(FREE) UPSC Current Affairs 2024 PDF

Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 04 April 2014

Tagore honored

India, Bangladesh and the United Kingdom joined hands to honour Rabindranath Tagore, one of the greatest poets of the Commonwealth, at the House of Commons.
Tagore was one of the most celebrated sons of India, a towering figure, who wrote India as well as Bangladesh’s national anthem.
The range of his achievements is extraordinary and not only includes literature but music and art as well.
Rabindranath Tagore became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913.

A multi-pronged approach with focus on inclusive economic growth would help eradicate poverty, which is increasingly getting concentrated in a few geographical areas, says a research report.
The observations are part of the India Public Policy Report (IPPR) 2014 jointly published by O P Jindal Global University and Oxford University Press.
Poverty in India is getting increasingly concentrated in a few geographical areas, among specific social groups and is increasing in urban areas.
Also, access to a diverse food basket alone may not help in effectively overcoming malnutrition.
The report’s Policy Effectiveness Index (PEI) showed that at all India level there is a gradual, but only a marginal, improvement in the policy effectiveness index over the three decades - period from 1981 to 2011.
The index is based on four factors - livelihood opportunity, social opportunity, rule of law and physical infrastructure development.

Tripura maintained its top position for the fifth consecutive year by providing 87 person-days’ rural jobs per household during the 2013-14 fiscal.
Tripura has been providing the highest average employment for the past five years under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).
Tripura provided 87 days of work per household in the 2013-14 fiscal against the national average of 45 person-days.
It has retained the top position since 2009-10. Another north-eastern state, Sikkim came second with 58 person-days per household, followed by Tamil Nadu with 56 person-days.
The MGNREGS mandates 100 days of employment in a financial year to at least one member of each rural household.
Tripura also leads in participation of tribals in the MGNREGS with 45 percent against the national average of 16. A total of 48 percent women got rural jobs directly in the state against India’s average of 54.

The sting operation carried out by `Cobrapost’ giving details of alleged conspiracy by right-wing organisations to bring down Babri Masjid in 1992 has no evidentiary value for CBI as it has already completed the investigation.
Highly placed sources of the agency said investigation in the cases has been completed after collecting all the legally tenable evidence based on which the cases are at trial stage.
They said the so-called revelations made by Cobrapost prima facie do not look to be legally tenable evidence.
There are two sets of cases -- one against BJP leader L K Advani and others who were on the dais at Ram Katha Kunj in Ayodhya in December 1992 when Babri Masjid was demolished, while the other case is against lakhs of unknown ‘karsevaks’ who were in and around the disputed structure.

The Supreme Court issued notice to the Centre on a petition challenging the amendment introduced to Section 62 (5) of the Representation of the People Act to treat persons in lawful custody in a criminal case as voters and allow them to contest elections.
A Bench of Justices H.L. Dattu and S.A. Bobde issued the notice on the petition filed by advocate Manohar Lal Sharma against a Delhi High Court order rejecting his plea.
Section 62 (5) of the Representation of the People Act says: “No person shall vote in any election if he is confined in a prison, whether under a sentence of imprisonment or transportation or otherwise, or is in the lawful custody of the police, provided that nothing in this sub-section shall apply to a person subjected to preventive detention under any law for the time being in force.”

By studying the gravitational pull exerted by Saturn’s moon Enceladus on the Cassini spacecraft, scientists have found that the moon could harbour a subsurface ocean of liquid water.
NASA has said the discovery furthers “scientific interest in the moon as a potential home to extraterrestrial microbes”.
On three occasions between 2010 and 2012, Cassini flew by Enceladus within 100 km, twice over the southern and once over the northern hemisphere. During these flybys, Cassini’s orbit was pushed and pulled by the moon’s gravity, indicating an uneven distribution of mass inside the moon.
Though the disturbances were small — 0.2-0.3 mm/second — scientists have been able to conclude that there is excessive mass about 30-40 km beneath Enceladus’s south pole, and a deficiency at the surface.
In 2011, a Jovian moon, Europa, was shown to harbour liquid water under an ice shell that covered the body’s entire surface. NASA has planned a mission to investigate Europa and allocated $15 million earlier this year to develop a mission.
The Cassini robotic spacecraft was launched in 1997 by NASA, European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency at a cost of $3.26 billion to study the Saturnian system.