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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 19 April 2014

High manganese level detected in the Selaulim reservoir

High manganese level has been detected in the Selaulim reservoir in Goa, which supplies drinking water to more than half of the coastal State. The government engineers have however said that there was “no reason” to worry.
The State Public Works Department has started monitoring the water content at the South Goa reservoir.
The manganese level in the water from the reservoir has risen up from 0.1 to 0.8 mg per litre.
The reservoir has an earth dam with concrete spillway and is on the Selaulim tributary of Zuari river.
The reservoir has production capacity of 214 MLD of water, which is supplied to entire South Goa and some parts of north district.

Trends in Vogue, Cavinkare’s arm that manages unisex hair salon network Green Trends, and Bharatiya Mahila Bank (BMB) have entered into a pact that seeks to make the entrepreneurial plunge easier for women.
Budding women entrepreneurs who take up a franchisee of Green Trends (GT) can get two-thirds of their total investment (Rs.40-50 lakh) financed by BMB without any collateral.
Collateral security is the key in getting loans from banks for entrepreneurs. This agreement will help all prospective franchisees, especially women, across the country to get collateral-free loans.
The company helps franchisees choose right location, get good realty deal and select right vendors for supplying equipment and systems. It has lined up a string of vendors who could do the works in salons at a competitive rate than others.

Fifteen Indian bird species are part of a list of avians which are evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered. The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Yale University has come out with a study of 100 Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) species worldwide.
The study says Bengal Florican, Lesser Florican, Great Indian Bustard, Sociable Lapwing and Jerdon’s Courser are birds that are under threat due to the destruction of their habitat of grasslands and scrub forests. The survival of Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Siberian Crane and White-bellied Heron greatly depend on the existence of their wetland habitat.
Forest Owlet’s survival is impossible if its habitat of deciduous forests in central India is destroyed, the study said. Officials of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), which works on the conservation of 12 of these threatened birds, said these species were threatened by human factors such as uncontrolled urbanisation, unsustainable industrialisation and rampant use of chemicals in agriculture.

An avalanche swept down a slope of Mount Everest on Friday killing 12 Nepali mountaineering guides at the beginning of the main climbing season.
The avalanche, the deadliest in eight years, hit the most popular route to the mountain’s peak. Three Nepali guides were injured and up to five people were missing. It was the first major avalanche on Mount Everest this climbing season, when hundreds of foreign and Nepali climbers flock to the mountain to attempt to reach its 8,850 metre peak.
More than 4,000 climbers have scaled Everest´s summit since it was first climbed by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa in 1953. The route they took is the one hit by the avalanche .Nearly 250 people have died on the mountain.
Everest is on the border between Nepal and the Chinese region of Tibet and can be climbed from both sides.
Nepal’s Tourism Ministry has issued permits to 334 foreign climbers to scale Mount Everest this season, up from 328 the whole of last year. Nepal plans to cut fees to climb the mountain despite concern about overcrowding.

President Obama signed a bill into law recently that would prohibit anyone who has engaged in espionage or terrorism against the United States from obtaining a visa to enter the country as a representative to the United Nations.
Congress passed the bill last week after Iran named Hamid Aboutalebi as its ambassador to the United Nations; Mr. Aboutalebi was an interpreter for the militant student group that stormed the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held Americans hostage for 444 days.
Iran has insisted that the United States has no right to dictate whom it may choose to represent it. Mr. Obama said the Constitution gave him exclusive discretion to receive or reject ambassadors, and if a case arose where the law would interfere with his exercising that discretion, he would treat it as advisory.