Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 15 April 2014

Transgenders as third gender

The Supreme Court has recognised transgenders or eunuchs as third category of gender and directed Centre and States to grant them all facilities, including voters ID, passport and driving licence.
The Centre and States were also directed to take steps for bringing the community into the mainstream by providing adequate health care, education and employment.
A bench of Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and A.K. Sikri directed the government to take steps for granting recognition to transgenders as a separate third category of gender after male and female.
The bench also said they are the citizens of the country and have equal rights to education, healthcare and employment opportunities like other people belonging to male and female gender.
The apex court expressed concern over transgenders being harassed and discriminated in the society and passed a slew of directions for their social welfare.

Scientific methods in crime detection

The Supreme Court has asked investigating agencies to adopt scientific methods in crime detection to save the judicial system from low conviction rates.
“The criminal judicial system in this country is at a crossroads. Reliable, trustworthy, credible witnesses to the crime seldom come forward to depose before the court and even hardened criminals get away from the clutches of the law. Even reliable witnesses for the prosecution turn hostile due to intimidation, fear and a host of other reasons. Investigating agency has, therefore, to look for other ways and means to improve the quality of investigation, which can only be through the collection of scientific evidence.”
Writing the judgment, Justice Radhakrishnan said there was a need to strengthen forensic science for crime detection. The judiciary needed to be equipped to understand and deal with such scientific materials.
The Bench gave this ruling while modifying the death sentence awarded to Dharam Deo Yadav, who murdered Diana Clare Routley, a 22-year-old girl from New Zealand who visited Varanasi in 1997. The trial court had awarded death sentence and it was confirmed by the Allahabad High Court.

Pulitzer Prize

Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, already among the most popular and celebrated novels of the past year, has won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. One of the country’s top colonial historians, Alan Taylor, has won his second Pulitzer, forThe Internal Enemy — Slavery and War In Virginia.
The Washington Post and the Guardian have won Pulitzer Prizes in public service for revealing the massive U.S. government surveillance effort.
The newspapers’ disclosures about the National Security Agency's spy programs show the U.S. government has collected information about millions of Americans' phone calls and emails based on its classified interpretations of laws passed after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Boston Globe has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize in breaking news, and The New York Times has won two Pulitzers in photography categories — Tyler Hicks was honoured in the breaking news category for documenting the Westgate mall terrorist attack in Kenya, and Josh Haner was cited for his essay on a Boston Marathon bomb blast victim who lost his legs.
The Center for Public Integrity won the award for investigative reporting for reports on how some lawyers and doctors rigged a system to deny benefits to coal miners suffering from black lung disease.
The Pulitzer for explanatory reporting was given to The Washington Post for reporting on the prevalence of food stamps in America.
Annie Baker's The Flick won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, a play set in a movie theater that was called a "thoughtful drama with well-crafted characters" which created "lives rarely seen on the stage".
The award for general nonfiction went to Dan Fagin’s Toms River, an acclaimed chronicle of industrial destruction in small New Jersey community. Megan Marshall’s Margaret Fuller, about the 19th century transcendentalist, won for biography; and Vijay Seshadri’s witty and philosophical 3 Sections received the poetry prize.

Bluefin-21

The underwater drone hunting for clues to the fate of flight MH370 returned six hours into a planned 16-hour mission because it was out of its depth, officials said on Tuesday.
The submersible is programmed to resurface rather than go beyond its safe maximum operating limit of 4,500 metres.
The Bluefin-21 vehicle was sent down for the first time to scour a 40 sqkm patch of the Indian Ocean about 2,170 kilometres north-west of Perth.
A week has gone by without any signals being picked up that could be from the flight recorders on the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777.
The plane vanished an hour into a night flight March 8 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people on board.
In a downbeat assessment of search results, Mr. Houston said it would “be appropriate to consult with Australia’s partners to decide the way ahead later this week.” The search for aeroplane wreckage has been assessed as the most costly ever mounted.

March Inflation at 5.7 per cent

Snapping the declining trend, the inflation rose to a three month high of 5.7 per cent in March mainly due to spurt in prices of food items like potato, onion and fruits.
The inflation in the food items, based on the wholesale price index (WPI), shot up by 9.9 per cent in March as against 8.12 per cent in the previous month.
The overall WPI inflation, which was on decline since December, had dropped to a nine-month low of 4.68 per cent in February.
The government further said the build up of inflation rate in the 2013—14 financial year was 5.70 compared to a build up rate of 5.65 per cent in the earlier fiscal.
The data further revealed that prices of sugar, pulses, cereals, cement and minerals eased in March compared to the previous month.
Inflation in the fuel and power category (LPG, petrol and diesel) rose to 11.22 per cent versus 8.75 per cent in February.

Shotgun World Cup

Mohammed Asab missed the double trap knock-out phase by one point in the Shotgun World Cup in Tucson, US. Ankur Mittal finished 19th with a 132 while Ronjan Sodhi placed 35th with 120 in a field of 41.
Joshua Richmond of the US who made the cut for the knock-out, one point above Asab, following a shoot-off on 138, went on to bag the silver after losing the shoot-off for gold against compatriot Jeffrey Holgun.
In women’s skeet, Saniya Sheikh shot 64 to be placed 25th among 31 shooters. National champion Rashmee Rathore could muster only 57 . Danka Bartekova of Slovakia won the gold as she beat Wei Weng of China, 14-13.

Plant growth chamber for space

Astronauts will now turn into cosmic gardeners and grow lettuce in space as United States space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is all set to send the largest ever plant growth chamber to the International Space Station (ISS).
It will launch the Vegetable Production System aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule.
The plant growth chamber will grow lettuce inside prototype flight pillows that will help the plants withstand zero gravity, The Verge reported. Red, blue, and green light emitting diodes (LEDs) will help sustain the vegetables, and the plant chamber itself can grow to 11.5 inches wide and 14.5 inches deep.
This will be “the largest plant growth chamber for space to date.
The chamber may even be used for more ambitious projects, like providing food for the average person back on Earth. After extensive testing on weightless horticulture, NASA is confident the lack of gravity will not impede growth.
However, space-borne microbes that may develop during growth are a cause of concern. Therefore, the lettuce will undergo extensive testing before astronauts chow down.