Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 29 September 2016

:: National ::

Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh have the maximum percentage of villages that are ‘Open Defecation Free’ according to the criteria of the Swachh Bharat Mission.
While the northeastern State scores a hundred per cent, as per the current tally, Himachal Pradesh scores 55.95 per cent.
Other better performing States with village-level achievements are Haryana and Meghalaya with just over 41 per cent each, Gujarat (37.58 per cent), Maharashtra (28.33 per cent), Chhattisgarh (24.91 per cent) and Rajasthan (23.83 per cent).
Kerala, which leads in overall household toilet coverage as per Swachh Bharat surveys, is in the list with only 19.92 per cent, indicating that declarations play a role in the overall assessment.
Besides these, the other States identified by the Mission trail the rest with lower coverage. The total number of districts declared ODF in the country stand at 23.
For purposes of assessing performance, the Swachh Bharat Mission considers both individual household latrine coverage and ODF.
Three cities in Karnataka — coastal Mangaluru, Udupi and Mysuru — have been declared “open defecation free” this week in the survey conducted among 75 cities across the country under different population categories.
Mysuru scored again, after it topped the list of “clean cities” for two consecutive years. A recent survey of 476 cities had also declared Mangaluru the third cleanest in India.

The SAARC summit of 2016 will be cancelled. The confirmation from Nepal, the current SAARC Chair, came hours after Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan decided, like India, to stay away from the summit scheduled for November in Islamabad.
Nepal had not taken any decision as it is the SAARC Chair and will have to follow proper official procedure before announcing the cancellation.
The leaders of India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan do not want to share the dais with Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
India argued that the SAARC rules are clear that the summit meeting cannot be held if one member withdraws.
Like India that cited “cross-border terrorist attacks in the region” as a reason for boycotting the summit, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan too expressed similar concerns in their official notes to Kathmandu.
The cancellation will be unprecedented as four members have cited “terrorism” , “interference” and “imposed violence” while withdrawing from the summit.
In the past, summits were postponed after quiet consultation but this time, major members of the regional grouping openly cited terrorism emanating from Pakistan as the reason for non-participation.

The United States has tapped Jeffrey DeLaurentis, America’s top diplomat in Havana, to become the first official Ambassador to Cuba in five decades.
Mr. Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced a thaw in relations in December 2014. The two countries restored full diplomatic relations in July 2015.\
Since then, Washington and Havana have taken once-unthinkable steps to mend ties after more than half a century of enmity.
Mr. Obama has visited Cuba and relaxed portions of the U.S. embargo imposed since 1962. Mr. DeLaurentis is already in Havana and previously worked in Bogota and at the United Nations.
But his nomination, which requires Senate confirmation, is likely to face stiff opposition in Congress, where Cuban-American lawmakers have sought to garner local support by opposing Mr. Obama’s policies.

Pakistan suffered a loss of about $7 billion in 2014 by importing items from other countries at a higher cost instead of sourcing them from India, according to a study by Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS).
The think-tank in the study, to be released this week, found out that the loss was substantial considering Pakistan’s GDP (nominal, 2015) was only about $270 billion.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is slated to chair a meeting to review trade ties between India and Pakistan on Thursday.
Significantly, the RIS study’s findings are in line with the theme of Modi’s recent speech at Kozhikode (Kerala), where he called upon the people of Pakistan to fight a war on unemployment, poverty and illiteracy.
Many products that Pakistan imported from third countries were at least three times more costly than the price of the same item from India in export markets, it added.
Pakistan is a net-importing nation with a trade deficit of $22 billion in 2015. In 2015, it imported around $44 billion, while it exported only items worth $22 billion. India-Pakistan trade is far below potential and negligible.
Trade between both the nations in 2015-16 was just $2.6 billion, while according to various estimates the annual bilateral trade has the potential to surpass $20 billion if both countries cooperate and remove barriers and restrictions.
Currently, most of the trade happens indirectly through Dubai, Singapore, port of Bandar Abbas (Iran).