Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 18 December 2014

National

State Cabinet approved draft CRDA Bill

• The State Cabinet approved the draft Capital Regional Development Authority (CRDA) Bill with four changes. The Bill will be tabled in the Assembly on December 19.
• Besides giving nod to the changes in CRDA Bill, the meeting chaired by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu also discussed the Debt Redemption Scheme and the strategy to be adopted in the Assembly.
• The Cabinet approved transfer of assets and liabilities of Vijayawada-Guntur-Tenali-Mangalagiri Urban Development Authority to the CRDA. The Chief Minister will be chairman of the 14-member CRDA and the

Municipal Administration Minister vice chairman.

• The CRDA will have Rs. 1000 crore as development fund and Rs. 250 crore as working capital. A detailed master plan for the capital region will be ready in six months.
• It is learnt that the Cabinet also approved increase in retirement age of teachers in aided colleges from 58 years to 60 years and from 60 years to 62 years in the universities.
• Another important decision taken by the Cabinet is to allow intra-State sale of paddy and also allow export to other States if farmers themselves pay Central Sales Tax.
• The Cabinet which discussed various issues during the four-hour meeting approved proposals to fill 4,000 field assistant posts under MNREGA and 6,000 posts in Panchayat Raj departments.
• Nod was also given to make changes in the Forest Act to enhance the fine and imprisonment terms for red sanders smuggling. Another proposal to create e-marketing facility to sell agriculture products online was also cleared.
• It was also decided to fill agricultural marketing committees through nominations while limiting the number of members to 19 and restricting the term to one year.

New maritime policy in a month says N. C. Naidu

• Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu announced that a new maritime policy to develop the 974-km coastline in the State would be unveiled in a month, saying that the move would give a fillip to industrialisation.

• He was speaking on ‘Andhra talks business’ at the CEO and investors’ conclave organised by the Fortune India, in partnership with the State government at Hotel Novotel. Over 100 CEOs, investors and top officials attended the programme.

• The session began with the launch of 2014 edition of Fortune India 500 mega issue by Mr. Naidu, along with Managing Director & CEO of ABP Pvt. Ltd D.D. Purkayastha and Fortune India editor D.N. Mukerjea.

• Mr. Naidu said the government was developing the State into a mega trade and logistic hub, benchmarked against the business-friendly countries like Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Dubai and outlined plans to transform AP into a gateway to South East Asia.

• He said efforts were on to develop ports at Ramayapatnam, Nakkapalli, Kalingapatnam and other locations and mega cities at Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada. He also referred to fast-track growth focus in five grids viz. power, gas, water, road and fibreoptic.

• “In AP, we want internet connection of 15-20 megabyte per second in every household in three years,” he said, adding that IT development would be the backbone of industrialisation.

• Later, during a media interaction, he said a single window clearance system would be introduced to clear the online applications submitted by prospective investors within three weeks.

India successfully test fires GSLV Mark-III

• India moved forward in rocket technology with the successful flight testing of its heaviest next generation rocket and the crew module.

• Precisely at 9.30 a.m., the 630-tonne Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mark III (GSLV Mark-III), standing 43.43-metre tall, freed itself from the second launch pad and with a reverberating deep throated roar, rose into the sky.

• With a thick orange flame at its tail, the expendable rocket ascended towards the heavens with one way ticket as its design life span is just around five minutes.

• The Rs.155-crore mission has twin purposes. The main purpose is to test the rocket’s atmospheric flight stability with around four tonne luggage.

• The second and incidental objective is to study the re-entry characteristics of the crew module — called Crew Module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment — its aero braking and validation of its end-to-end parachute system.

• According to an Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) official, it will be of the size of a small bedroom and can accommodate two to three people.

• Just over five minutes into the flight, the rocket spat out the giant cup cake shaped 3.7-tonne crew module at an altitude of 126 km.

• The crew module then descended towards Earth at a high speed. The speed was moderated remotely manipulating its onboard motors till 80 km above the earth.

• From here the ballistic re-entry into the atmosphere began while the onboard thrusters were shut down. The crew module’s heat shield was expected to experience a heat of around 1,600°C.

States to get relief on GST Bill (Register and Login to read Full News..)

Ancestors of Indian Muslims were Hindus, says Togadia (Register and Login to read Full News..)

Delhi HC permits ‘Xiaomi’ to sell Qualcomm-based handsets till Jan. 8 (Register and Login to read Full News..)

Sports

AIBA bans boxer L. Sarita Devi

• Indian woman boxer L. Sarita Devi was handed a one-year ban by the International Boxing Association (AIBA) for refusing to accept her bronze medal at the Asian Games but the punishment is unlikely to hurt her career too badly as she would be available to compete in the 2016 Olympic qualifiers.

• Sarita, who had refused to accept the medal to protest her controversial semifinal bout loss, has been banned retrospectively from October 1, 2014 to October 1, 2015 and fined 1000 swiss francs.
• Although her repeated apologies failed in getting her AIBA’s pardon, even this ban is quite a relief for the lightweight (60kg) boxer, who is currently nursing a broken right wrist.

Bindra wins bronze in National Shooting championship (Register and Login to read Full News..)

Persons in news

S. Narayanan passes away

• S. Narayanan (89), chairman of India Motor Parts & Accessories Ltd (IMPAL), part of the TVS group, passed away.
• He was a doyen of the automobile industry having spent over seven decades in it. He single-handedly nurtured the spare parts industry in the country and held top posts in many industry associations.
• Narayanan was on the Board of IMPAL since 1965, served as its managing director from 1969-79 and as Chairman from 2002. He was instrumental in the company’s expansion all over India.
• He is survived by wife Choodamani Narayanan and two sons — industrialist N. S. Ramji and N. Krishnan, Managing Director of IMPAL — and daughter-in-law Dr. Nalini Krishnan of The Hindu.

Science & Technology

‘Mental health programme’ to focus on the elderly

• Over the last few years, a lot of the patients senior geriatrician V.S. Natarajan has seen were in need of mental health services.

• “Financial, health and social problems – these are the issues the elderly have. With many elderly citizens living alone in both villages and cities as their children migrate elsewhere for work, cases of depression and dementia are on the rise,” he said.

• To take care of the mental health needs of the elderly, an expansion of the district mental health programme (DMHP) in Tamil Nadu has been planned, under which, psychiatrists in every district will be trained to take care of geriatric needs. Once a week, a special clinic for senior citizens will be held.

• “We already have psychiatrists in 25 districts; in four others, psychiatrists are being posted and in the three others, the process has begun. Since we have the infrastructure and the resources and have a geriatric care policy in the State, we decided to link them and meet this essential need,” a senior health official said.

• This apart, caregivers will also be trained, said the official. “This is important as caregivers too need to be trained in the needs of the elderly.

• This area is generally not looked into as most caregivers are family members, but we are planning to focus on this,” he said.

• “There has been an increase in longevity thanks to better healthcare, but the aim of the DMHP’s geriatric care services is to improve the quality of life of senior citizens,” said State nodal officer, C. Ramasubramanian.

• “We are getting our psychiatrists trained by NIMHANS, Bangalore, in geriatric mental health care so they are equipped to take care of the elderly,” he said. The psychiatrics will in turn train primary health centre doctors, he said.

• For the elderly, loneliness, fear of death, health ailments and financial troubles pose the major problems. “Nutrition also needs attention. A lack of adequate nutrition too, could lead to mental health issues,” said Dr. Natarajan.

Coconut plucking, women take high wages

• Even though Cuddalore district abounds in coconut trees, the price of coconuts is high. The reason trotted out for such market behaviour is the lack of manpower to pluck coconuts or the high wages the workers demand.

• It has created a situation in which even the ripe coconuts are left either to rot on the trees or fall. It has become consternation for the coconut growers to find the workforce on time to harvest, not to speak of the plight of the households having a few coconut trees in their garden.

• To overcome the problem, the M.S. Swaminatan Research Foundation (MSSRF) has launched the “Friends of Coconut Tree” programme for farmers and the unemployed youth.

• R. Elangovan, Project Officer of the MSSRF, told that the six-day training programme organised under the aegis of the MSSRF Village Resource Centre at Parangipettai was intended to help the farmers and unemployed youth learn to climb trees to pluck the coconut.

• To start with, 20 persons, including four women hailing from Killai, Nochikadu, Manikkollai and Parangipettai, joined the programme conducted recently.

• It was conducted in coordination with the Coconut Development Board that provided the device for climbing the trees free of cost.

• It was a sort of an in-house training as the trainees would stay at the Parangipettai centre throughout the training programme. Besides mastering the tree climbing techniques, they were also taught yoga and pranayam.

• Mr Elangovan said the Coconut Development Board had made it mandatory that 30 per cent of the trainees ought to be women. It was a surprise that four women had come forward to enroll their names in the programme.

The pollutants causing discolouration of Taj Mahal identified

• Finally, the specific pollutants in the air that are responsible for the discolouration of the white marble of Taj Mahal have been identified. Particulate carbon and fine dust particles that are deposited on the marble are responsible for its browning.

• Carbon is of two types — black carbon and light absorbing organic carbon or brown carbon. The results from a study were published a few days ago in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

• Besides studying air samples collected from the area, the authors used marble samples on the building to collect the pollutants. They also undertook computer modelling to study the colour change brought about by reflectance of the particles.

• Both organic carbon and dust particles have the ability to preferentially absorb light in the blue region of the spectrum. The absorption of blue light by these pollutants in turn gives the marble surface a brown hue.

• “There is one group of organic carbon which absorbs light in the blue region of the spectrum and this is called brown carbon.

• Discolouration is because of what is happening to reflectance, and reflectance is in turn influenced by these particles,” said Prof. S.N. Tripathi from the Department of Civil Engineering and Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur. He is one of the authors of the paper.

• The ability of fine dust particles to produce the brown hue is a well known in North India. According to him, it is the presence of haematite in the dust that is responsible for the brown hue.

Remote powered ‘solar ploughing machine’ developed by engineering students (Register and Login to read Full News..)

Special care for children during medical X-ray procedures (Register and Login to read Full News..)

Valuable spin-offs from ‘carbon nanotube’: research (Register and Login to read Full News..)

Business & Economy

SEBI makes fresh bid to find ‘Sahara investors’

• In a fresh effort to locate Sahara investors eligible for refunds, regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has asked bondholders to submit their claims by January along with necessary proof of their investments.

• The latest exercise follows a similar attempt made by Sebi in August, wherein the eligible bondholders were asked to submit their refund claims to the regulator by September 30, 2014.

• Sebi said it received 4,900 refund claims during that exercise from the bondholders of two Sahara companies — Sahara India Real Estate Corp Ltd (SIRECL) and Sahara Housing Investment Corp Ltd (SHICL), which had raised over Rs 24,000 crore from about three crore investors.

• “In the interest of those bondholders of Saharas who could not submit their refund claims before the last date, this advertisement is being issued to enable those bondholders to submit their refund claims,” Sebi said.

• The Supreme Court had asked Sebi to facilitate refund to the bondholders of the two companies in connection with a long-running dispute involving raising of funds to the tune of over Rs 24,000 crore from investors across the country.

• While Sahara maintains it has already repaid more than 93 per cent of the outstanding dues directly to the concerned bondholders and the remaining amount was just about Rs 2,500 crore, it deposited Rs 5,120 crore to Sebi in December 2012 towards the investor refunds as per Supreme Court orders.

Existing account enough to avail ‘Jan Dhan’ benefits: govt. (Register and Login to read Full News..)

Click Here to Register for Full News

Click Here for Archive

Sources: Various News Papers & PIB

This is a Part of Online Coaching Programme for IAS Exam