Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 06 August 2017

Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 6 August 2017

::National::

M. Venkaiah Naidu was elected the 13th Vice-President of India

  • M. Venkaiah Naidu was elected the 13th Vice-President of India. The polling was held earlier in the day, and results were declared in the evening.
  • Mr. Naidu polled a massive 516 of the total 760 votes, aided by cross-voting by Opposition MPs in the 15th vice-presidential elections.
  • Opposition candidate Gopalkrishna Gandhi polled 244 votes. The elections saw the highest polling percentage at 98.12%, with 14 MPs failing to turn up to vote.
  • While the result of the contest was a foregone conclusion, the margin of Mr. Naidu’s victory was the largest in recent elections.
  • In 2002, Bhairon Singh Shekhawat (the last NDA nominee to win) polled 454 votes to Sushil Kumar Shinde’s 305 votes. Outgoing Vice-President Hamid Ansari polled 490 votes to 238 of the NDA’s Jaswant Singh.
  • BJP leaders, who oversaw the election for the party, said that between 17 and 20 MPs cross-voted, but no details were available on the MPs.

Dialogue is the only way to cut through deep-rooted religious stereotypes Says PM

  • Dialogue is the only way to cut through deep-rooted religious stereotypes and prejudices that divide communities across the world, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said.
  • “As the inter-connected and inter-dependent world of the 21st century battles a number of global challenges, from terrorism to climate change, I am confident that the solutions will be found through Asia’s oldest traditions of dialogue and debate,” he said.
  • Mr. Modi said he is a “product of the ancient Indian tradition that firmly believes in dialogue on difficult issues.”
  • The Prime Minister said the ancient Indian concept of Tarka Shastra is founded on dialogue and debate as the model for exchange of views and avoidance of conflict.
  • It is only natural that the search for answers be led by humanity’s longest traditions of thought, rooted in various religions, civilisations, and multiple streams of spirituality, he said.
  • On the subject of environmental protection, Mr. Modi said man must relate to nature and revere it and not merely consider it a resource to be exploited.
  • If man does not nurture nature, then nature reacts in the form of climate change, he added.

Dr. Rajiv Kumar has been appointed as the new vice-chairman of NITI Aayog

  • Economist Dr. Rajiv Kumar has been appointed as the new vice-chairman of the government think tank NITI Aayog. Present vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya had stepped down earlier this month.
  • The spokesperson added that Dr. Vinod Paul, pediatrician at AIIMS, has also been appointed as a member of the NITI Aayog.
  • Dr. Kumar, who holds a DPhil in economics from Oxford and a Ph.D from Lucknow University, has served as director and chief executive of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), and has earlier worked with the Asian Development Bank.
  • He was also a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research.

Leopards the victim of shrinking forests

  • Each time the rain ends in Assam, wild animals come out of their dens and into the direct line of fire of their worst enemy — man.
  • Every year, the State Forest Department rescues five or six elephants and leopards in and around Guwahati city, though no reliable data on leopard attacks on human beings or livestock can be found.
  • The leopard-man conflict is mainly confined to the hilly areas. In the past 10 years, more than 50 of these big cats have either been captured or killed in the city.
  • During the 1960s and the 1970s, leopards and elephants were a common sight in cities such as Kahilipara, Kharrguli, Santipur, Lal Ganesh, Fatasil, Khanapara, Chandrapur, Hengerabari, Sunsali, Kamakhya and Ramsa in the State.
  • The demographic pattern of Guwahati has changed after the shifting of the capital from Shillong. Increasing human population and unplanned legal and illegal settlements have exerted great pressure on the hills in the city.
  • Guwahati, the gateway to Northeast India, is probably the only city in the country with huge protected areas within its limits — 2,632 hectares. There is an urgent need to protect the forest cover that shelters the big cat.

::International::

New piece of legislation to change America’s immigration system

  • U.S. President is championing a new piece of legislation that proposes to change America’s immigration system to give preference to skills than family links, but the fractious nature of the debate over the move suggests that it is far from becoming a law.
  • RAISE or Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act, sponsored by Republican Senators David Perdue and Tom Cotton, also proposes to cut immigration by 41% in the first year and by 50% by the 10th year.
  • According to the Bill, people with English proficiency will be preferred, and the number of refugees admitted annually will be reduced by half to 50,000.
  • The lottery system to promote diversity in America, which allows people from less represented countries such as Nepal and Ethiopia, will be ended. The Bill does not propose changes in temporary work visa programmes such as H-1B.
  • The proposal for skill-based immigration per se could find larger support, including among many Democrats, but the host of allied issues entangled in the American immigration debate makes any forward movement on the issue difficult.
  • Comprising a significant portion of new entrants into the U.S. in the last two decades, Indians have a huge stake in the debate.
  • There is no authentic numbers available, but community activists estimate that South Asians constitute a significant share in that.
  • Of the one million permanent residency permits, or green cards, issued by the U.S. annually, two third goes for the category of family reunion. Green card allotment has a country-wise cap, which currently is disadvantageous to Indians.
  • According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that maintains country-wise list of H-1B visa applications, but not allotments, 21 lakh Indians applied under the programme in the last 11 years.
  • The agency received 34 lakh applications for H-1B in the same period and the second largest cohort of applicants were from China, at 2.96 lakhs.

::Business and Economy::

IBM had achieved a breakthrough in security technology

  • IBM said that it had achieved a breakthrough in security technology that would allow enterprises from banks to health care companies to retailers to encrypt their customer data at a large scale.
  • The New York-based technology major said its system makes it possible for the first time to ‘pervasively encrypt’ every level of a network, from applications to cloud services and databases and prevent theft of information.
  • This has been made possible by IBM Z (z14), a next-generation mainframe unveiled by the company in July. It is capable of running more than 12 billion encrypted transactions per day.
  • IBM, which reported a revenue of $79.9 billion in 2016, said that its India hardware and firmware team had made significant contributions to the z14 system and microprocessor development.
  • It said that more than 100 engineers from its India labs worked on key components of both the core and the processor in the areas of logic design, verification, custom circuit design and tool development.
  • The team has also contributed to the base firmware development, next-generation input/output enablement and in building newer virtualisation management capabilities.
  • One of the key units designed by the India team is the encryption unit, that gives an unparalleled security feature to the z14 mainframe.
  • Of the more than nine billion data records lost or stolen since 2013, only 4% were encrypted, according to IBM. This makes the vast majority of such data vulnerable to organised cyber crime rings, state actors and employees misusing access to sensitive information.
  • Another concern for users is the protection of encryption keys. In large firms, hackers often target encryption keys, which are routinely exposed in memory as they are used, the company said.

Gold continued its gains at the domestic bullion market

  • Gold continued its gains for the third week in a row at the domestic bullion market, riding on good buying by local jewellers, even as the metal lost attraction overseas.
  • The precious metal made the most in view of the ongoing festive season, but a weak trend overseas came as a spoiler.
  • The yellow metal gained 2.42% or Rs. 680, in three weeks. In contrast, silver ended lower on speculative selling and lower industrial off-take.
  • On the global front, gold futures settled firmly lower as the dollar jumped after a key report on U.S. payrolls in July showed stronger than expected job creation.

::Science and Tech::

New tool can help detect human papilloma virus (HPV)

  • Testing menstrual blood present on menstrual cloth can help detect human papilloma virus (HPV), which is one of the main causes of cervical cancer, researchers have found.
  • The study was carried out on over 550 women aged 30 to 50 years at two rural populations in Maharashtra. The results were published in the journal European Journal of Cancer Prevention.
  • Cervical cancer is a major public health problem in India, and although there are cervical cancer screening tests, most rural Indian women fear the test and see it as an unpleasant experience.
  • Over 190 eligible women were recruited for the study from two villages close to Jamkhed Tahsil of Maharashtra. The women who consented underwent HC2 testing to detect HPV.
  • All the women, whether positive or negative for HPV, were asked to store their cloth pad used on the first day of period and immediately hand it over to the health worker. The collected menstrual cloth samples were sent to NIRRH for testing.
  • The DNA extracted from the dried menstrual blood was amplified and tested for HPV. Over 3% positive HPV cases were detected from this area (both HC2 and DNA study showed positive).
  • They underwent further vaginal examination and treatment. Two cases of cervical lesions were also diagnosed.
  • From this population, 4.9% cases were diagnosed as HPV positive using DNA tests. The HPV positive women and a few HPV negative women underwent vaginal examination, HC2 test and PAP smear test (another cervical cancer test).
  • The sensitivity of the menstrual pad HPV testing in the first and second area was 83% and 67%, respectively, and the specificity was 99% and 88% in the two areas.
  • The reduced sensitivity at second area could be due to electricity failure in the health centre as the samples need to be continuously stored at -20⁰C.
  • By developing a simple method to mail the pads to the lab by participants itself, menstrual pad test can become a stress-free cervical cancer screening method, the authors write.

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