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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 05 April 2021

::NATIONAL::

Supreme Court has said that seriousness of the charge is a basic consideration before setting an accused free on bail.
According to Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), If the offence alleged is bailable, then, the accused is entitled for Bail as a matter of right before Police station or Magistrates court.
For non-Bailable offences CrPC provides certain restrictions on the power of a police officer to grant bail.
Anticipatory Bail is a type of bail which is given to someone who is in anticipation of getting arrested for anon-bailable offence by the police.
It is only issued by the Sessions Court and High Court.

In FY 2020-21, KVIC (Khadi & Village Industries Commission) created 5,95,320 jobs under Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Program (PMEGP), the highest ever since its launch in 2008.
PMEGP aims to generate employment opportunities in rural as well as urban areas of the country through setting up of new self-employment ventures/projects/micro enterprises.
KVIC functions as national level nodal agency and at the state level, the scheme is implemented through State KVIC Directorates, State Khadi and Village Industries Boards (KVIBs) etc.
KVIC established under the Khadi and Village Industries Commission Act, 1956, is a statutory organization under the aegis of the Ministry of MSME.

The 120-seat parliament, which convened in an extraordinary session for two days, gave 71 votes for Vjosa Osmani-Sadriu, the former parliament speaker, in the third round of voting, while 11 votes were invalid.Two opposition parties and the ethnic Serb minority party boycotted the voting.
Ms. Osmani-Sadriu, post-war Kosovo’s seventh President and its second female one, had the backing of the left-wing Self-Determination Movement, or Vetevendosje!, which won Kosovo’s February 14 early election in a landslide.
The party now holds the three top posts: The President, The Speaker and the Prime Minister.

Prince Hamzah bin Al Hussein, the former crown prince and half-brother of ruling monarch Abdullah, has reportedly been placed under house arrest.
Hamzah has said that he has been placed under house arrest as part of a crackdown on critics, and has denied being a part of any conspiracy against the government or King Abdullah.
The government also made other high profile arrests on Saturday, including a former minister and another member of the royal family, citing the security and stability of Jordan.
Jordan, whose royal family traces its lineage back to Prophet Muhammad, has been ruled since 1999 by 59-year-old Abdullah II, the oldest son of the revered late King Hussein and his second wife, the British-born Princess Muna.
Hamzah is the son of Hussein and Queen Noor, his American-born fourth wife. Widely considered Hussein’s favourite child, Hamzah was made crown prince of Jordan in 1999– the year of the former king’s death.

T-bills, which are money market instruments, are short term debt instruments issued by the Government of India and are presently issued in three tenors, namely, 91-day, 182 day and 364 day.
Treasury bills are zero coupon securities and pay no interest. Instead, they are issued at a discount and redeemed at the face value at maturity.
Zero Coupon Bonds are bonds with no coupon (interest) payments.
However, like T- Bills, they are issued at a discount and redeemed at face value.

According to a new study by scientists published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Uranus is reflecting X-rays.
The study, which analysed two visuals of the planet, marks the first time that X-ray activity has been discovered on the planet.
The new Uranus study initially expected that most of the X-rays detected would also be from scattering, there are tantalizing hints that at least one other source of X-rays is present.

Method used for the study

During the study, scientists compared observations of the Chandra Space Telescope, which is managed by Nasa’s Marshall Space Flight Centre dating back to 2002 and 2017.
The analysis of the 2002 observation of the planet depicted X-rays clearly. When it was compared to the 2017 observations, the study found a possible flare of the X-rays.
The detection of the X-rays is significant as they have been detected in other planets of the solar system, except Uranus and Neptune.
The study also added that understand the X-ray emission could provide more information about the characteristics of the planet and its composition.

Cause of the X-rays emission

There are two plausible reasons for the emission of X-rays.
The first, according to Nasa, could be the Sun which has a similar effect on planets like Jupiter and Saturn that scatter the X-ray light which is given by the Sun.

The International Cricket Council’s (ICC) cricket committee has made changes to the way lbws will be decided under the Decision Review System (DRS).
The “wicket zone”, the area of the stumps a ball must hit for an on-field not-out decision to be overturned, which previously ended below the bails, will now extend all the way up to the top.
The committee also decided to retain the umpire’s call, an element that allows the on-field decision to stand when there is no conclusive evidence to overturn it.
A player can also ask the umpire whether an attempt was made to play the ball before deciding to review an lbw call. The soft signal protocol for outfield catches, which was in the news during the India-England series, was not adjudicated on.

What necessitated the review?

Under DRS, 50% of the ball should predictively hit the “wicket zone” for an on-field not-out decision to be reversed.
Earlier, if the ball-tracking simulation showed the ball to be clipping the bails, the on-field verdict, even if it was not out, stood because the “wicket zone” ended below the bails.
This left both players and supporters exasperated because two balls, both predictively shown to be hitting the stumps, can both be out and not out depending on the on-field umpire’s call.