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Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 22 February 2016

:: NATIONAL ::

The Jat agitation in Haryana claimed one more life, taking the death toll to 11, as the State remained on edge even as the government decided to bring a Bill to grant other backward class (OBC) status to Jats.
The decision was taken at a meeting of the Home Minister, the National Security Adviser, the Army chief and the Delhi Police Commissioner with Jat leaders.
BJP leader, told reporters that the Jat community would get reservation in jobs, and a Billwould be brought in the next session of the Haryana Assembly.
Fresh incidents of violence and arson were reported in the State as the agitation enteredthe ninth day. Rohtak, Bhiwani, Jhajjar, Jind, Hisar, Hansi, Sonipat and Gohana continue to be under curfew.

With India’s first ever digital platform, Integrated Child Health Record (ICHR), you can now have your child’s health records made available at the click of a button.
Supported by cloud computing and mobile technology, ICHR offers to map a child’s health and track vaccination.
ICHR is supported by a mobile application to address the pressing concern of parents who are keen to track their child’s growth and vaccination.
The mobile interface will be available for both an- droid and iOS users.
ICHR provides and auto- mates long-term surveillance of a child’s growth.
It also offers benefits including helping in early detection of obesity and malnutrition in urban and rural population respectively.
It also addresses the dire need of maintaining the data centrally for research purposes.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday said that a “provisional agreement” has been reached on a cease-fire that could begin in the next few days in Syria’s five-year civil war.
Mr. Kerry declined to go into the details of the agreement, saying it “is not yet done.” But he said he hoped President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin would talk soon and that after that, implementation could begin.
Fighting has intensified in Syria during recent weeks and an earlier deadline to cease military activities was not observed.
The United States, Russia and other world powers agreed on Feb 12 on a deal calling for the ceasing of hostilities within a week, the delivery of urgently needed aid to besieged areas of Syria and a return to peace talks in Geneva.
UN envoy Stafan De Mistura halted the latest Syria talks on February 3, because of major differences between the two sides, exacerbated by increased aerial bombings and a wide military offensiveby Syrian troops and their allies under the cover of Russian air strikes.
The humanitarian situation has only gotten worse, with an estimated 13.5 million Syrians in need of aid, including 6 million children.

India’s Commerce Ministry is assessing the implications of the likelihood of China being granted “Market Economy Status” (MES) from December this year under the World Trade Organisation (WTO) norms.
This comes against the backdrop of instances of India's manufacturers in steel, chemicals, electrical and electronics sectors being “severely hurt” by “unfairly low-priced” imports from China, and the extensive usage of anti-dumping duty by India to offset the losses caused to the local manufacturers due to dumping.
Of the 535 cases where anti- dumping duties were imposed by India from 1994- 2014, a maximum of 134 has been on goods from China.
Beijing has cited the 2001 agreement on China joining the WTO to say that WTO- member countries had then decided to deem China as a 'market economy' from December 2016 while adjudicating anti-dumping cases.
As per the 2001 agreement (Protocol on the accession of China to the WTO), in calculating the 'normal value' of the exported goods while adjudicating anti-dumping cases, the WTO member nations could for 15 years ignore selling price and production costs in China.
Once China is granted MES, it will severely limit India's ability to resort to anti- dumping as the authorities (DGAD) will have to accept the production costs and sell- ing price in China as the benchmark, the sources said.
They added that it will in turn mean lesser chances of anti- dumping duties being imposed or lesser anti-dumping duties even if they are imposed.