Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 24 September 2018

Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 24 September 2018

::NATIONAL::


Centre gets court notice over OCI entry issue

  •  The Delhi High Court has directed the Centre to ensure that Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card holders or foreigners are informed in advance if they are blacklisted and would be denied entry into the country.

  •  Justice VibhuBakhru said a number of cases were being filed in the High Court on account foreigners or OCI card holders not being permitted entry into India when they arrive here.

  •  The “disturbing feature” in each was that none of them had any prior intimation that they were blacklisted, despite having a valid visa, the judge observed.

  •  “They (foreigners/OCI card holders) discover that they are not allowed entry into the country only on their arrival at the airport in India. Whilst there may be good reason for the respondents to deny certain foreigners entry into India, the practice of not informing them of such decision in advance, cannot be countenanced,” the High Court said.

  •  The High Court directed the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to ensure that necessary directions are issued to all the officers, who are authorised to issue blacklisting orders, to inform the foreigners/OCI card holders concerned that they have been blacklisted and their entry into the country would be denied.

  •  The directions came while hearing a petition by a woman, whose husband - an OCI card holder - was not allowed to enter the country despite having a valid visa.

  •  According to the petitioner, her husband is a person of Indian origin and had acquired the citizenship of the United Kingdom in 2006 after spending 17 years studying and working there.

India to buy more Israeli missiles

  •  A deal to procure the Spike anti-tank guided missiles from Israel through the government-to-government route has been brought before the Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) for approval. However, some validation trials have to be held before the deal is signed.

  •  The deal will feature on the agenda of the DAC which is scheduled to meet early this week. The deal is for 170 launchers, 4,500 missiles and 15 simulators.

  •  Another defence source said the missile did not perform as desired in the previous trials during peak summer temperatures in the desert, and hence the need to validate its performance.The earlier deal was cancelled in January after protracted negotiations, just ahead of the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to India.

  •  It was decided that the requirement could be met through the indigenous man-portable missile being developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation.

  •  The earlier $500-million deal for Spike missiles was accorded Acceptance of Necessity (AoN) by the DAC in 2009 and was approved in October 2014, but contract negotiations dragged on over cost and technology transfer. The deal was for 8,000-plus missiles and 300-plus launchers, along with technology transfer to build them in India.

::ECONOMY::

RBI, SEBI closely monitoring financial markets

  •  Following volatility in the equities market on Friday, the central bank and the capital markets regulator have said the developments are being closely monitored and they are ready to take action, if necessary.

  •  “The Reserve Bank of India and the Securities and Exchange Board of India are closely monitoring recent developments in financial markets and are ready to take appropriate actions, if necessary,” a statement said.

  •  The stock markets saw wild swings on Friday with some of the non-banking finance company stocks being hammered down. Mortgage lender Dewan Housing Finance Ltd (DHFL) lost 42% of its market capitalisation which also impacted other NBFC stocks. Investors are also worried about the recent developments in IL&FS that had defaulted on commercial paper resulting in rating downgrade.

  •  State Bank of India — the country’s largest lender— also stepped in to allay fears of concerned investors. SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar said SBI would continue to lend to the NBFCs. “Some comments are being attributed to the SBI about the bank being wary of lending to NBFCs.

  •  “The rumours are baseless. SBI lends support to NBFCs in private and public sector within the regulatory policy framework and will continue to do so," said Mr. Kumar said. He aid he was not concerned with the liquidity position of NBFCs.

E-vidhan application launched

  •  Union Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs, Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, ShriArjun Ram Meghwal presided over the Inaugural Session of the two-day National Orientation workshop on National e-Vidhan Application (NeVA), organized by Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, here today.

  •  The Orientation Workshop would include technical sessions and group discussions over 2 days, which would facilitate exposure for the delegates about the positive attributes of NeVA; deliberations on issues faced by different State Legislatures in implementation of e-Vidhan and finding solutions thereof.

  •  The focus of the workshop would be to encourage all State Legislatures to move towards e-Vidhan platform and bring in transparency, accountability and responsiveness in their conduct of business, through the use of technology.

  •  The mNeVA (NeVA-mobile app) is a device neutral anduser friendly app thathas made information on conduct of business in Legislatures accessible anytime, anywhere to everyone.

  •  It is a work-flow based app deployed in Cloud (Meghraj) which helps the Chair of the House to conduct the proceedings of the House smoothly and the members to carry out their duties in the House efficiently.

  •  NeVA has made live for RajyaSabha in respect of Monsoon Session 2018 and information in respect of LokSabha is being updated. Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Sikkim, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Puducherry, Manipur Assemblies have already started using the application.

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::INTERNATIONAL::

Women foreign ministers meeting held

  •  Women Foreign Ministers meeting for the first summit of its kind vowed on Saturday to bring a ‘women’s perspective’ to foreign policy. The two-day meeting, which began on Friday in Montreal and brought together more than half of the world’s top women diplomats, focussed on topics such as conflict prevention, democratic growth and eliminating gender-based violence.

  •  The Ministers will share their takeaways from the event during meetings taking place as part of the UN General Assembly in New York in the coming week.

  •  The diplomatic chiefs from 17 countries promised to meet regularly — albeit informally — within the next year. “We planted a seed that will grow into, I believe, a plant with beautiful flowers,” said European Union diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini, who co-led the meeting with Ms. Freeland.

  •  In addition to Ms. Freeland and Ms.Mogherini, the conference brought together Ministers from Andorra, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Croatia, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Kenya, Namibia, Norway, Panama, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, South Africa and Sweden.

  •  At the end of the summit, a dozen of the participants symbolically placed flowers on headstones erected in a Montreal park to commemorate 14 women killed in 1989 at the EcolePolytechnique engineering school. The killer, who targeted women in what was classified as a hate crime, wounded 14 others.

China cancels bilateral meeting with U.S defence officials

  •  China has responded robustly to Washington’s decision to impose military sanctions — opening up key diplomatic channels to air its protest, and recalling its visiting naval official from the U.S. It has also cancelled an upcoming defence officials meeting in Beijing later this month.

  •  On Friday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister ZhengZeguang, summoned Terry Branstad, the U.S. Ambassador to China, to lodge Beijing’s protest over Washington’s plan to sanction a Chinese military organisation and its head for buying Russian weapons.

  •  A day earlier, the U.S. State Department had announced that it was sanctioning the Equipment Development Department of the Central Military Commission, and the department’s director, for violating the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). The U.S. invoked the act because of China’s purchase from Russia of S-400 missiles and the SU-35 fighter jets.

  •  Separately, Huang Xueping, deputy head of the CMC’s office for international military cooperation, summoned the acting defence attaché at the U.S. Embassy on Saturday evening.

  •  Mr. Huang said that China will immediately recall Navy commander ShenJinlong, who is in the U.S. to attend a symposium, and postpone the second meeting of a communication mechanism for the joint staff departments of China and the United States, scheduled for September 25-27 in Beijing.

::SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY::

WHO report observes changing trend in blindness in Indian children

  •  A recent World Health Organisation (WHO) report has estimated that, across the world, 19 million children are visually impaired and 1.4 million among them are legally blind. According to the National Program for Control of Blindness, the number stands at 8 out of 10,000 for childhood blindness in India.

  •  A study conducted in two taluks in Karnataka has now pointed out that corneal blindness is no longer the leading cause of childhood blindness. But blindness due to unavoidable causes are on the rise. They found whole-globe anomalies (small eye or absence of eyes) and uvealcoloboma (a gap or a defect in the inner layers of the eye) to be the main causes of blindness.

  •  Eye defects were detected in about 550 children in the examined group and refractive errors - when the eye is not able to focus images due to changes in the length of the globe or the shape of the cornea - were the most common cause.

  •  The study found that more than 25% of the blindness was caused by whole globe anomalies and 25% by uvealcoloboma. The other causes include corneal xerosis, cortical visual impairment, and retinal problems.

  •  “In the 1990s, corneal blindness, caused by vitamin A deficiency, was the leading cause of childhood blindness. The National vitamin A prophylaxis programme has brought down the prevalence. But alarmingly, the number of [occurrences of] blindness due to unavoidable causes has gone up,” explains Dr.VasudhaKemmanu, consultant paediatric ophthalmologist.

  •  Dr.Vasudha further explains that consanguineous marriage could be one of the reasons for eye diseases causing blindness. Further studies are being carried out to understand the role of such marriages. “We found that in 34% of the kids with eye defects their parents were blood-relatives such as uncles and nieces,” she adds.

::SPORTS::

National rifle association brings in selection policy for Olympics

  •  The performance of the Indian shooters will be gauged mainly in the international arena while ratifying their selection for Tokyo 2020.

  •  The National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) has drafted a selection policy for the Olympics, with an objective of “fielding the best from the best, purely on merit.” It has also decided to persist with the domestic competitions and a bunch of selection trials towards finalising the National teams for the rest of the international events.

  •  The scores from the recent Asian Games in Palembang, apart from the World Championship in Changwon, will form the basis for selection, along with the scores in the Asian Championship and World Cups to be staged next year. Unlike the past, it has been decided to have a uniform policy for rifle, pistol and shotgun.

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