Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 2 July 2015

Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 2 July 2015

Amnesty International released a detailed report here on Wednesday on the implications of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) in Jammu & Kashmir, asserting that the Union government has often refused to prosecute the Army or paramilitary personal accused of human rights abuses.
“By not addressing human rights violations committed by security force personnel in the name of national security, India has not only failed to uphold its international obligations but has also failed its own Constitution,” said Minar Pimple, senior director of global operations at Amnesty International.
“Impunity only breeds further violence and alienation, making it more difficult to combat abuses by armed groups.”

The World Bank has approved an additional loan of $650 million for the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC), which is aimed at the faster delivery of goods between the northern and eastern parts of the country.
This round of loans to the Eastern DFC follows two other loans by the World Bank. The Cabinet last week approved the revised cost estimate of Rs.81,459 crore for the Eastern and Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) Project.
The third round of World Bank funding, announced on Wednesday, will build the 401 km Ludhiana-Khurja section in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab.
The project will “help increase the capacity of these freight-only lines by raising the axle-load limit from 22.9 to 25 tonnes and enable speeds of up to 100 km/hr. It will also help develop the institutional capacity of the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd (DFCCIL) to build and maintain the DFC infrastructure network,” according to the World Bank.
An analysis of the projected greenhouse gases that are expected to be generated by the Eastern freight corridor project found that it would be 55 per cent lower than the levels of gases released without the project.
The Eastern DFC project is expected to release 10.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions up to 2041-42, compared to a whopping 23.3 million tonnes in the absence of the freight corridor.

The UN rights body adopted without a vote a resolution on addressing the human rights situation of Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar, nearly a month after a regional crisis erupted with hundreds of migrants from the nation found adrift in the Bay of Bengal.
The resolution, which was to be considered yesterday but could not proceed due to the absence of the delegation of the country concerned - Myanmar - in a rare occurrence, was subsequently adopted in the UNHRC without a vote.
India yesterday disassociated itself from the resolution, saying it is "highly prescriptive and not consistent with the broad ethos" of the work of the Council.
In recent years, tens of thousands of persecuted Rohingya Muslims besides Bangladeshi economic migrants have fled on boats across the Bay of Bengal in search of better prospects.

Edward Witten is an American physicist who specialises in String Theory, Quantum Gravity and Supersymmetric Field Theories. He is the only physicist who has so far received the Fields Medal, one of the highest honours given to mathematicians. In this interview, Prof. Witten, who was in Bengaluru to attend the conference Strings 2015 organised by the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences.
Twentieth century physics consisted of two great theories — quantum mechanics, which describes atoms, molecules, and subatomic particles, and Einstein's theory of gravity (which he called General Relativity), which we use to understand stars, galaxies, and the universe as a whole.
These two theories are in conflict with each other. If one applies to Einstein's theory the textbook recipes of “quantisation,” one runs into contradictions.
Since stars (for example) are ultimately made of atoms and subatomic particles, it does not make sense to have one theory for the stars and one theory for the subatomic particles. String theory is the framework in which physicists have succeeded in reconciling Einstein's theory of gravity with quantum mechanics.

Ace Indian tennis star Sania Mirza has become the first woman tennis player from the country to be top-seeded in this year's ongoing Wimbledon championships.
Sania and her partner at Wimbledon, veteran Martina Hingis, beat Diyas and Zheng 6-2, 6-2 to progress.
The 28-year-old Sania, who is playing in her 15th year at the Wimbledon, is in fact the first Indian woman to achieve the feat in any Grand Slam competition.
The only other Indians getting the top draw in a Grand Slam earlier were Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi in the 1999 French Open men’s doubles competition.
Sania, who is married to Pakistan cricketer Shoaib Malik, won her first major title here - the 2003 Wimbledon Championships Girls' Doubles, partnering Alisa Kleybanova.
Getting the No. 1 seeding means that Sania is now a member of the elite 'Last-four Club' in Wimbledon that makes her entitled to certain lifetime privileges, including use of a special locker, etc.