Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 30 December 2014

:: National ::

‘Tamilaga Vivasayeel Sangham’ seeks permission to kill wild animals

• Tamilaga Vivasayeel Sangham has sought permission to shoot wild animals and birds that destroyed crops. It has also urged the State Government to allow the Forest Department staff to shoot with rubber bullets elephants, leopards and other animals that strayed out of forest into human habitations.

• The association members, numbering around 600, staged a protest at the Red Cross Junction seeking permission to kill boar, peafowl and other animals and birds that destroyed crops.

• The protest was led by State president M.R. Sivasamy.Though farmers were engaged in cultivation for the past 100 years near the forest boundary, the man-animal conflict had intensified only after the animal population increased due to the enforcement of the Wildlife Protection Act and other conservation measures.

• The increase in population led to shortage of food and water, which forced the animals to look out for food in human habitation.

• They demanded that if farmers died or suffered injuries in man-animal conflict, they should have the provision to slap cases on the owners of the animals and the Forest Department for compensation. They said that in the current year 50 farmers were killed and crops worth crores of rupees were damaged.

• The farmers’ other demands included restricting the applicability of the Wildlife Protection Act to only the forest, disbursement of compensation within 15 days of crop damage and abandoning the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Scheme.

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:: Business & Economy ::

Bharti Airtel drops ‘plans’ to charge extra for internet calls

• Bharti Airtel announced rolling back of plan to start charging customers for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services that include applications such as Skype, Line and Viber, which lets users make free calls through the Internet.

• The telecom operator said, “In view of the news reports that a consultation paper will be issued shortly by TRAI on issues relating to services offered by OTT players including VoIP, we have decided not to implement our proposed launch of VoIP packs.”

• Airtel had last week decided to charge VoIP calls wherein user could chose VoIP specific data packs. For prepaid users, the VoIP pack was priced at Rs 75 for 75 MB with a validity of 28 days. Similar plan was announced for postpaid customers.

• Presently, users are not charged any fee by the operators to use these applications. They just need to pay the regular data charge for Internet browsing. The move by Airtel received a lot of flak from users on social media and also sparked a discussion over net neutrality.

• The operator, however, had defended it saying it had invested over Rs 1,40,000 crore in rolling out network and further Rs. 50,000 crore have been paid as government levies and, therefore it found offering VoIP services for free as not tenable for business.

• In response to Airtel’s statement on the business not being viable in the current form, Medianama, a portal on telecom, pointed out that in just the last two and a half years, Airtel has earned Rs. 141,545 crore in revenues, and Rs. 16,211 crore in profit. Over 20 years they have earned substantial return on their investment.

• While Airtel's decision to charge more for these services was not in accordance with net neutrality, it is not illegal as there are no norms in the country for the same.

• Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers should treat all data on the internet equally, and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, site, platform, or application.

Banks vulnerable to financial contagion says RBI (Register and Login to read Full News..)

Shortage of iron hits Tata Steel plant (Register and Login to read Full News..)

:: Sports ::

Rituparna Das & Ruthvika enter final

• A light breeze from one end of the huge hall troubled her a bit, but top-seeded Rituparna Das stayed steady and marched to the women’s singles final of the second Manorama Open National-ranking badminton tournament at the Rajiv Gandhi indoor stadium.
• Rituparna, the Junior National champion, defeated Air India’s fourth-seeded Tanvi Lad in three sets and will meet her Gopi Chand Academy-mate Ruthvika Shivani, the eighth seed.
• Meanwhile, Petroleum Board’s Ajay Jayaram brushed aside Karnataka’s junior national champion Daniel S. Farid 21-6, 21-10 and entered the men’s final.
• He will meet Haryana’s second seed Sameer Verma, who bounced back after losing the first set to defeat Karnataka’s third-seeded Aditya Prakash 17-21, 21-13, 21-17.

Bengal begins its campaign with a win in Volleyball

• West Bengal displayed fine team effort to start its campaign with a 25-18, 25-22, 25-22 win over Gujarat in a boys’ Pool A match on the opening day of the 37th National sub-junior volleyball championship at the Ajmal Khan Park, Karol Bagh.

• Last year’s quarterfinalist, Bengal played solidly to take the first set without much trouble. However, it found the going tough when Gujarat competed keenly in the next two.

• Bengal benefited from the good work of its blocker-cum-setter Pratik Sarkar. The tall boy moved swiftly to cover the net and set up some nice balls for his colleagues to score points off. Libero Manoj Sardar also made useful saves as Bengal narrowly took the second set.

• Led by its setter Kamal Chaudhary, Gujarat fought back in the third set and kept the serve with it for a good period. Chaudhary showed his skill as a playmaker as well as an opportunistic scorer.

• However, he did not get enough support from his teammates who committed a lot of unforced errors. Bengal, which let slip the momentum a little bit, regained control primarily due to the decent performances of its captain Debdip Kole and Sarkar in the third set.

• In one of the longest matches in the girls’ section, Himachal Pradesh thwarted a spirited Andhra Pradesh to record a hard-fought victory in Pool D.

Ankita Raina wins first ITF singles title (Register and Login to read Full News..)

Sony PlayStation network is back online after 3-day outage (Register and Login to read Full News..)

:: International ::

Google Inc’s Gmail blocked in China, Great Firewall suspected

• Google Inc’s Gmail was blocked in China after months of disruptions to the world’s biggest e-mail service, with an anti-censorship advocate suggesting the Great Firewall was to blame.

• Large numbers of Gmail web addresses were cut off in China, said GreatFire.org, a China-based freedom of speech advocacy group. Users said the service was still down.

• “I think the government is just trying to further eliminate Google’s presence in China and even weaken its market overseas,” said a member of GreatFire.org, who uses a pseudonym.

• “Imagine if Gmail users might not get through to Chinese clients. Many people outside China might be forced to switch away from Gmail.” Google’s own Transparency Report, which shows real-time traffic to Google services, displayed a sharp drop-off in traffic to Gmail from China.

• “We’ve checked and there’s nothing wrong on our end,” a Singapore-based spokesman for Google said in an e-mail.

• Almost all of Google’s services have been heavily disrupted in China since June this year, but until last week Gmail users could still access e-mails downloaded via protocols like IMAP, SMTP and POP3.

• These had let people communicate using Gmail on apps like the Apple iPhone’s Mail and Microsoft Outlook. China maintains tight control over the Internet, nipping in the bud any signs of dissent or challenges to the ruling Communist Party’s leadership.

• The country is host to the world’s most sophisticated Internet censorship mechanism, known as the Great Firewall of China. Critics say China has stepped up its disruption of foreign online services like Google over the past year to create an Internet cut off from the rest of the world.

:: Science & Technology ::

Marine debris damaging coral reefs says scientist

• The increasing amount of marine debris like plastic, glass, rubber and others break or damage reef, a senior scientist said.

• “Marine debris like plastic, glass, metal, rubber abandoned fishing nets and other gear often get entangle and kill reef organisms and break or damage them,” said Dr. Mahua Saha, senior Scientist from National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) addressing representatives of SAARC nations during a workshop held at Port Blair, Andaman.

• She said the reefs in North-western Hawaiian Islands are particularly prone to accumulation of marine debris because of their central location in the North Pacific Gyre.

• “From 2000 to 2006, NOAA and partners removed over 500 tons of marine debris there,” Dr. Saha added. The workshop was organised by NIO for SAARC Coastal Zone Management Centre.

• The policy makers from four SAARC countries — India, Bangladesh, the Maldives and Sri Lanka — participated in the event. Dr. Saha said that the increasing level of marine pollution is playing an important role in coral destruction.

• “Reefs in close proximity to human populations are subject to poor water quality from land and marine-based sources. In 2006, studies suggested that approximately 80 per cent of ocean pollution originates from activities on land,” she said.

• “Major part of pollution comes from land-based run off, oil spills, nutrients and pesticides from agriculture, wastewater, industrial effluent, untreated sewage and others.”

• Pesticides containing persistent organic pollutant (POPs), hydrocarbons from oil tankers and heavy metals from industrial (mining, dredging) effluent cause major threat to corals, the scientist said.

Huge population at ‘skeletal fluorosis’ risk

• With drinking water in 14,132 habitations in 19 States still containing fluoride above the permissible levels, the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry fears that a huge population is at risk of serious health conditions such as skeletal fluorosis.

• The Ministry has now urged the Drinking Water and Sanitation Ministry to ensure the supply of safe drinking water in these habitations. Data collated by the latter say Rajasthan has the highest number of such habitations (7,670), affecting 48,84,613 people.

• Telangana has 1,174 such districts with 19,22,783 affected people. Karnataka has 1,122 such districts and Madhya Pradesh 1,055. Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Maharashtra, Odisha, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh too face the problem.

• The World Health Organization guideline value for fluoride is 1.5 mg per litre, with a target of between 0.8 and 1.2 mg per litre to maximise benefits and minimise harmful effects. Fluoride levels in the body depend on climate and intake of the chemical from drinking water and other sources, the WHO says.

• Fluoride contamination affects the teeth and bones and long-term excessive exposure causes abdominal pain, excessive saliva, nausea, vomiting, seizures and muscle spasms.

• The WHO says fluroide levels above 1.5 mg per litre causes pitting of tooth enamel and deposits in bones. Levels above 10 mg per litre cause the crippling skeletal fluorosis.

• The government has started the National Programme for Prevention and Control of Fluorosis in 2008-09. In 2013-14, the programme was brought under the National Rural Health Mission, which has so far covered 111 districts.

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Sources: Various News Papers & PIB

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