Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 30 November 2015

:: National ::

Climate deal negotiations in Paris

• Paris prepares to host the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change conference beginning from 1st December raising expectations that the participation of nearly 150Presidents.

• Prime Ministers and heads of state in a leader-ship event will bring about agood agreement.

• U.S. PresidentBarack Obama is to join China’s President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister NarendraModi, is intended to signal the seriousnesswith whichclimate change is being approached at CoP21.

• For India and other developing countries, the momentum that has built around theParis conference is an opportunity to press their case for funds from the FirstWorld.

Fate of GST Bill depends on ‘intolerance’ debate

• The Congress has decided not to engage with the ruling BJP on the contentious Goods and Services Tax(GST) Bill until the issue of“intolerance” is debated in Parliament

• The Congress’s demands are that the tax cap be fixed at18 per cent, the 1 per cent inter-State cess be scrapped and independentaccountability be ensured.

• some “experienced leaders” had urged caution arguing that since the ruling parties of the “consumer States” were willing to back the Bill, the Congress might lose their support in Parliament, and its influence as the leading party of the Opposition

Enough funds for clean Ganga project

• Union Minister NitinGadkari on Sunday said the Central government is giving priority to making the Ganga pollution-free and there is no dearth of funds for the ‘Clean Ganga' mission.

• Projects worth crores of ru-pees have been launched to make the river pollution-free. A number of ghats and gar-dens would be built on its banks boosting tourism and provide a source of income for at least 10 lakh youths.

• He was speaking at a symposium on conservation of the Ganga organised at ChaudharyCharan Singh University here, which was also attended by a number of leaders including Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti.

• The government alone can't keep the Ganga clean. It can make the river pollution free by spending Rs 20,000 crore but the society has to come forward to keep it that way.

Constituent assembly on secularism and socialism (Register and Login to read Full News..)

Other countries should take lead from India (Register and Login to read Full News..)

:: International ::

Problems in Nepal persists

• India-Nepal ties hit another flashpoint on Sunday after 13 personnel of the Sash-astraSeemaBal (SSB) were detained by the Nepal ArmedPolice Force (APF) in Jhapa(Nepal).

• They were released after several hours in custody of the government would not react officially, so as not to further harm bilateral relations that have deteriorated since Nepal promulgated a Constitution that India has objected to.

Migrant flow into Turkey and Consequences (Register and Login to read Full News..)

:: India And World ::

Importance of India in climate change deal

• The U.S. appears careful not to be confrontational with India ahead of theParis climate conference.

• US is partnering with India on responsible energy development. India is a strategic partner that has one of the largest economies in the world, and it recognizes the critical importance of in-creasing energy security, reducing emissions,and improving resilience in the face of cli-mate change.

• We maintain a robust programme of cooperation in this area, including the highly successful U.S.-IndiaPartnership to AdvanceClean Energy (PACE)

• This cooperation strengthens our bilateral relation-ship, enhances economic growth in both countries,and promotes the development of new and innovative technologies and products to address our shared challenges.

• The U.S. would also pitch for expanding the donor base, “the number of parties who are prepared to contribute financing to poor countries,” and would seekmore private investments.

• The onus of attracting such private investment would be on developing countries that should “create the enabling environment,”.

:: Science And Technology ::

Concern over large gaps in airspace security

• There is no guarantee that India's air defence systems would be able to detect enemy nation, or a terrorist organisation and launch a counter-at-tack to shoot it down before it wreaks havoc on targets.

• The vulnerability of Indian cities and other strategic as-sets have been exercising military planners for long. Their efforts to develop a robust air defence network received a major boost with the first successful test of the Long Range Surface to Air Missile (LR-SAM), jointly developed by India and Israel, from an Israeli warship on Thursday.

• The test came just a few days after the November 22 successful interception of Orissa by an Advanced Air Defence (AAD) missile of a dummy in-coming ballistic missile.

• However, officials point out that given the large airspace, there still remain significant gaps in the air defence network and most systems in service, largely old Russian ones, are in urgent need of re-placement.

• While efforts have been on for over a decade to procure new systems or develop them indigenously or in collaboration, most of them have been repeatedly delayed due to time and cost overruns.

• Air defence networks are meant to detect, track andshoot down incoming enemy aircraft, missiles or drones.

• Any incoming hostile target is first detected by long-range radars connected to the SAM system and once the threat is identified and its trajectory determined, the long-range missiles are fired.

• As the last resort if the missile is in close proximity, man-portable systems and shoulder-fired missiles like Igla are fired along with anti-aircraft guns. At the moment, upgrade and replacement programmes are in the pipe-line in every single category among the three services.

:: Business And Economy ::

Liquidity situation is tightening during festive season

• An increase in consumer spending during the festival season has pushed up the short-term money market rates.

• This happens at a time when the interest rates are supposed to soften after the central bank reduced its repo rate, the one at which the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) lends money to commercial banks and used as tool to control inflation.

• As a result, banks are expecting the central bank to provide some comfort by infusing more money into the banking system in its fifth bi-monthly monetary policy review scheduled December 1.

• On an aver-age there are outflows to the tune of Rs.50,000 crore during the festival season. But this year the amount went up was be-tween 15 and 20 per cent.

• Bankers said since the central bank has taken an accommodative monetary policy stance and reduced policy interest rate by 125 bps in this calendar year, which is now at 6.75 per cent, it could ad-dress the liquidity issue by pump-ing in more money into the system by open market purchase of bonds.

• Apart from increased consumer spending, government's cash balances with the Reserve Bank of India have also increased, which means the government is spend-ing less as compared to what it did during the first half of the financial year, and so there is lesser cash coming into the system.

• Foreign investors are also pulling out the country and investing in lesser risky assets with the US Fed forecast to be on course for a rate hike in December.

India for protection of poor farmers' interests at Nairobi WTO meet

• India, at the forth-coming Nairobi meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), will put “all its energies” on pushing through a plan meant to protect the interests and livelihood of poor and vulnerable farmers.

• Roberto Azevedo, WTO Director General, recently said that the negotiations to firm up rules to liberalise global trade are currently “stuck” due to member countries finding it “difficult to reconcile their views” on a host of issues.

• The Indian position echoed the one recently proposed by the G-33 on an effectiveSpecial Safeguard Mechanism (SSM). The G33 is a coalition of 48 nations including India, Indonesia and China, which took up the issue of develop-ing countries getting considerable flexibility in limiting market opening of agriculture sector.

• The SSM is a trade remedy that would allow developing countries to temporarily hikeimport duties on farm products to counter sudden import surges and price falls, thereby, protecting the interests of poor farmers.

• The same issue had led to the breakdown of a WTO ministerial meeting in July 2008. It has been generally agreed that the developing countries could have an SSM, but developed countries including the US have opposed a proposal to enable developing countries to raise tariffs (using SSM) over and above the duty commitments made by them (developing countries) in the farm sector during the earlier Uruguay Round of WTO global trade pact negotiations.

Centre to map country's training infrastructure (Register and Login to read Full News..)

:: Sports ::

Sindhu seizes title for the third time

• Two-time defending champion P.V. Sindhu completed a hat-trick of women's singles title at the $120,000 Macau Open Grand Prix Gold after defeating Japan's MinatsuMi-tani in the final on Sunday.

• Sindhu produced a dominating game to notch up a 21-9, 21-23, 21-14 win over sixth seed Mitani in a women's singles match that lasted an hour and six minutes.

• The World No. 12 Indian dished out some superb strokes and acute angled returns to bamboozle the Japanese, be-sides making some sound judgements at the baseline to get across Mitani, who struggled to keep the shuttle inside the court.

• Sindhu dominated the proceedings right from the start as she rode on the errors of Mitani to reach 11-5 at the break.

• Mitani came up with an aggressive rally and sealed it with a down the line smash but she failed to curb her errors and most of her returns went wide and long to allow Sindhu lead 17-6 in a jify.

Fury becomes new world heavyweight champion

• Britain's Tyson Fury was crowned the new world heavy-weight champion on Saturday after a unanimous points win over WladimirKlitschko, who sufered his first defeat in elev-en years.

• The 27-year-old Fury was awarded the fight in Duessel-dorf 115-112, 115-112 and 116-111 by the judges to take Klitschko's WBA, IBF, IBO and WBO belts as the Ukrainian sufered his first defeat since 2004.

• Fury will cash in on the vic-tory regardless of the fight purse having bet £200,000 ($300,630) on himself.

• Fury had problemswith ill-fitting gloves in the week leading up to the fight, there was plenty of tension in the build-up on Saturday.

First Day-Night test match goes to Australia (Register and Login to read Full News..)

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Sources: Various News Papers & PIB

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