Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 26 July 2015

Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 26 July 2015

:: National ::

Highest farmer suicides HP,NCRB

Even as union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh has blamed love affairs and then impotency for farmer suicides, figures recorded by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) completely contradict him.
According to the NCRB report, released recently, 87.5% of farmer suicides in Himachal Pradesh were due to crop failure in 2014 and the state also tops the northern region in absolute number of suicides by farmers with 32 such cases. The cause of 28 of these has been listed as crop failure.
In number of farmers suicides, Punjab recorded 24, Haryana had 14, Jammu and Kashmir had 12 while Delhi, Uttrakhand and Chandigarh recorded nil, as per the report.
In Himachal, the only 4.7 % farmers have committed suicide due to 'suspected/illicit relations' and 2.3% due to 'cancellation/non settlement of marriage'.
In Punjab, Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir there was no suicide due to crop failure. Punjab recorded 3 suicides due to indebtedness which was due to non-agriculture loan, while there was no suicide in Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir for indebtedness.
Most of the suicides in these states are due to illness, drug abuse/alcohol addiction and property dispute.
There were a total of 644 suicides ( any cause) in HP in 2014, where as in 2013 there were 554. So, there is a jump of 16.2 %, which is the 4th highest increase rate in the country.

:: International ::

China;s Ambitious Search For aliens

China is currently in the process of building the world’s largest single-aperture telescope, FAST, according to reports emerging in its state media.
Its reflector the size of more than 30 football fields, the telescope is an attempt by China (under the project Breakthrough Listen, envisioned by American physicist Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner) to find signs of alien life after NASA’s groundbreaking announcement that an ‘Earth 2.0′ was discovered by its planet-hunting Kepler telescope.
According to Xinhua, built in the deep mountains of China’s Guizhou province, the diameter of the telescope’s reflector will be 500 meters and will be made up of 4,450 panels, easily surpassing Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, “only” 305 meters in diameter.
With a perimeter of more than 1.5 km, it will take about 40 minutes to complete one round of the telescope.
The valley in Guizhou has “radio silence,” with no habitation in the radius of five kilometers and only one county in the radius of 25 kilometers

:: Business ::

Government planning to Issue Rs 15,000-Cr Sovereign Gold Bonds

The government plans to issue sovereign gold bonds worth Rs 15,000 crore in the second half of the current fiscal year as it looks to curb demand for physical gold and raise funds through such securities.
Following the approval, bonds could be issued in the second half of this fiscal year, the official said.
The government is targeting to raise about Rs 15,000 crore and the issuance would be for retail investors in tranches.
The proposed scheme, which aims to shift part of the estimated 300 tonnes of physical gold bar purchased every year to demat gold bond, will be marketed through post offices and brokers on commission basis.
The bond issuance would be part of the government's plan to borrow Rs 6 lakh crore in the current fiscal year. As per the borrowing calendar, the government proposed to borrow Rs 3.6 lakh crore in the first half ending September 2015.
Besides helping the government raise funds to meet its expenses, such bond issuance would result in curbing the demand for gold which in the past had been one of the main reasons for the bloated current account deficit, which touched a record high of 4.7 per cent ($88 billion) in 2012-13.
As the name suggests, these bonds would be issued by Government of India with a nominal rate of interest, which will be linked to international rate for gold borrowing.
According to the proposal, an indicative lower limit of 2 per cent may be given, but the actual rate will have to be market determined.
The bonds will be issued in 2, 5, 10 grams of gold or other denominations and the tenor of the bond could be for a minimum of 5-7 years so that it would protect investors from medium-term volatility in gold prices.

:: Science & Technology ::

New findings about Stem cell transplantation

A group of medical researchers have recently claimed that using stem celltransplantation to treat patients with a serious but a very rare form of chronicblood cancer Juvenile MyelomonocyticLeukemia (JMML) has shown improved results.
Researchers at the Children's Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), led by Dr Hisham Abdel-Azim, looked at the children with Juvenile Myelomonocytic Leukemia (JMML) who underwent cell transplantation at the hospital and noticed that all of them were alive and in clinical remission.
Abdel-Azim said that the lack of transplant-related mortality in the group of children we studied at the Children's Centre for Cancer and Blood Diseases at the hospital suggested that BUMEL (Intravenous Busulfan and Melphalan) may represent a successful cell transplantation high-dose chemotherapy regimen.

:: Sports ::

Dhoni still most marketable sportsperson

Mahendra Singh Dhoni, India's One Day International cricket captain, has been ranked ninth in a list of the most marketable sportspersons in the world, prepared by the London School of Marketing (LSM).
He ranks ahead of the likes of Argentina's football star Lionel Messi and Jamaican sprint king Usain Bolt.
Dhoni, 34, considered one of the finest finishers in the game, was also placed ahead of football superstars Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar, as well as tennis players Andy Murray and Serena Williams.
While compiling the list, LSM researchers looked at the brand value of the individuals, along with their current income from sponsorships and the percentage of their total earnings these accounted for. It also considered their presence on social media.
Swiss tennis star Roger Federer was named the most marketable sportsperson in the world, followed by golfers Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson at the second and third positions, respectively.
Despite his loss in this year's Wimbledon final to Novak Djokovic, Federer is considered one of the most influential sportspersons in the world. He has 17 Grand Slam singles titles to his credit.
Tennis stars dominate the list, with Djokovic seventh, followed by Rafael Nadal. Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams, the only two women to make it to the top 20, have been ranked 12th and 20th, respectively.