Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 31 October 2014

National

SC expresses satisfaction over L-G decision on govt.formation in Delhi

• The Supreme Court expressed satisfaction over Lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung’s move to call an all-party meeting on forming a government in Delhi and granted him time till November 11 to convey the outcome to it.

• Resuming the hearing, a Constitution Bench, comprising Chief Justice H.L. Dattu and Justices J. Chelameswar, A.K. Sikri, R.K. Agrawal and Arun Mishra, took into consideration news reports about the Lt. Governor’s decision.

• The Bench told Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the Aam Aadmi Party, to wait for a positive outcome. The CJI told counsel, “Whatever I have read in the newspapers, it appears that the L-G has made positive moves.

• If he feels that there is a possibility of government formation, then he should be given time to explore it. There could be a minority government with outside support.

Swachh Bharat Abhiyan & Clean Ganga now under CSR ambit

• Widening the activities coming under CSR ambit, contributions made by corporates towards Narendra Modi-led government’s two key initiatives — Swachh Bharat and Clean Ganga will now be considered as social welfare spending work.

• Making amendments to the Companies Act, the Corporate Affairs Ministry has said that contributions to ‘Swachh Bharat Kosh’ and ‘Clean Ganga Fund’ would come under CSR framework.

• ‘Swach Bharat Kosh’ has been set up to attract funds, from various entities including corporates, for activities related to Swachh Bharat initiative. The ‘Clean Ganga Fund’ is aimed at pooling money for taking up works to clean the Ganga River.

• These two initiatives are the latest ones to be brought under the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) ambit where contributions made to the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund have been included already.

• Through a notification, the Ministry has inserted the words ‘including contribution to the Swach Bharat Kosh set up by the central government for the promotion of sanitation” in Schedule VII of the Act, which pertains to CSR activities

• Besides, the words “including contribution to the Clean Ganga Fund set up by the central government for rejuvenation of river Ganga” have been inserted in the Schedule.

Cyclone Nilofar loses intensity

• Cyclone Nilofar will not make landfall in north Gujarat, as predicted earlier. The cyclone would have lost its intensity, officials said

• “There is no landfall. At present, Nilofar is a storm in the sea. The moment it reaches the coast, it will weaken into a depression,” Manorama Mohanty, Director, Ahmedabad Meteorological Centre, told.

• However, the State agencies are on alert and teams of National Disaster Response Force and other rescue forces will remain on standby.

• “Parts of Kutch and the coastal districts of Saurashtra will experience heavy to very heavy  rainfall of 2-10 inches.

• The Collectors have been alerted to take measures in case of water-logging,” Relief Commissioner D.N. Pandey told.

• The India Meteorological Department said that Nilofar remained stationary for three hours and weakened into a cyclonic storm. The maximum wind speed will be 60 kmph.

Newborns to get free treatment till age one in Rajasthan under JSSY (Register and Login to read Full News..) 

International

US asked not to pressurise India to reject license on cancer drug

• An international organisation working for cancer-affected people has asked the Obama administration not to pressurise India to reject a compulsory license on a drug for a rare form of leukaemia, which would be a de facto endorsement of an excessive price.

• In a letter to the US Trade Representative (USTR), Mike Froman, Union for Affordable  Cancer Treatment (UACT), opposed the policies that promote high cancer drug prices  throughout the world.

• UACT in its letter refers to recent reports suggesting that USTR is pressuring the Indian government to reject a compulsory license on dasatinib, a drug for a rare form of leukaemia.

• The Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) price for dasatinib is more than USD 100 per day, which makes it unreachable for the majority of leukaemia patients in India.

• US government opposition to a compulsory license on dasatinib is a de facto endorsement of an excessive price, and will have predictably harsh consequences for leukaemia patients. Who have developed resistance to imatinib.

• The UACT letter also challenges the assumption that USTR is advancing the US interests by promoting stronger monopolies of medicines.

• While BMS attempts to justify high cancer drug prices on the grounds that R&D is expensive, BMS in fact spent little on the R&D for dasatinib and benefited extensively from US
  government research subsidies, including NIH-funded research and clinical trials, and a 50 per cent tax credit on the BMS funded trials, it said.

United States warplanes come to aid of Kurds

• United States warplanes renewed air strikes against Islamic State jihadists near the Syrian town of Kobane as Iraqi peshmerga soldiers prepared to reinforce their fellow Kurds in the border area, the U.S. military said.

• U.S. fighter jets and bombers had carried out eight air raids near Kobane, targeting six vehicles, a building and several IS fighting positions over the past 24 hours, said the military’s Central Command, which oversees the air war in Iraq and Syria.

• In Iraq, American unmanned drones and fighter jets conducted six bombing raids, including three near Sinjar in the north and three around Fallujah, west of Baghdad, Central Command said in a statement.

• The latest air strikes came as heavily armed peshmerga forces were poised to cross the Turkish border into Kobane to help the local Kurdish militia that has held out against a relentless assault by IS militants for weeks.

• Free Syrian Army rebels crossed from Turkey to Kobane earlier on Wednesday. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Washington had seen the reports that FSA fighters were crossing the border.

• “We welcome the support they would provide to Kobane’s defence,” Ms. Psaki told reporters, adding it would be up to officials on the ground to confirm when the process was completed.

• Iraqi Kurdish officials said up to 200 fighters would be sent. The town has become a crucial symbol in the battle against IS, an extremist Sunni Muslim group that has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq and declared an Islamic “caliphate.”

Sweden officially recognises Palestinian state, Israel denounces as ‘deplorable’ (Register and Login to read Full News..) 

Business & economy

Finance Ministry cuts non-Plan spending by 10%

• The Finance Ministry ordered a mandatory 10 per cent cut in the Centre’s non-Plan expenditure for 2014-15.

• The cut does not cover interest payment, repayment of debt, defence capital, salaries, pension or Finance Commission grants to States, says a circular. Subsidies will face the brunt of the cuts.

• The UPA government too had in place austerity measures. For 2013-14, former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram rolled out cuts of 15 per cent on average across both Plan and non-Plan expenditures. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has spared Plan expenditure from his 10 per cent spending cut.

• A Finance Ministry release said the objective of the fiscal prudence and economy measures was the need to rationalise expenditure and optimise available resources.

• The Ministry revived its standard measures, including curbs on conferences abroad or in five-star hotels, purchase of vehicles and staff cars, travel curbs on flying first class and ban on new posts.

‘Black money could add $30 billion to forex reserves’:  BofA-ML (Register and Login to read Full News..) 

Sports

Pankaj Advani first player to bag billiards triple double

• Pankaj Advani outplayed England’s Robert Hall 1928-893 in the final of the IBSF World Billiards championship (timed format) to complete a grand double.

• The 29-year-old, Bangalore-based Advani had won the title in the points format (150-up) last week.

• Advani, who took a stranglehold of the match leading 746-485 at the half-way mark, thus became the first player ever to win titles in both formats thrice, following his double in 2005 and 2008.

• Advani capped a phenomenal year that saw him win the World 6-Red championship besides the World Team billiards championship before the double here that took his individual haul of world titles to 10.

• Despite the wide margin of victory over Hall, Advani, returning to topflight billiards after a break of two years during which he spent time on the professional snooker circuit, had to work hard as he was only too aware of Englishman’s ability for big breaks.

• Advani, who made tournament high breaks of 701 and 575 earlier in the competition, opened up a sizeable lead in with a best break of 289 and then made fruitful visits to the table to eventually break Hall’s challenge.

Saina climbs a place to be No. 5 in world badminton rankings (Register and Login to read Full News..) 

Science & technology

7 new frog species found from Western Ghats and Sri Lanka

• A team of researchers from India and Sri Lanka has discovered seven new species of golden-backed frogs in the Western Ghats-Sri Lanka global biodiversity hotspot, throwing new light on the highly distinct and diverse fauna in the two countries.

• The results of the decade-long survey published in the latest issue of Contributions to Zoology, an international journal brought out by the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands, show that the frogs in Sri Lanka and those in India belong to distinctly different species. It was earlier believed that some of the golden-backed frogs (Genus Hylarana) found in the two countries were of the same species.

• The team, led by Delhi University’s Prof. S.D. Biju, used DNA techniques and morphological evidence as tools to identify species and understand the frogs’ distribution.

• The survey yielded 14 distinct golden-backed frogs, with seven new species, including one (Hylarana serendipi) from Sri Lanka. Of the six new species from the Western Ghats, four (H. doni, H.urbis, H.magna and H sreeni) are found in Kerala and one each in Karnataka (H. indica) and Maharashtra (H.caesari).

• “The distribution pattern of the species highlights the need to reassess the conservation status of the amphibians and work out separate conservation strategies,” Prof. Biju said.

High milk intake could increase mortality risk: study

• Drinking more than 700 ml of milk a day could increase the risk of early death, a new study has warned.

• Researchers led by Professor Karl Michaelsson of Uppsala University in Sweden have found that high levels of lactose and galactose sugar in milk could have a negative effect. The study, which surveyed 61,000 women and 45,000 men for more than 20 years, found that those who drank one and a half pints, or over 700 ml of milk a day were twice as likely to die early than those who drank less.

• In the study 61,433 women, aged 39 to 74, and 45,339 men, aged 45 to 79, in Sweden completed food frequency questionnaires for 96 common foods including milk, yoghurt and
  cheese.

• The scientists set out to examine whether high milk intake may increase oxidative stress, which in turn affects the risk of mortality and bone fracture, according to media reports.

• In women, no reduction in fracture risk with higher milk consumption was observed. Women who drank more than three glasses of milk a day (average 680 ml) had a higher risk of death than women who drank less than one glass of milk a day (average 60 ml).

• Men were tracked for an average of 11 years, during which time 10,112 died and 5,066 had a fracture, with 1,166 hip fracture cases. Men also had a higher risk of death with higher milk consumption, although this was less pronounced than in women.

• Further analysis showed a positive association between milk intake and biomarkers of oxidative stress and inflammation.

Diabetes triples the risk that a person will develop TB:  Report (Register and Login to read Full News..) 

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Sources: Various News Papers & PIB

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