Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 23 April 2014

Course for safe roads

Indian roads have proved to be giant killers demanding immediate attention and remedial action, the Supreme Court observed recently and appointed a panel to suggest measures to prevent road accidents and to ensure accountability.
Justice K.S. Radhakrishnan, who retires as Supreme Court judge soon will be part of this panel along with S. Sundar, Former Transport Secretary and Dr. Nishi Mittal, formerly HoD, Traffic Engineering and Safety (TES)
A Bench of Chief Justice P. Sathasivam and Justices Ranjan Gogoi and N.V. Ramana, gave this direction acting on a public interest writ petition (PIL) filed by renowned orthopaedician Dr. S. Rajasekaran.
The bench quoted figures furnished by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) in the volume “Road Accidents in India 2010” highlighting the extent of increase of road accidents and fatal cases between 1970-2010.
It is reported that road traffic accidents in 2010 numbered 4,30,654 resulting in 1,26,896 deaths and serious injuries 4,66,600 that includes amputation of limbs. One serious road accident in the country occurs every minute; and one person dies in a road traffic accident every 4 minutes.
In his judgment Justice Gogoi said: “Road traffic accidents have the potential of being one of the largest challenges to orderly human existence necessitating immediate and urgent intervention.
The Bench asked the three-member panel to submit a report to the apex court after receipt of reports from Centre and States on the status of implementation and enforcement of various road safety laws.

Border Defence Cooperation Agreement

India and China recently held their first-ever Director General of Military Operations-level meeting, which discussed ways to implement the Border Defence Cooperation Agreement(BDCA)signed during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Beijing in October.
And it was an eight-member delegation led by People’s Liberation Army(PLA)Deputy Chief of General Staff Lt Gen Qi Jiangua, which represented the Communist nation at the DGMO-level dialogue.
The two sides exchanged views on various issues of mutual interest such as maintenance of peace and tranquility along the LAC and enhancing mutual cooperation and understanding between the Armies of India and China. Measures for implementation of existing bilateral agreements were also discussed.
The take-away from the new BDCA, which has drawn heavily from the earlier bilateral agreements of 1993, 1996, 2005 and 2012 on border Confidence Building Mechanisms, were proposals for opening a hotline between their military headquarters, non-tailing eachother’s patrols along the LAC, holding meetings of border personnel in all the sectors, apart from organising small-scale tactical exercises involving the two armed forces along the LAC.

Hatf-III

Pakistan conducted a successful training launch of short range surface to surface ballistic missile Hatf III (Ghaznavi) recently.
The missile can carry nuclear and conventional warheads to a range of 290 kilometres.
The successful launch concluded the field training exercise of strategic missile group of Army Strategic Forces Command.
As per the statement released by Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the training launch was witnessed by Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Rashad Mahmood, Director General Strategic Plans Division Lieutenant General Zubair Mahmood Hayat, Commander Army Strategic Forces Command Lieutenant General Obaid Ullah Khan, Chairman NESCOM Muhammad Irfan Burney and other senior military officials and scientists.

Code Of Conduct On Communication

Naval chiefs from US and Asian-Pacific nations including Vietnam adopted a code of conduct aimed at improving communication at sea to reduce the possibility of conflict.
Citing Australian media reports, VNA said that the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea was approved by countries including the US, China, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam at the Western Pacific Naval Symposium in China's eastern coastal city of Qingdao.
The pact outlines how naval ships should communicate and manoeuvre when they unexpectedly come into contact in sea lanes surrounding China, Japan and Southeast Asia.
Although not legally binding, the code of conduct is said to help establish international standards in relation to the use of sea lanes.

TCS amongst top 10 global IT services companies

In a positive note to Indian IT industry, India's largest IT services provider, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), has broken into the league of top 10 global IT services companies, moving from the 13th position in 2012 to the 10th spot in 2013.
Twelve years ago, when TCS' revenues were about $1 billion, then CEO S Ramadorai had laid out a vision to be among the top 10 by 2010.
According to experts, It's taken a little longer, partly because of the global financial slump of 2008-09, but the company has now got there, and considering the pace at which it is growing compared to its global counterparts, the ranking could get better fairly quickly in the years to come.
TCS is estimated to have IT services revenues of $10.1 billion (out of its total revenues of about $12.5 billion). IBM ($54.4 billion), Fujitsu ($32.1 billion), Hewlett-Packard ($29.2 billion) and Accenture ($25.4 billion) lead the list.
The research compares IT services, and excludes other areas such as BPO, R&D services and software/hardware products. And it uses figures for the four quarters of calendar year 2013. TCS rose to the 10th spot displacing Montreal-based IT services firm CGI.
India-based companies Cognizant, Infosys, Wipro and HCL are at the 15th, 18th, 20thand 25th positions, respectively, all of them rising by one to three spots compared to 2012. HfS Research believes that Cognizant could be in the top 10 in the next 2-3 years, may be at the expense of US IT company CSC. CSC's revenues last year had dropped compared to the year before

World senior snooker title

India's Chitra Magimairaj emerged champion in the senior category when she defeated Alena Asmolova of Belarus 3-0 in the final at the World Snooker championship held at Leeds.
Magimairaj, thus made up for a disappointing performance in the Open category as she drubbed Asmolova 57-32, 76-16, 42-9.
Earlier, in the semi-finals, Magimairaj beat fellow-Indian and Bangalorean Revanna Umadevi 2-0 after getting past Carmelita Yumito (Brazil) 2-1 and Jenny Poulter (England) 2-1, in the previous rounds.