Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 25 November 2015

:: National ::

Russian plane shot down in Turkey-Syria border

Turkish fighter jets on patrol near the Syrian border shot down a Russian warplane that Tur-key said had violated its air-space, a long-feared escalation that could further strain relations between Russia and the West.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu ordered the Foreign Ministry to consult with NATO and the Unit-ed Nations over this episode, his office said in a statement, without elaborating.
NATO announced that it would hold an emergency meeting in Brussels later on Tuesday to discuss the episode.
In his first remarks on the incident, Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed that an F-16 Turkish fighter jet had shot down the Sukhoi Su-24 with an air-to-air missile. But he insisted that the Russian jet had been in Syrian airspace at the time and had never threatened Turkey's territory.
Mr. Putin, speaking slowly and clearly angry before ameeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan in Sochi, Russia, said the episode would have “serious consequences for Russian- Turkish relations”

Pressure mounts on India before Paris talks

India's strategy at the Paris Climate Change summit will be to work with emerging economies and press the developed world to concede that responsibility for cutting carbon emissions after 2020 cannot be shared equally by rich and poor nations.
Two major issues that New Delhi will focus on at the Conference of the Parties (CoP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are failed ambitions on transferring low carbon technologies to the developing world, and the lack of support for a plan to fund mitigation and adaptationefforts.
The UN Convention on Climate Change has followed the principle of common but differentiatedresponsibilities (CBDR), reflected in the Kyoto Protocol and rein-forced last year at Lima.
Under this, poor countries were not required to cut emissions. India is emphasising this again, informed sources in the Ministry of Environment and Forests said, and demanding that developing nations be allowed greater room in cutting emissions beyond 2020.
The Modi government is approaching the CoP with the view that the domestic actions proposed under the Intended Nationally Deter-mined Contributions (INDCs) submitted to the UNFCCC are truly progressive.
National per capita emissions are very low at 1.56 tonnes carbon dioxide equivalent (about a tenth of some developed nations), and India’s share of cumulative global emissions only 3 per cent.
In the run-up to the CoP, India has been engaging 60 countries ranging from the Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries to the developed nations to evolve a consensus. Two areas of failure in the climate process so far, ac-cording to Indian officials, are creation of the $100-billion annual climate finance fund that had been initiated six years ago in Copenhagen, and transfer of green technologies.
“The finance pledge has been diluted at successive Conferences of the Parties, and only a promise of $10.2 billion has been made at present,” said an official.
If innovators of green technologies have to be compensated, it could be done using the fund, but there should be no access barrier to any country.
Another contested area is that of transparency norms for use of funds. This has been proposed by the industrialised countries in the form of a common frame-work from 2020, but has also not found favour since it goes against the principle of differentiated capabilities.
India is also taking the lead in demanding the majorshare of the carbon space (the ceiling of 800 or 900 giga-tonnes of carbon emissions that the earth can still absorb to keep a rise in global temperature below the agreed 2 degree Celsius mark), for the developing world.

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:: International ::

Worsening Syrian conflict

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he found it suspicious that Turkey had reached out to its NATO allies after the downing of a Russian jet over the Syrian border but not to Moscow.
The Russian leader, insisted the affair should encourage more cooperation in the fight against terrorism.
A U.S. official said U.S. forces were not involved in the downing of the Russian jet, which was the first time a Russian or Soviet military aircraft has been publicly acknowledged to have been shot down by a NATO member since the 1950s.
The incident occurred as Russia and the West were slowly edging toward some manner of understanding to unite forces to confront the Islamic State in the wake of the bloody terrorist attacks in Paris and the downing of a Russian charter flight over Egypt that together killed 354 people. President François Hollande of France began a world tour this week to try to build consensus on the is-sue.
The Kremlin dispatched its military to Syria in late September to shore up Mr. Assad and to fight rebels backed by Turkey.

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:: India and World ::

Strategic tie-up between India-Singapore

India and Singapore signed a joint declaration envisaging a “Strategic Partnership,” which, besides broadening engagement in existing areas of cooperation, aims to catalyse new ones ranging from political, defence and security cooperation to economic, cultural and people-to-people contacts.
Besides the partnership declaration — a framework to contribute to greater regional stability and growth — the two countries signed as many as 10 bilateral agreements.
Later, addressing the India-Singapore Economic Convention, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his visit had been very productive and positive. Memoranda of understanding were signed for curtailing drug trafficking and improving cybersecurity, enabling Singapore and India to collaborate on technology and research.
Agreements were signed for collaboration in urban planning and wastewater management and to extend long-term loan of Indian artefacts to the Asian Civilisations Museum of Singapore and for cooperation in the fields of arts, museums, archives and monuments.

:: Business and Economy ::

India to sell rupee bonds

India has decided to start selling Rupee Bonds “in some countries” to provide long-term finance for infrastructure development in the country. This will be in addition to the setting up of the NationalInvestment and Infrastructure Fund and introduction of the tax-free Infrastructure Bonds.
Singapore could be among the countries where the Rupee Bonds would be offered.
With this last round of reforms, India will be among the most open economies for FDI
New sectors have been fully opened for FDI, entry and exit norms had already been relaxed to a great extent.
For most of the sectors, the FDI clearances were now on automatic route. In addition to greenfield areas, many sectors could freely absorb FDI in brownfield projects. These included roads, construction and medical services.

IDEA And VIDEOCON spectrum deal

The country’s third largest telecom services provider, Idea Cellular, will buy spectrum in Gujarat and Ut-tar Pradesh (West) from Videocon Telecommunications for Rs 3,310 crore ($499 mil-lion) to boost its high-speed data services.
This is the first deal after the government allowed tele-com companies to trade mo-bile airwaves in September to address the problem of short-age of spectrum and improve services for mobile phone users facing issues such as frequent call drops.

EPFO investing in AA+-rated private bank bonds

The Employees’Provident Fund Organisation(EPFO), the country’s largest retirement fund with over Rs.8lakh crore under its watch,has decided to begin investments in bonds rated AA+ or higher issued by private sector banks.
With the EPFO board,chaired by Union Labour and Employment Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, ratifying onTuesday investments in bonds rated AA+ or higher, PF savings can now be invested in bonds issued by private banks with a tenure of 10years, with an upper limit of 20 per cent of each bank’s net worth