Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 14 October 2014

National

Post-Hudhud, relief efforts in A.P., Odisha

• The Andhra Pradesh government, with the support of the Army, the Navy, the National Disaster Response Force and other authorities, swung into action to provide relief to over 2,80,000 people in 44 mandals in four districts of north Andhra Pradesh affected by Cyclone Hudhud that crossed the coast, claiming 21 lives.
• Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu reached the city to oversee the operations. The cyclone, which made landfall here, was a 400-km-long system that wreaked havoc across the four districts. Fifteen lives were lost in Visakhapatnam district, five in Vizianagaram and one in Srikakulam.
• Over 6,695 houses and 5,727 electric poles and transformers were damaged in the four districts. Nineteen tanks and canals breached their banks in Vizianagaram district.
• The focus of restoration was Visakhapatnam city, which has a large number of industrial establishments, apart from being the headquarters of the Eastern Naval Command. The 12 NDRF teams deployed in the district have been systematically cutting the fallen trees and clearing the National Highway and main thoroughfares in the city. Power distribution companies have deployed over 5,000 employees, apart from hiring 1,000 people to work on restoring power supply.

Rejuvenation of river Yamuna project

• With an aim to rid the Yamuna of pollutants and to end the discharge of effluents into it, the Delhi Government has embarked on an ambitious project to rejuvenate the river that runs through the Capital city.
• The "Rejuvenation of River Yamuna" project is being implemented by the Delhi Government with assistance from the Centre and the Delhi Development Authority (DDA). The government has also sought assistance from the Netherlands in areas of its expertise like in river engineering and modelling, water resources management and pollution control to clean the Yamuna.
• Lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung chaired a meeting of the governing body of the Unified Centre for Rejuvenation of River Yamuna on Monday and said the plan to rejuvenate the river is being coordinated by the Delhi Jal Board through its interceptor sewage project. The riverfront development has been entrusted to DDA which will set up biodiversity parks and recreational spaces.
• “While DJB's interceptor sewage project shall be able to check 70 per cent of the sewage flow into the river, the sewage from other drains also needs to be intercepted to check pollutants from entering the Yamuna,” he said.
• Asking all departments and agencies concerned to work on the project, Mr. Jung instructed Environment Secretary Sanjeev Kumar to take steps through the Delhi Pollution Control Committee to ensure that pollutants, especially from industries, are not allowed to flow into the Yamuna.

President interacts with Indian scientists at Arctic station

• As five Indian scientists from “Himadri,” India’s Arctic station at Svalbard, listened in by video link, a dire climate change warning that linked varying monsoon patterns in India with Arctic ice melts was presented to President Pranab Mukherjee.
• Jan-Gunnar Winther, director of the Norway Polar Institute, said at the Fram maritime museum that scientists had consistently underestimated the process of climate change.
• Sitting alongside Norwegian King Harald V, President Mukherjee asked the five scientists about the links they had managed to establish between Arctic ice melting and monsoon pattern changes in India.
• “I wish you all success,” the President told the five scientists who were standing in snow at temperatures of minus five degrees at the “Himadri” station. He said the Indians at the Arctic station were taking risks by subjecting themselves to the cold, hostile climate.
• Mr. Mukherjee also sought suggestions from three Indian Ph.D candidates Archana Mesram, Srikumar Rai and Tina Chauhan, who joined in by a separate video link from the University Centre, Svalbard, on how India-Norway cooperation could be taken forward.
• Ms. Mesram said being able to study in Norway presented a huge opportunity for her and suggested to the President that more Indian universities should be involved in research activities with their Norwegian counterparts.

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International

U.S. pressed Turkey to play stronger role against IS

• Kurdish fighters engaged in fierce clashes with jihadists on the Turkish border near Kobane, as Washington pressed Ankara to play a stronger role in the campaign against the Islamic State (IS) group.
• Turkey denied allowing the United States to use its bases against IS, after U.S. officials said access had been granted and that Ankara would also host training for “moderate” Syrian rebels.
• American and Saudi warplanes carried out seven new strikes around Kobane, the U.S. military said, including on ARE staging posts used in its bid to cut the town off from the outside world.
• A Kobane politician who is now a refugee said IS fighters had surrounded Kobane to the south, east and west, and warned of a “massacre” if they take the northern front bordering Turkey.
• Fighting spread to less than a km from the barbed wire frontier fence, with the jihadists carrying out two suicide car bomb attacks in the border zone, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
• With the jihadists advancing on its doorstep, NATO member Turkey has come under intense pressure to take action as part of the U.S.-led coalition that has been carrying out air strikes in both Syria and Iraq.
• Iraqi forces are reported to be under intensifying pressure in Anbar province between Baghdad and the Syrian border, where a roadside bomb killed the police chief.

‘IS’ site closed down by Iceland

• Iceland has closed down a website believed to be used by IS, according to the authority responsible for the country’s Internet domain name “.is”.
• Internet in Iceland Inc, or ISNIC, said in a statement that it had “suspended domains that were used for the website of a known terrorist organisation”.
• The site “khilafah.is” — which ISNIC said was run by a group calling itself Islamic State — was believed to have been online since mid-September.

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Persons in news

Jean Tirole wins Nobel Prize for Economics

• French economist Jean Tirole won the 2014 Nobel Prize for economics for his work that has shed light on how governments should regulate powerful companies that dominate markets, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.
• “Jean Tirole is one of the most influential economists of our time,’’ the academy said. “Most of all, he has clarified how to understand and regulate industries with a few powerful firms.’’ The economist will receive an 8 million Swedish crown ($1.1 million) prize.
• Mr. Tirole’s research showed that market regulations should be carefully adapted to the conditions of specific industries, rather than general regulations such as price caps which can do more harm than good, the academy said.
• “This year's prize in economic sciences is about taming powerful firms,’’ Staffan Normark, Permanent Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, told a news conference.
• The economics prize, officially called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, was established in 1968. It was not part of the original group of awards set out in 1895 will of Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.

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Business & economy

Continue with MGNREGA: Economists

• Several leading economists have appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to continue with the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act amid apprehensions that the government might restrict the programme and not offer it adequate support.
• In a letter to Mr. Modi, Dilip Abreu, Pranab Bardhan, V. Bhaskar, Ashwini Deshpande, Jean Dreze, Maitreesh Ghatak, Jayati Ghosh, Dilip Mookherjee, R. Nagaraj, Debraj Ray and others argued that despite numerous hurdles, the NREGA had achieved significant results.
• The letter said: “We are writing to express our deep concern about the future of India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act .
• “The NREGA was enacted in 2005 with unanimous support from all political parties. It is a far-reaching attempt to bring some much-needed economic security to the lives of millions of people who are on the margin of subsistence.
• “Despite numerous hurdles, the NREGA has achieved significant results. At a relatively small cost (currently 0.3% of India’s GDP), about 50 million households are getting some employment at NREGA worksites every year. A majority of NREGA workers are women, and close to half are Dalits or Adivasis. A large body of research shows that the NREGA has wide-ranging social benefits, including the creation of productive assets.
• “Recent research also shows that corruption levels have steadily declined over time. While corruption remains a concern, experience shows that it can be curbed, and the battle against corruption in NREGA has helped to establish new standards of transparency in other social programmes as well.

Tata Value Homes plans to launch three new projects

• Tata Value Homes (TVH), a fully-owned subsidiary of Tata Housing Development Company, plans to launch three new ‘Value Home’ projects in the Mumbai metropolitan area, the Delhi NCR region and Kolkata. These projects, to be launched this financial year, will develop 12,000 flats, and these will be ready in phases over a 7-8 year horizon.
• Tata Housing Development Company Managing Director and CEO Brotin Banerjee said two of these projects were under the joint venture model, while the other one would be in a development management model.
• Speaking on the sidelines of the launch of its e-commerce platform for home buying, www.tatavaluehomes.com, he said the plan was to also add some international projects on the portal in this fiscal. TVH was working on projects in Sri Lanka and the Maldives under the public-private-partnership model, and was also considering projects in Africa, he added.
• TVH sold more than 750 flats online in a year, valued at over Rs.300 crore, and has now launched the e-commerce portal, Mr. Banerjee said, adding that the new user-friendly platform would allow buyers from anywhere in the world to book their flats in three easy steps, including selection of location, reviewing the details and booking online.
• The booking entails a non-refundable payment of Rs.30,000, and the inaugural offer is ‘one price one nation’, starting from October 15. Accordingly, buyers can buy units at a uniform price across projects in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune and Chennai.

SEBI ban puts DLF in a spot

• The Securities and Exchange Board of India’s ban on the country’s largest property developer, DLF, means the company could now struggle to pay down its debt using equity or debt instruments regulated by the market regulator. Its debt, which swelled as the firm ramped up land acquisitions before the financial crisis, stood at Rs.19,100 crore ($3.13 billion) at the end of June.
• The ban, a blow to the heavily indebted real estate firm, follows what the regulator said was DLF’s failure to provide key information on subsidiaries and pending legal cases at the time of its record-breaking 2007 initial public offering.
• A DLF spokesman said the company was reviewing the order, but declined to comment further.
• “As far as non-disclosure cases are concerned, this is the biggest case in SEBI’s history, and this is by far the biggest punishment they have imposed,’’ said J. N. Gupta, a former Executive Director at the regulator, who now runs a shareholder advisory firm.
• DLF raised $2.3 billion in 2007 at the height of the pre-financial crises euphoria, in what was then the country’s biggest market debut. New Delhi-based DLF builds homes, offices and shopping centres, and is now developing a 1.9-million square-foot retail mall close to the capital, which is expected to be the biggest in the country when it is completed next year.

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Science & technology

A multi-sectoral approach to control dengue

• Dengue fever is rearing its ugly head again in India with new cases of infections and even deaths being reported from different States. The world’s fastest growing vector-borne disease, dengue sees an estimated 50-100 million cases being reported annually in over 100 endemic countries.
• Ever since its detection in the early 1950s, there has been a 30-fold increase in dengue incidence. Almost half of the world’s population is currently considered at risk of contracting dengue. The Southeast Asia region contributes to more than half of the global burden of the disease. About 52 per cent of the world’s population at risk resides in this region. Dengue is endemic in 10 of the 11 member states, and India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Thailand are among the 30 most endemic countries in the world.
• The good news is that deaths due to dengue have been brought down substantially. This is because of greater awareness among treating physicians on the proper use of World Health Organization protocols in providing care to dengue patients. This is also attributed to increased knowledge among communities to seek early treatment for symptoms that resemble those of dengue. However, an area of concern is that the number of cases has been increasing year after year. To understand it, we need to comprehend and keep pace with the changing epidemiology of dengue, especially the multiple ecological factors that influence its spread.
• Being a vector-borne disease, ever-increasing numbers and varieties of mosquito-breeding habitats are being created with rapid and poorly planned urbanisation, globalisation, consumerism, poor solid waste and water management, and increasing population movement without adequate measures to prevent vector breeding.

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Sources: Various News Papers & PIB

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