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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 16 July 2014

China’s Xi invites Modi to visit, calls for ‘early’ border settlement

In Fortaleza to attend the BRICS Summit, Mr. Modi and Mr. Xi met for 80 minutes – extending beyond the scheduled 40 minutes.
China’s President Xi Jinping on Tuesday invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit China in November and called for a “negotiated resolution” to the boundary dispute “at an early date”.
China had invited Mr. Modi to attend the APEC leaders’ meeting in Beijing in November. However, with scheduled SAARC and G20 meetings that same month, the visit may take place at a later date.
Mr. Xi called for a “negotiated solution to the border issues at an early date”
Prime Minister Modi said that maintaining peace and tranquility on the border was essential for resolving the issue and India is willing to peacefully settle the boundary issue through exisiting mechanisms and friendly negotiations.
The Prime Minister also referred to India and China’s common civilisational heritage, and links through Buddhism, and called for both countries to do more together to tackle their common challenge of fighting terrorism.
The Chinese President said he wanted both countries to launch “a batch of exemplary projects” in infrastructure, such as railway construction, to enable more balanced and sustainable trade. The rising trade deficit in China’s favour, reaching $ 29 billion last year, was raised by Mr. Modi.
Mr. Xi also said China welcomed India to join its initiative to set up a new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank as a founding member, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Environmentalist Chandi Prasad gets Gandhi Peace Prize

Environmentalist and social activist Chandi Prasad Bhatt was presented the Gandhi Peace Prize by President Pranab Mukherjee.
Mr. Bhatt is a dedicated, tireless and invaluable worker for the conservation of the environment, the Chipko movement started by him in 1973 followed the method of peaceful and non-violent Satyagraha for the redressal of the legitimate rights of the hill people to collect wood and fodder and saving them from natural calamities owing to large-scale deforestation.
A Gandhian and a member of the Sarvodaya movement, Mr. Bhatt organised the Dashauli Gram Swarajya Sangh in 1964. He dedicated himself through the Sangh to improve the lives of villagers, providing employment near their homes in forest-based industries, and fighting against wrong policies through Gandhian non-violent satyagraha.

SC Constitution Bench to decide on `living will’ to die with dignity

A five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court will take up for consideration a petition seeking to declare the execution of a `living will’ of persons, suffering from chronic terminal diseases and likely to go into a permanent vegetative state, to refuse treatment to pave way for their death.
Petition was filled by NGO Common Cause.
AG Mr. Rohatgi said the issue had lot of legal, social and moral aspects concerning the humanity as a whole. He said right to die merely because of pain and suffering would not be in the interest of society as it was against public policy.
Ruling in `Aruna Shanbaug’s case’ decided that passive euthanasia is wrong.
In November 2012 the Law Commission had submitted a report relating to passive euthanasia and `living will’.

States want review of key provisions in Land Acquisition Act

A conference of state revenue ministers recently suggested wide-ranging changes to dilute the Land acquisition act, and chief among them was to re-examine the consent clause, as ownership of land rests with the government in Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects, and also scrap the mandatory social impact assessment (SIA).
Kerala felt that obtaining consent of land owners prior to preliminary notification was a herculean task as the identification of land owners at such initial stages may pose a problem.
Madhya Pradesh felt that the provision of consent from 70 per cent land owners in case of PPP projects should either be deleted or eased out.
States also want to do away with the mandatory social impact assessment (SIA) study prescribed in the act and should be confined to large projects or PPP projects as it may delay the acquisition process, which is called the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement, 2013.
States also wanted the definition of “affected family” in the act to be re examined as it is very elaborate and includes livelihood losers working in the affected area for three years prior to the acquisition of land and whose primary source of livelihood is affected.
The clause specifying sharing of 40 per cent enhanced cost with original land owners when the land is transferred on higher consideration should be deleted as it leads to disputes, states felt.

Israel resumes air strikes on Gaza as ceasefire fails

Israel on Tuesday resumed airstrikes on Gaza after an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire failed to stop the escalating violence that has killed 192 Palestinians in nine days of fighting as Hamas continued to fire rockets at the Jewish state.
Earlier Israel accepted, while Hamas refused the Egyptian proposal for a ceasefire.
The Egyptian-proposed ceasefire plan was aimed at halting Israel’s deadly nine-day offensive on the Gaza Strip that has killed 192 Palestinians but the Israeli premier had warned that the operation would be intensified if Hamas militants refused to accept the truce.

Iran offers to halt nuclear expansion for deal with world powers

Iran is offering to hold off from expanding its uranium-enrichment programme for about seven years in negotiations with six world powers.
Negotiations are ongoing in Vienna between Iran and the group of Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany to curb Iran's nuclear programme, with deadline on Sunday.
Iran is currently spinning about 10,000 centrifuges at high speeds to purify uranium to levels suitable for use in power reactors. An additional 9,000 centrifuges are installed but not operating.

RBI eases reserve norms for banks issuing infra bonds

The Reserve Bank of India, in order to encourage infrastructure development and affordable housing, exempted long-term bonds from the mandatory regulatory norms such as the Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR), the Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR) and Priority Sector Lending (PSL) if the money raised is used for funding of such projects.
The objective of these instructions is to mitigate the Asset-Liability Management (ALM) problems faced by banks in extending project loans to infrastructure and core industries sectors, and also to ease the raising of long term resources for project loans to infrastructure and affordable housing sectors
The RBI said that apart from what is technically defined as infrastructure, affordable housing is another segment of the economy which requires long-term funding.
India is looking at investing $1 trillion in infrastructure development by 2017, half of which is expected to come from the private sector.
Finance Minister during budget speech also said that banks will be encouraged to extend long term loans to infrastructure sector with flexible structuring to absorb potential adverse contingencies, sometimes known as the 5/25 structure.
Under the 5/25 structure, bank may fix longer amortisation period for loans to projects in infrastructure and core industries sectors, say 25 years, with periodic refinancing, say every five years. This ensures that banks Asset and Liability is properly managed.

Finding life beyond Earth is within reach: NASA

Experts from NASA and its partner institutions have outlined a road-map to the search for life in the universe, an ongoing journey that involves a number of current and future telescopes.
NASA’s quest to study planetary systems around other stars started with ground-based observatories, then moved to space-based assets like the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Kepler Space Telescope.
Today’s telescopes can look at many stars and tell if they have one or more orbiting planets. Even more, they can determine if the planets are the right distance away from the star to have liquid water, the key ingredient to life as we know it.
The NASA road-map will continue with the launch of the Transiting Exoplanet Surveying Satellite (TESS) in 2017, the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018, and the proposed Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope — Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets (WFIRST-AFTA) early in the next decade.
The Webb telescope and WFIRST—AFTA will lay the groundwork, and future missions will extend the search for oceans in the form of atmospheric water vapour and for life as in carbon dioxide and other atmospheric chemicals, on nearby planets that are similar to Earth in size and mass, a key step in the search for life.