Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 15 May 2014

Entitlements in live-in relationships

Women in live-in relationships and partners are entitled to payment of maintenance by their male partners since the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, recognises such relationships, according to the Madras High Court Bench.
The purpose of enacting such a law [the Domestic Violence Act] would only make way for maintenance not only to a legally wedded wife but also to a second wife or concubine.”
The judge made the observation, disposing of a writ petition filed by the estranged wife of a former Chief Educational Officer (since dead) against payment of family pension to his illegal second “wife” with whom he had lived for 47 years without obtaining divorce from the petitioner.
Though the case was filed to restrain the officials concerned from disbursing the pension to the second “wife” nominated by the deceased government servant, the two women entered into a compromise midway and informed the court that they wanted to share the monthly pension equally.

The U.S. has said the heads of state and government are eligible for A1 visas and no individual automatically qualifies for an American visa ,under the INA (Immigration and Nationality Act). No individual automatically qualifies for a U.S. visa.
However, the U.S. law exempts foreign government officials, including heads of state and heads of government from certain potential inadmissibility grounds.
In 2005, the U.S. State Department revoked Mr. Modi’s visa on the ground of alleged human rights violations after the 2002 Gujarat riots.

The New York Times has named the paper’s current managing editor Dean Baquet as the new executive editor after Jill Abrahamson stepped down from the top position .
Ms. Abrahamson, who took over as executive editor in 2011, was the first woman to hold the paper’s top position.
Mr. Baquet, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, will become the first African-American to lead one of the most respected and influential newspapers of the United States.

Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani’s skyscraper residence in Mumbai is the most expensive billionaire home in the world, according to a Forbes list, which also includes Indian-origin steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal’s houses in London.
Ambani’s 27-storey, 400,000-square-foot skyscraper home ‘Antilia’, named after a mythical island in the Atlantic, tops the Forbes list of the most expensive homes in the world.
The house has six storeys of parking, three helicopter pads, and reportedly requires a staff of 600 to keep it running.

Eight-time world champion Pankaj Advani (ONGC) stamped his authority yet again by pocketing the billiards crown in the Cricket Club of India (CCI) Classic Billiards and Snooker tournament in Mumbai .
The Bangalore-based cueist defeated Dhruv Sitwala in the final. Advani, 27, also won the Highest Break award for the 530, which he scored against Devendra Joshi in the quarter-finals.

Scientists have discovered the world’s oldest and best-preserved sperm from tiny shrimps, measuring a massive 1.3 millimetres and dating back to 17 million years in Australia.
Preserved giant sperm from shrimps were found at the Riversleigh World Heritage Fossil Site in Queensland and are the oldest fossilised sperm ever found in the geological record, researchers said.
The shrimps lived in a pool in an ancient cave inhabited by thousands of bats, and the presence of bat droppings in the water could help explain the almost perfect preservation of the fossil crustaceans.
The giant sperm are thought to have been longer than the male’s entire body, but are tightly coiled up inside the sexual organs of the fossilised freshwater crustaceans, which are known as ostracods.
Within these are the almost perfectly preserved giant sperm cells, and within them, the nuclei that once contained the animals’ chromosomes and DNA.