Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 22 November 2014

National

Huge arms haul in Rampal’s Satlok ashram

• The Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Haryana Police recovered a huge cache of arms during search operations at Satlok Ashram in Barwala.
• It has taken three persons hiding there into custody. With this, the total number of arrests has gone up to 865.
• A Haryana Police spokesperson said seizure included three .32 bore revolvers, 19 air guns, two double-barrel 12 bore guns, two 315 bore rifles, 103 live cartridges and a chilli grenade.
• The team also found acid syringes, sticks, 20 pairs of black dresses and two tanks containing 800 litres of diesel. A pregnancy test strip was found in the room adjacent to Rampal’s in the ashram.

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International

President Obama’s Republic Day visit great chance for bolstering ties

• U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposed visit to India in January 2015 is a great opportunity to strengthen and expand bilateral strategic partnership, top American administration officials and experts have said.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited Mr. Obama to be the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations, an invitation which has been accepted by the American leader.
• “First time a U.S. President is to attend Republic Day (celebrations), which commemorates the adoption of India’s constitution.
• We are committed to strengthening and expanding the U.S.-India strategic partnership,” National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, tweeted.

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Science & technology

Mangalyaan among Time's best inventions 2014 list

• Mangalyaan has been named among the best inventions of 2014 by Time magazine which described it as a technological feat that will allow India to flex its “interplanetary muscles.”
• “Nobody gets Mars right on the first try. The U.S. didn’t, Russia didn’t, the Europeans didn’t. But on September 24, India did. That’s when the Mangalyaan ...went into orbit around the Red Planet, a technological feat no other Asian nation has yet achieved,” Time said about Mangalyaan, calling it “The Supersmart Spacecraft.”
• Mangalyaan is among the 25 ‘Best Inventions of 2014’ listed by Time magazine that are “making the world better, smarter and—in some cases—a little more fun.”
• Developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation, the Mars spacecraft cost India just $74 million, less than the budget for the multi—Academy Award winning science fiction thriller film ‘Gravity.’
• The list also includes inventions by two Indians for developing an exercise space for prisoners in solitary confinement and a tablet toy for kids.
• Nalini Nadkarni, forest ecologist and college professor helped develop the ‘Blue Room’ with Snake River Correctional Institution in Oregon for inmates in solitary confinement, who for 23 hours a day see nothing but a tiny, white-walled cell, an experience some research suggests heightens mental illness and makes prisoners prone to suicide attempts and violence.
• Former Google engineer Pramod Sharma developed ‘Osmo’, a tablet toy that gets physical. Sharma got the inspiration when he saw his daughter playing with the iPad, but did not want her to be glued to the tablet all day long.
• The toy, which debuted in October, has helped Osmo raise $14.5 million in capital and is now being sold in the Apple Store.

Two Akash missiles tested again

• Two Akash Surface-to-Air supersonic missiles were fired in quick succession by Indian Air Force personnel to destroy one fast moving Banshee unmanned aerial vehicles and a simulated electronic target at the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur, in Odisha.
• While one missile hit and destroyed the target in a low altitude near boundary mission, the other missile war head detonated in the vicinity of the simulated target in a far boundary high altitude exercise.
• Friday’s flight trials were preceded by simultaneous launch of two Akash missiles against flying targets.
• The current series of tests, which culminated, were conducted for acceptance of new production lot of the missiles. In all, nine missiles were tested since November 17 as part of the training exercise for IAF personnel.

Two new subatomic particles discovered

• Two new subatomic particles that could widen our understanding of the universe have been discovered, scientists at CERN announced.
• The collaboration for the LHCb experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider discovered the two new particles belonging to the baryon family.
• A baryon is a composite subatomic particle made up of three quarks.
• The particles were predicted to exist by the quark model but had never been seen before. A related particle was found by the CMS experiment at CERN in 2012.
• Like the well-known protons that the LHC accelerates, the new particles are baryons made from three quarks bound together by the strong force.
• The types of quarks are different, though: the new particles both contain one beauty (b), one strange (s), and one down (d) quark, CERN said in a statement.
• Thanks to the heavyweight b quarks, they are more than six times as massive as the proton. But the particles are more than just the sum of their parts: their mass also depends on how they are configured.
• “Nature was kind and gave us two particles for the price of one,” said Matthew Charles of the CNRS’s LPNHE laboratory at Paris VI University.
• As well as the masses of these particles, the research team studied their relative production rates, their widths — a measure of how unstable they are — and other details of their decays.
• The results match up with predictions based on the theory of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), researchers said.
• QCD is part of the Standard Model of particle physics, the theory that describes the fundamental particles of matter, how they interact and the forces between them.

India did not clear on its position on the issue of hydrofluorocarbons

• India did not clearly spell out its position on the issue of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) during a key UN conference as nations debated whether to set up a contact group for discussing the proposed amendment to the Montreal Protocol to phase down the harmful greenhouse gas.
• As nations debated pro and cons of the issue, India neither supported nor opposed it and instead merely read out a joint-bilateral statement on HFCs signed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Barack Obama during their White House summit on September 30.
• When contacted, Indian officials known to the development pointed out that it was done to “clarify” the country’s stand after Canada, while moving the amendment, referred to “a change” in India’s approach on the issue.
• India’s unclear stand has irked the green groups attending the conference.
• “I can’t understand why a bilateral deal was read out in a multilateral forum,” climate expert and deputy director general of Centre for Science and Environment, Chandra Bhushan, said.
• On the opening day of the conference on November 17, India had not opposed to participate in discussing on the agenda on the issue of harmful greenhouse gas under United Nations Montreal Protocol on ozone depleting substances.
• As the debate is still on, a breakthrough on the issue of HFCs is highly unlikely as oil producing gulf countries participating in a key UN conference continued their strong opposition to the U.S.-led nations’ proposal to amend the Montreal Protocol to phase down the harmful greenhouse gas.

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Business & economy

FM Arun Jaitley slams ‘unsustainable’ taxes

• Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that an unsustainable tax demand would only earn the country a bad name as an investment destination.
• The Minister’s comments come in the wake of the Income Tax department losing its battle against Shell in Mumbai High Court.
• “Unsustainable demand won’t get you taxes. Unsustainable demands in the books can show you in good glory, but eventually those taxes will be blocked in some judicial court proceedings...they would have only earned us a bad name as an investment destination,” Mr Jaitley said at the HT Leadership Summit. He, however, maintained that those who are supposed to pay taxes must pay.
• Mr Jaitley’s comments come in the wake of Mumbai High Court order earlier this week wherein Income Tax Department lost its Rs 18,000 crore transfer pricing cases against oil major Shell India. The government is also engaged in a Rs 20,000 crore tax dispute with British telecom major Vodafone.
• Referring to retrospective amendments to the tax laws by the UPA government, Mr Jaitley said, if the government was not investor friendly, people would start looking elsewhere.
• He further said making the taxation regime investor-friendly and streamlining the procedure for land acquisition were the big challenges facing the government.
• The Minister, however, took comfort from the fact that taxation laws were the domain of the Lok Sabha in which the NDA has majority.
• He said though the government had managed to get the mess concerning allocation of coal blocks cleared with ease, resolving other issues remained a challenge.
• When asked the three specific reforms he would like to get passed in the ensuing Winter session of Parliament, Mr Jaitley said he would like the insurance Bill, coal laws and Goods and Services tax to be cleared. He said there were political risks to reforms.
• “Reforms alone by themselves are not enough, if they have to survive politically, the blending [with politics] has to be adequately done by those involved, Mr. Jaitley said.

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Sports

Deborah takes gold at Track Asia Cup

• Deborah overcame a bout of fever and cold to claim the women’s 500m time trial gold medal on the opening day of the Track Asia Cup.
• The youngster from Car Nicobar of Andaman and Nicobar islands performed close to her best timing.
• She clocked 37.25 to push Kazakh woman Tatyana Zadnepryanova (40) to the second place. Bangladeshi girl Parul Akhtar (45.6) finished a distant third.
• With an average speed of more than 48km per hour, Deborah, who completed the first half with 20.78, increased her pace significantly to record 16.47 in the next 250m. “My personal best is in the 36 range.
• I was not well, so I held myself back a little bit. I have a few other events left where I also want to win the gold medal,” said Deborah.
• The results (Indians unless stated): Men: 1km time trial: 1. Kwun Wa Law (HK) 1:08.35; 2. Satjakul Sianglam (Tha) 1:08.46; 3. Amrit Singh 1:08.88. Points race: 1. Magomed Mamedov (Kaz) 81; 2. T. Boonratana (Tha) 69; 3. Ching yin Mow (Hkg) 52.