Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 30 May 2015

Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 30 May 2015

:: National ::

No intention to run govt. through L-G: Rajnath

Responding to the allegations of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the Centre had no intention to run the State government through the Lieutenant-Governor.
“We do not have any objection to the working of the State government. However, upholding Constitutional provisions is also our responsibility,” said Mr. Singh at a press conference, in reply to a question on the ongoing stand-off between the Delhi government and Lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung.
With the AAP scaling up the battle on issues surrounding the core demand for full Statehood, the Home Minister said the Centre had not yet given a thought on extending the status to Delhi.
Asked how the Centre intended to deal with the situation if the AAP took to the streets, Mr. Singh said it would have to intervene if any law and order issue arose. “Law and order is my duty,” he said. Through a notification on May 21, the MHA conferred powers on the Lieutenant-Governor to appoint bureaucrats and also restrained the Anti-Corruption Branch under the Delhi government from taking action against any Central government employee.

P.K. Sinha appointed Cabinet Secretary

Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the appointment of Pradeep Kumar Sinha, a 1977 batch IAS officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre, as the next Cabinet Secretary.
Mr. Sinha, who has been serving as Power Secretary since July 2013, will succeed Ajit Seth whose term ends on June 13. He will soon be attached to the Cabinet Secretariat as OSD till the commencement of his tenure.

Government ‘takes over’ DD News (Register and Login to read Full News..)

Singapore to host first ‘International Yoga Day’ on June 21 (Register and Login to read Full News..)

:: International ::

U.N. working group to visit Sri Lanka

A United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances will visit Sri Lanka during August 3-12, Sri Lanka Ministry of Foreign Affairs’s spokesperson Mahishini Colonne has said.
Ms. Colonne told reporters that the government and the U.N. group had been working together since the 1990s and it was in continuation of this relationship that an invitation was extended to the Working Group last year.The group’s programme would be announced in due course.
Answering questions on the problem between fishermen of India and Sri Lanka, she said a settlement could not be found “overnight,” and the problem required “understanding and patience” on both sides.

U.N. calls for comprehensive response to migrant crisis

The U.N. called for a “comprehensive response” to the large scale humanitarian crisis of migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar, of which nearly 2,000 are still believed to be stranded in the perilous sea across the Bay of Bengal.
“At the moment the priority should be saving those people who are at sea but in the long term, obviously, you have to address the root cause of the problem. This has to include efforts for reconciliation in Rakhine State where there have been ethnic clashes and also the issue of citizenship has to be addressed by the authorities in Myanmar,” said William Spindler, spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency.
17 countries, including India, the U.S., Australia, Japan and the regional countries of Myanmar, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Bangladesh met in Bangkok to thrash out a solution to the crisis even as 2,000 people are still believed to be stranded on the sea. Myanmar and Bangladesh agreed to address the “root causes” of a migrant exodus from their shores, but critics pilloried a deal that failed to mention the Rohingya minority at the heart of the crisis.

U.S. removes Cuba from terror blacklist (Register and Login to read Full News..)

Cameron urges ‘flexible and imaginative’ EU reforms (Register and Login to read Full News..)

:: Business and Economy ::

Best yet to come for economy: CEA

Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian said that the current financial year would be better than 2014-15 “by a margin greater than 2014-15 better than 2013-14.”
Dr. Subramanian was reacting to the announcement of the GDP growth of 7.3 per cent in 2014-15, the first year of the NDA regime. “This is very encouraging news….From the point of view of broader policy-making we are still a recovering economy …We are not an economy that is at potential; that has implications for what all actors, the government and everyone has to do to get India back to its growth potential,” Dr. Subramanian told presspersons. The figures showed that gross fixed capital formation, a barometer for investments, slowed for the second straight year.
Improving significantly, however, the manufacturing sector grew by 7.1 per cent against the 2013-14 growth of 5.3 per cent. “The encouraging part is the growth in manufacturing, which would also mean that we are also creating jobs in our growth path,” Finance Secretary Rajeev Mehrishi told presspersons after the data were released.
The Central Statistics Office on Friday revised downwards the growth figure from its earlier advance estimate of 7.4 per cent.
The International Monetary Fund has projected that India will outpace China during the current fiscal year.
The downward revision is in line with other indicators showing slowing output and sluggish corporate earnings.
Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan, who is due to announce a monetary policy review on Tuesday, had also cautioned on the possibility of a downward revision in the GDP growth.
The prime drivers of the growth were the significantly stronger performance of ‘manufacturing’, ‘electricity, gas, water supply and other utility services’ and the ‘financial, real estate and professional services’.
Almost all sectors of the economy picked up during the year. The exceptions were the sectors of ‘agriculture, forestry and fishing’, ‘mining and quarrying’ and ‘public administration defence and other services’ that’s linked to government spending.
In a statement, the Finance Ministry said one broad way of looking at the estimates released was that those sectors within control of policy manufacturing and services improved substantially while those dependent on factors beyond the policy control such as agriculture, which is dependent on weather, and exports, that are dependent on foreign demand, did less well.
Commenting on the growth figures, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Director-General Chandrajit Banerjee said: “The figures reconfirm CII’s own assessment that the economy is showing signs of recovery which could gather pace in the next fiscal. ”

Volkswagen plans to launch India specific car next year (Register and Login to read Full News..)

:: Science and Technology ::

Scientists devise new strategy to starve HIV to death

Scientists have found a new strategy to starve the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to death — by blocking its sugar and nutrient pipeline.
HIV has a voracious sweet tooth, which turns out to be its Achilles’ heel, according to researchers from Northwestern Medicine and Vanderbilt University. After the virus invades an activated immune cell, it craves sugar and nutrients from the cell to replicate and fuel its wild growth throughout the body.
Scientists discovered the switch that turns on the immune cell’s abundant sugar and nutrient pipeline.
Then they blocked the switch with an experimental compound, shutting down the pipeline and, thereby, starving HIV to death.

:: Sports ::

IOC emerges champion

Indian Oil Sports and Recreation Club won the TNCA VI Division title beating IAF (Tambaram) in the championship match to clinch the P.V.H. Babu Shield.
Indian Oil Sports & Recreation Club also won the P.C. Ramudu Shield for the VI division ‘B’ zone, with 28 points winning all its seven matches. D.G. Karthik was the leading run-scorer for IOC with 336 runs while S. Karthik was the leading wicket-taker for the club with 26 wickets.
IAF (Tambaram) won the T.K.N. Babu Shield for the VI Division ‘A’ zone, with 26 points from seven matches that included six wins and a tie.
IAF (Tambaram), Eccentrics Cricket Club, Indian Oil Sports and Recreation Club and Lusuraj Cricket Club are promoted to fifth division for the 2015-16 season.