Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 02 June 2014

First CM of Telangana

Telangana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS) chief K Chandrashekhar Rao was sworn in as the first Chief Minister of Telangana, which became the 29th state of India.
Eleven ministers have also taken oath in K Chandrasekhar Rao's Cabinet in the new state of Telangana.
Rao hoisted the tricolour and took salute at an impressive parade held at Parade Grounds, Secunderabad.
In his first public address as the CM, Rao vowed to make Telangana a model state in all respects and said that welfare and development would be the two driving forces of his government.
The Telangana government would maintain cordial relationship not only with the Centre but also neighbouring states.
Rooting out "political corruption" would also be top on his agenda to ensure transparent governance.

The Supreme Court has stayed the execution of death row convict Yakub Abdul Razak Memon, a key conspirator along with Dawood Ibrahim in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case.
The mercy plea of Memon was rejected by President Pranab Mukherjee on May 21.
The decision was taken by the President following recommendations of the Maharashtra government and the Union home ministry that the mercy petition of Memon be rejected.
A bench comprising justice JS Khehar and justice C Nagappan issued a notice to the Maharashtra government and others on the plea of Memon and said "execution proceedings will remain stayed".
The court also referred to a Constitution Bench a plea of Memon that review petitions in death penalty cases should not be heard by the apex court in chamber proceedings and be decided in open court.

With Russia and the United States as far apart as ever on ways of resolving the crisis in Ukraine’s southeast, its outcome may well be decided on the battlefield.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has not spoken with U.S. President Barack Obama since Kiev launched its “anti-terrorist operation” against anti-government protesters in Russian speaking regions in the east six weeks ago.
While Moscow denounces the Ukrainian crackdown in the east as a “punitive operation” against the civilian population, Washington maintains that Kiev’s authorities “have every right to take steps to maintain law and order in their own country.”
The Ukrainian border guard service has reported several convoys of trucks with militants and weapons crossing the porous border from Russia in recent weeks.
Russia has refrained from openly supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine and still hopes to persuade Kiev to resolve the conflict by granting broad autonomy to the region.
The conflict in the east is fast morphing into civil war. This was in stark display earlier this month in Odessa, a peaceful multiethnic Ukrainian port city on the Black Sea, where a group of ultranationalists from western Ukraine burnt alive and clubbed to death at least 48 pro-Russian activists.

A stronger rupee has paved the way for high-street banks to have a greater play in the currency market, with last year's unnerving choppiness suddenly looking like a thing of the past.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently told several large lenders that they are free to carry out foreign exchange proprietary trades in which bank treasuries bet on the dollar-rupee movement.
The move will deepen the currency market and offer finer foreign exchange rates to customers, particularly large corporates with regular exports, imports and dollar borrowings.
The RBI allows each bank a certain net open position (NOP) limit for prop (or, proprietary) trades; the limit varies from $20 million to $100 million, depending on a bank's size and level of treasury activity.
In 2013, when the rupee buckled under speculators' attack, the limits were whittled down by banks to $5 million and even zero at the RBI's instruction.

Nasa’s sun-observing IRIS (Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph) spacecraft has captured its first stunning close-up of a colossal coronal mass ejection(CME) erupting from the sun.
The field of view for this imagery is about five times the width of earth and about seven-and-half times its length, a tremendous sheet of solar material can be seen erupting in a latest video released by Nasa.
The view is unprecedented for IRIS which was launched in June last year to observe the lowest levels of the sun’s atmosphere with better resolution than ever before.
IRIS must commit to pointing at certain areas of the sun at least a day in advance, so catching a CME in the act involves some educated guesses and a little bit of luck.

Manish Pandey played an absolute blinder as Kolkata Knight Riders held their nerves to beat a spirited Kings XI Punjab by three wickets in an exhilarating summit clash to win the seventh edition of the Indian Premier League in Bangalore.
This was KKR's second IPL trophy, the only team apart from Chennai Super Kings to achieve the feat.