.
Since coming to office, Mr. Obama has hosted the Dalai Lama three previous times. Each time, He has tried to limit the fallout by holding the meeting behind closed doors.
Even before the meeting, Beijing made its displeasure felt, warning it would “damage mutual trust and cooperation”.

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:: Science and Technology ::

LIGO announced witnessing the merging of a second black hole pair

Even before the excitement over the discovery of the first binary black hole merger can ring down, LIGO scientists have announced witnessing the merging of a second black hole pair.
They infer this from the observation of a gravitational wave (GW151226) detected on December 26, 2015.
Being a much weaker signal than the first, the detection of this merger required the use of sophisticated noise filtering and mathematical analyses, some of which has been developed by Indian scientists.
The LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) and Virgo Collaboration have made public the set of observations. The entire signal, coming from 1.4 billion light years away, lasted just one second.
Having approximately 14 and 8 times the mass of the sun, the two black holes, during their cataclysmic merging, released approximately one solar mass within this short interval.
The signal-to-noise ratio of the second merger was much lower than its massive predecessor, causing the detection to be more challenging.
A special technique called matched filtering invented in 1949 by Wiener had to be adapted for gravitational wave data analysis.
In developing this technique and other important areas, such as theoretical modelling of the expected signals, the Indian contribution is significant.
The adaptation of matched filtering to detect gravitational waves was developed at IUCAA, Pune.

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:: Business and Economy ::

SBI and associate banks merger approved by Govt.

The Union Cabinet has approved the merger of State Bank of India (SBI), the country’s largest lender, and its associate banks — a move which is expected to bring the state-owned entity on a par with global lenders.
The merged entity will have an asset base of about Rs.37 lakh crore, with nearly 24,000 branches and about 58,700 ATMs across the country as of March 2016-end . SBI and its associates employed 2.85 lakh people in 2014-15.
The merger of SBI with its associates began eight years ago when SBI merged State Bank of Saurashtra with itself in 2008. In 2010, State Bank of Indore was also merged with the larger bank.
SBI has since made repeated attempts to merge its units but none came to fruition due to a shortage of capital.
The shares of SBI associate banks rose sharply after the cabinet approval. Those of the three listed associate banks that, State Bank of Mysore, State Bank of Travancore and State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur were up 20 per cent each.
SBI shares were up 3.9 per cent to close the day at Rs. 214.65 while the benchmark Sensex rose 1.25 per cent or 330 points to reach 26,726.

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:: Sports ::

India beaten South Korea in Champions Trophy hockey tournament

India muffed chances galore before a deft deflection from NikkinThimmaiah enabled it to pip South Korea 2-1 in the 36th Hero Champions Trophy hockey tournament.
India found the lead through S.V. Sunil in the 39th minute. South Korea equalised in the 57th minute through Kim Jun-hu, only for Thimmaiah to reclaim the lead within 30 seconds with a fine deflection of a Talwinder cross.
The narrow victory ensured India stayed in the hunt for a medal.