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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 20 October 2017

::NATIONAL::

Pollution levels still really high after Diwali

This year’s Deepavali was the quietest in recent history, but the low-key celebrations across the country didn’t stop pollution levels from spiking sharply.
In Chennai, which celebrated the festival, pollution levels the following evening inched up to that of Delhi, a city where where smog and pollution touch toxic highs during this season.
Other cities in the south, such as Bengaluru and Hyderabad, also witnessed a sharp rise in air pollution.
The Air Quality Index (AQI), a six-rung classification scale that rates air quality from ‘good’ to ‘severe’, downgraded air quality in Chennai from ‘satisfactory’ on October 16 to ‘poor’ and ‘very poor’ in the days leading up to Deepavali.
The primary pollutant in both cities was PM 2.5, or particles that are smaller than 2.5 microns and linked to respiratory illnesses.
Experts suggest that the weather conditions, which slowed the speed of winds in the Bay of Bengal, resulted in the high levels of pollutants enveloping Chennai.
While last year’s Deepavali saw heavy rain, the chill and morning mist had set in. Mr. Nagappa expects particulate matter to hover over the city due to lack of dispersal.
Hazy weather is expected in Hyderabad over the next few days, meaning pollution from firecrackers could remain suspended in the air due to temperature inversion, weathermen say.

Kanger valley rock geckothe newest addition to India’s lizard species

Geckos or house lizards usually evoke in us varying degrees of disdain. But a team of scientists’ fascination for these reptiles led them to discover a new species from the Eastern Ghats.
The Kanger valley rock geckoHemidactyluskangerensisis the newest addition to India’s lizard species.
Discovered the gecko from Chhattisgarh’s KangerGhati National Park. Though named after this park, the species is also found in Jagdalpur and Sukma in Chhattisgarh and in Khamman, which are part of the Eastern Ghats.
Growing to over eight inches long, the adult Kanger valley rock gecko is fairly large. The researchers found them in abandoned houses in the national park and juveniles on termite mounds and tree trunks.
Though several researchers and reptile buffs had spotted the species before, they had mistaken it for the commonly-found rock gecko which it resembles.
According to the researchers, the discovery highlights the need for dedicated surveys across the Eastern Ghats, where biodiversity has not been quantified too well. Most areas here also need protection from various anthropogenic pressures, they add.

MHRD to change the criteria for research fellowships

MHRD is looking to tweak the criteria for grant of Prime Minister’s fellowships to research students of the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, the 23 Indian Institutes of Technology and the National Institutes of Technology.
The fellowships – which are meant to promote research and innovation – will give the students about Rs. 75,000 a month.The MHRD is considering a change in the criteria, among others, of who can apply.
The reason: institutions have different criteria for awarding grades and a better way to assess students is to see how they fared among their peers.However, the proposals will go through the Cabinet before the scheme is finalised.
Earlier, the plan was to invite students to submit their proposals to a portal that would send these to a national coordination institution.
Now, there may be a move to make students apply to the particular institution that will be assigned the task of assessing proposals in that particular subject.
The fellowships are aimed at giving a fillip to research and innovation, an area in which Indian institutions are seen to be lagging behind their counterparts in other parts of the world.
The proposals, it is hoped, will give bright students who want to move to corporate jobs for money the incentive to stay on in research.

::INTERNATIONAL::

Spain leaders totally against independence of catalan region

Spain said that it will move to seize some of the Catalan regional government’s powers after its leader warned that he could declare independence, escalating the country’s worst political crisis in decades.
The central government in Madrid had given separatist leader Carles Puigdemont until 10:00 am to say whether or not he was declaring a breakaway state in the semi-autonomous region following a chaotic referendum on October 1.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had warned he would trigger Article 155 of Spain’s Constitution — a never-before-used measure allowing it to impose direct rule over the wealthy northeastern region — unless Mr. Puigdemont backed down.
There are fears that such a move, allowing Madrid to potentially suspend Mr. Puigdemont’s government and take over its police force, could spark unrest in a region where even Catalans who oppose independence cherish their autonomy highly.
Mr. Puigdemont responded that Catalan lawmakers could vote to declare secession unilaterally if Madrid triggers Article 155.
The government hit back by saying it intends to push on with triggering Article 155 — a process that would take several days — to “restore legality” in the region.
The Catalonia crisis has prompted a series of huge street rallies, worried investors and added to the woes of a European Union already grappling with Brexit.
Catalonia’s 7.5 million residents are fiercely attached to their own language and culture but are divided on whether to break away from the rest of Spain.
Mr. Puigdemont says his regional administration has a mandate to declare independence from what he says was a 90-% “Yes” vote on October 1, marred by a heavy-handed police crackdown on voters.
But turnout was given as only 43%. Many voters who oppose independence stayed away from a referendum that had been declared illegal by Spain’s Constitutional Court.
Madrid had offered the separatists a potential last-minute way out by proposing fresh regional elections sanctioned by the central government. A government source told AFP that would allow the region to “return to legality”.
Separatists complain that Catalonia, which represents about a fifth of Spain's economic output, pours more into the national coffers than it gets back, and say it would prosper if it went its own way.
But opponents say the region has more clout as part of Spain and that the instability could be disastrous for its economy.
The current standoff is already taking a toll on one of Spain’s most important regional economies.
More than 800 companies have moved their legal headquarters out of Catalonia, citing the risk of instability, while Madrid has cut its national growth forecast for next year to 2.3%.

::BUSINESS AND ECONOMY::

MPC warns against the increase in inflation risk

A majority of the members of the RBI monetary policy committee, which met on October 3-4, flagged an increase in inflation risks, according to the minutes of the meeting released by the RBI. The central bank held its key policy interest rate at 6%.
One member, Chetan Ghate, had observed that a deceleration in retail inflation, which began in March, had been temporary as headline inflation had subsequently risen 200 basis points in the two reported months preceding the meet.
The MPC had voted 5-1 to leave the repo rate unchanged at 6%, with Ravindra Dholakia remaining the sole dissenter by voting for a 25 bps rate cut.
RBI Governor Urjit Patel had also referred to the rise in headline inflation in July and August.
Michael Debabrata Patra, one of the members who had suggested an increase in the rate in the April policy, said: “Recent inflation prints have vindicated my stance.”
Mr. Patra, while voting for keeping the interest rate unchanged, said he was voting for a status quo, as long as inflation readings stayed within the target of 4%.
In a note to its clients, Nomura said the MPC minutes suggested that there would again be a pause in the next policy meeting scheduled in December.
Nomura said CPI inflation was likely to moderate to about 3% in October. But as the drop would be driven by food prices, while core inflation was likely to stay above 4% amid rising risks of fiscal slippage.
It expected the rates to stay unchanged as per its baseline scenario, including at the next policy meeting on December 6, with a 5-1 vote.

Unions to protest against AI disinvestment

Air India unions are likely to meet next week in the national capital to discuss their strategy amid the government going ahead with the disinvestment process.
Efforts were on to bring all staff unions of Air India, including those of the pilots and engineers, on one platform and work out a strategy to deal with the situation arising out of the government’s decision to offload its stake in the flag carrier.
In the last few months, several Air India unions have held discussions at an individual level with the management on the issue of disinvestment. But now there is need for all unions to come together and talk to the government in one voice on airline’s privatisation.
Air India, which has more than 20,000 employees on its rolls, has six recognised unions, representing ground and commercial staff, pilots, cabin crew and engineers, among others, besides unrecognised ones.

::SCIENCE AND TECH::

U.S. regulators have approved a second gene therapy for a blood cancer

U.S. regulators have approved a second gene therapy for a blood cancer, a one-time, custom-made treatment for aggressive lymphoma in adults.
FDA allowed sales of the treatment from Kite Pharma. It uses the same technology, called CAR-T, as the first gene therapy approved in the U.S. in August, a treatment for childhood leukaemia from Novartis Pharmaceuticals.
The treatment, called Yescarta, will cost $373,000 per patient, according to drugmaker Gilead Sciences. Kite became a subsidiary of California-based Gilead this month.
CAR-T treatment uses gene therapy techniques not to fix disease-causing genes but to turbocharge T cells, immune system soldiers that cancer can often evade.
The T cells are filtered from a patient’s blood, reprogrammed to target and kill cancer cells, and then hundreds of millions of copies are grown.
Returned to the patient, all the revved-up cells can continue multiplying to fight disease for months or years. That’s why these immunotherapy treatments are called “living drugs.”
The most common one accounts for about a third of the estimated 72,000 new cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosed each year.
Yescarta, also known as axicabtageneciloleucel, was approved for patients who have already been treated with at least two cancer drugs that either didn’t work for them or eventually stopped working.
Yescarta is not a benign treatment, though. Three people died after getting the treatment, which can cause serious side effects. The FDA is requiring Kite to do a long-term safety study and train hospitals to quickly spot and handle those reactions.
In the key test, Yescarta was given to 101 patients. About 72% saw their cancer shrink and about half showed no sign of disease eight months later.
While it is billed as a one-time treatment, because the patients’ cancer is so far advanced, it returns in some. The therapy is still working in most study participants, so the average duration of its effects isn’t known yet