Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 08 January 2015

:: National ::

Nothing offensive in PK: Delhi High Court

• The Delhi High Court said there was no substance in the allegations made in a public interest litigation that the Aamir Khan-starrer movie, Pk, had defamed and maligned the Hindu culture and Hindu religious practices. The Court refused to entertain the petition against the film.

• Hearing the public interest writ petition, moved by Ajay Gautam, a Division Bench of the High Court comprising Chief Justice G. Rohini and Justice R.S. Endlaw said, it did not find anything offensive in the movie or any substance in the petition.

• “What is wrong in the movie? You cannot take offence at everything,” the Court told the petitioner. Mr. Gautam claimed that there were certain sequences in the film which had the potential of hurting religious sentiments of Hindus, while the Central Board of Film Certification had failed to give a serious consideration to this aspect while granting the certificate for its release in cinema halls.

• The Bench said it would pass a detailed order on the petition later. Additional Solicitor-General Sanjay Jain, opposing the petition, said a similar matter had recently come up before the Supreme Court, which had dismissed the plea for restrictions on screening of PK.

• When Mr. Jain said there was a provision for appeal against the CBFC’s decision on certification of films, the court said the right of appeal was limited to the film-makers.

‘Janata Parivar’ plans joint action against ordinance raj

• With just 10 months to go for the crucial Assembly elections in Bihar, the Janata Parivar, currently working on a merger of six parties, may do it in stages. “We might first merge the Janata Dal (United) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal, as there is greater urgency to do that with the Bihar polls almost upon us,”.

• Ever since last year’s general elections, when the BJP-led alliance swept the State, winning 31 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats, decimating both the RJD and the JD(U), the two parties have been in a state of shock.

• A few months later, in August, when the two parties joined hands with the Congress for 10 Assembly by-elections, they won six seats. Simultaneously, JD(U) president Sharad Yadav is scheduled to hold talks with Samajwadi Party chief, Mulayam Singh, and JD(U) leader and the former Bihar Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar, on a joint action programme to mobilise public opinion against the Centre’s efforts to bypass Parliament and rule through ordinances.

• “The government has taken the route of issuing ordinances bypassing the democratic process of Parliament,” Mr. Yadav said, recalling, “We remember that the BJP during the UPA regime used to say that ordinances should be issued only in the case of an emergency or when the matter was of urgent importance.”

• Indira Gandhi had tried Emergency and “failed.” He added that the BJP still had “time to change its ways.” Among the other four parties in the Janata Parivar, the Samajwadi Party has five MPs in the Lok Sabha and 15 in the Rajya Sabha, and there is no urgency for a merger like JD(U) and RJD.

:: Business & Economy ::

No plan to curb gold imports says Rajeev

• Providing relief to the economy from widening trade deficit on account of gold imports, the inward shipments of the metal slumped to 39 tonnes in December, Commerce Secretary Rajeev Kher said.

• India imported an astonishing 152 tonnes of gold in November, which had threatened to disrupt the trade balance and impact the current account deficit (CAD). “Gold imports at present on the basis of December and January performance have not been a cause of worry,” Mr. Kher told reporters.

• In January so far, the imports were aggregated at seven tonnes (about $200 million) only. In September and October, the imports were 95.62 tonnes and 109 tonnes, respectively. Mr. Kher also said that there were no plans to curb gold imports and bring back restrictions like 80:20 scheme.

• “It is gone, 80:20 scheme. Why should it come back...We are not looking at any new policy (for gold imports),” he said after a meeting on gold imports with representatives of the gems and jewellery sector.

• Higher gold imports in November have pushed up trade deficit to one-and-a-half year high of $16.86 billion in November as against $9.57 billion in the same month last year. The current account deficit too had widened to $10.1 billion or 2.1 per cent of GDP in the July-September period.

• Mr. Kher said various issues related to gold as well as gems and jewellery exports were discussed with the industry representatives at the meeting.

• He said it was the follow-up meeting after the ‘Make in India’ workshop last month. The sector is among the 25 focus areas that have been identified under the ‘Make in India” programme.

• “We are looking at improving our manufacturing in the gems and jewellery sector and how to improve our exports. We discussed about sourcing of gold, financing of raw material, mining of gold, concept of fashion jewellery.

‘Ford’ will pilot share-car project in Bengaluru

• Ford will pilot a share-car project in Bengaluru. The project aims to create a model for easy vehicle sharing among small communities such as office workers, apartment dwellers and families to share a vehicle among multiple drivers.

• “This approach will help consumers who can’t afford a car but want the benefits of owning one. Researchers plan to develop a model for vehicle scheduling and managing ownership,” Ford said in a statement.

• Ford is working with two-year old start-up Zoomcar on the project. Zoomcar is a self-drive car rental service that allows users to rent cars by the hour, day, week or month. “Basically, we save you the cost and hassle of owning a car while giving you all the good parts: convenience, mobility, and independence,” Zoomcar’s website says.

• Greg Moran, Co-Founder and CEO of Zoomcar, refused to disclose more on the project, but said the market for car sharing in India was estimated to be $4-5 billion.

• Ford’s car sharing project in India is among the 25 global mobility experiments the firm unveiled in the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. “These mobility experiments will test new ideas and address growing or increasing transportation challenges; insights gained will shape Ford’s future investments,” it said.

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:: Sports ::

Sharapova moved into Brisbane International semifinals

• Maria Sharapova moved into the Brisbane International semifinals with a 6-1, 6-3 win over Carla Suarez Navarro, weathering a challenging opening few games before taking the momentum away from her Spanish rival.

• Top-seeded Sharapova dropped her opening service game and then needed eight breakpoints before converting for a 2-1 lead. From there, it was straight-forward progress.

• The reigning French Open champion has dropped just five games across her opening two matches of the season and next faces Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina, who came from a set and a break down to beat third-seeded Angelique Kerber of Germany 4-6, 7-5, 6-3.

• Third-seeded Milos Raonic moved into the men’s quarterfinals with a 6-3, 6-4 second-round win over Mikhail Kukushkin of Kazakhstan. Roger Federer was scheduled to play a night match.

:: Science & Technology ::

NASA’s Kepler space telescope marks 1,000th exoplanet discovery

• NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope to date has offered scientists an assortment of more than 4,000 candidate planets for further study — the 1,000th of which was recently verified. Thisn was achieved by continuously monitoring more than 150,000 stars beyond our solar system.

• The range of distances from the host star where liquid water might exist on the surface of an orbiting planet are known as the habitable zones. Three of the newly-validated planets are located in their distant suns’ habitable zone. Of the three, two are likely made of rock, like Earth.

• Two of the newly validated planets are named Kepler-438b and Kepler-442b. Kepler-438b, 475 light-years away, is 12 per cent bigger than Earth and orbits its star once every 35.2 days. Kepler-442b, 1,100 light-years away, is 33 per cent bigger than Earth and orbits its star once every 112 days.

• They both are less than 1.5 times the diameter of Earth orbiting stars smaller and cooler than our Sun, making the habitable zone closer to their parent star, in the direction of the constellation Lyra.

• “Each result from the planet-hunting Kepler mission’s treasure trove of data takes us another step closer to answering the question of whether we are alone in the universe,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

• The Kepler team has raised the candidate count to 4,175 with the detection of 554 more planet candidates from Kepler observations conducted May 2009 to April 2013. Eight of these new candidates are between one to two times the size of Earth, and orbit in their sun’s habitable zone.

• Of these eight, six orbit stars that are similar to our Sun in size and temperature. All candidates require follow-up observations and analysis to verify they are actual planets. “Kepler collected data for four years — long enough that we can now tease out the Earth-size candidates in one Earth-year orbits,” said Fergal Mullally, Kepler scientist who led the analysis of a new candidate catalogue.

• Scientists are also working on the next catalogue release of Kepler’s four-year data set. The analysis will include the final month of data collected by the mission and will be conducted using software that is more sensitive to the tiny telltale signatures of small Earth-size planets than software used in the past.

Cane farmers engage in jaggery production

• At a time when sugarcane farmers all over the State are protesting delayed payments by sugar mills — cooperative and private — and demanding increase in the price of sugarcane, those of Kavasambattu village in K.V. Kuppam panchayat union in Vellore district have been engaged in jaggery production for two generations.

• S. Sivakumar (42), a sugarcane farmer of Kavasambattu, told this correspondent that while there about 40 sugarcane farmers in the village, none of them supply cane to sugar mills for the last several years owing to the problems such as delayed payments and un-remunerative price.

• “Our family has been engaged in jaggery production from my father’s period. My grandfather was supplying to the mills, but for the last two generations, we are engaged in production of jaggery which is profitable”, he said.

• Mr. Sivakumar said that the farmers of this village produce jaggery not only from the sugarcane from their own fields, but also from those procured from Dharmapuri, Tiruvannamalai and Kallakurichi. “We produce about 200 kg of jaggery per day.

• The cauldron that I have can produce 50 kg of jaggery at a time. I boil the sugarcane four times a day to obtain 200 kg”, he said. Depending on the availability of sugarcane, he produces about 1.5 tonnes to two tonnes of jaggery per week and sells it to the wholesale jaggery mundy in Vellore.

• Quite a few of the farmers, such as Ravi, have joined as workers in the jaggery units of their fellow farmers in the village owing to the decline in agriculture on account of water scarcity. Workers get low wages compared to the toil in the jaggery unit.

• “I sweat it out from 4 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily in the jaggery unit, mixing the simmering hot sugarcane juice in the cauldron and later making jaggery balls, but I get only Rs.200 per day”, said Venkatesan, a worker.

• But, he does not complain since he knows that the farmer did not get a steady price. The price of jaggery in the Vellore market declined from Rs.420 per 10 kg last week to Rs.350 today, he said.

• R. Velmurugan, a farmer of Kavasambattu, said though he produces jaggery in his unit, he does not sell it in the wholesale market, but sells the excess jaggery to fellow farmers in his village and in the retail outlet run by his wife — a functionary of a women’s self-help group Mr. Velmurugan, who is also the secretary (development) of the Vellore unit of Tamil Nadu Science Forum, said the government should encourage farmers to tap solar energy or use biogas for burning the cauldron in order to make the process eco-friendly.

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:: Persons in News ::

Atul Khare is new U.N. Under-Secretary-General

• United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has announced the appointment of Atul Khare of India as Under-Secretary-General, Department of Field Support (DFS). He succeeds Ameerah Haq of Bangladesh.

• Dr. Khare, a former Indian Foreign Service officer and AIIMS graduate, brings to the position strategic management and innovative reform expertise in both headquarters and field perspective, a U.N. statement said.

• Currently providing charitable medical advice in India, Dr. Khare has a long senior career with the U.N., most recently as Assistant Secretary-General leading the Change Management Team (2011-2012) and Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations and Deputy Head of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations in New York (2010-2011).

• He was previously Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Timor-Leste and Head of the United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT) at the level of Under-Secretary-General (2006-2009).

:: International ::

US-China rivalry fuels tensions in South China Sea

• China is set to step up investments in off-shore oil-fields, but its nuclear strategy towards the United States, rather than demand for energy security, maybe at the heart of its assertion in the South China Sea.

• Shanghai’s National Business Daily is reporting that the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) has accelerated oil exploration, especially in the western region of the South China Sea.

• The goal is to construct a big off-shore oilfield that would have an output of 10 million tonnes. The focus on off-shore exploration follows the depletion of existing on-shore oilfields.

• By 2020, yearly output from Daqing — China’s largest oilfield — is expected to drop to 32 million tonnes, 8 million tones lower than the current production level. Other fields are also expected to suffer a similar fate.

• China’s burgeoning energy demand does appear to be a factor fuelling its assertion in South China Sea, and sharpening its disputes with littoral states, especially Vietnam and the Philippines, along with Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei.

• China claims a large maritime space, defined by the "nine-dash line" that stretches hundreds of kilometers south and east of its southerly Hainan Island, covering the strategic Paracel and Spratly island chains. China buttresses its claims by citing 2,000 years of history, when the two island chains were regarded as its integral parts.

• But Vietnam rejects the Chinese argument, justifying its own claims, on the basis of written records, which, in its view establish its administration over the area since the 17th century. Beijing and Manila clash on account of their dispute over the jurisdiction of the Scarborough shoal, which is 160 kilometers from the Philippines.

• Signalling its intent to hold on to its claims, China, set sail Sansha I, its latest supply ship, from Hainan for Yongxing Island (Woody island), the largest of the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China sea, which is also claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan.

• Countering the energy argument, several analysts assert that China’s long term strategic contest with the United States, based on its nuclear doctrine, rather than a grab for oil and gas, better explains Beijing’s maritime assertion in the South China Sea.

• Protection of naval assets, especially a select group nuclear submarines, which give China its second strike capability and assured deterrence vis-à-vis the U.S. seem to be compelling Beijing to keep out rivals from the South China Sea.

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Sources: Various News Papers & PIB

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