Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 04 February 2015

:: National ::

Journalist-writer Hindol Sengupta’s book on entrepreneurial ventures in India has been shortlisted for the U.S.’ prestigious Hayek Prize this year.
Recasting India: How Entrepreneurship is Revolutionizing the World’s Largest Democracy is among the six books in race for the $50,000 prize awarded by the Manhattan Institute each year to writers whose work best celebrates the principles of Austro-Hungarian Nobel laureate in economics, Friedrich von Hayek.
The book, published by Palgrave Macmillan Trade, encapsulates real stories of extraordinary enterprise of ordinary people.

Britain became the first country in the world to allow the creation of babies with DNA from three people after MPs voted for the controversial procedure.
Lawmakers at the House of Commons voted by 382 to 128 in favour of allowing the creation of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) babies with DNA from three people, a move aimed at preventing serious inherited diseases being passed on from mother to child.
Under the change to the laws on IVF, as well as receiving the usual “nuclear” DNA from its mother and father, the embryo would also include a small amount of healthy so-called mDNA from a woman donor.
The bill is expected to be rubber-stamped by the House of Lords, the upper chamber of Parliament, later this month, paving way for the procedure to begin next year.
The change could apply to up to 2,500 women of reproductive age in Britain with hereditary mitochondrial diseases but opponents say it opens the way to the possibility of “designer babies” in future.
Mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) is passed through the mother and mitochondrial diseases cause symptoms ranging from poor vision to diabetes and muscle wasting.
Health officials estimate around 125 babies are born with the mutations in Britain every year. The law will allow Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to authorise the procedure.