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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 23 May 2015

Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 23 May 2015

:: National ::

L-G well within his powers to appoint officials, says Centre

Amid the impasse over division of powers in Delhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party unequivocally backed Lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung, saying it was not mandatory for him to consult Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on matters such as appointment of officials.
Mr. Kejriwal cried foul, accusing the Centre of backstabbing the people of the capital and alleging that the Prime Minister’s Office was trying to run Delhi through the Lieutenant-Governor.
“Pre-Independence, the Queen of England used to send notifications to the Viceroy of India. Now, Jung ‘Saheb’ is the Viceroy and the PMO is London,” Mr. Kejriwal said.
A Gazette notification, issued by the Union Home Ministry late on Thursday night, said the Lieutenant-Governor would have jurisdiction over matters connected with services, public order, police and land.
It left matters pertaining to services of bureaucrats to be settled by the Lieutenant-Governor, allowing him discretionary powers to seek the opinion of the Chief Minister as and when the former deemed it fit.

SC panel sets deadline for road safety directives

The Road Safety Committee formed by the Supreme Court to check lax enforcement of road laws has set the States a June 30 deadline to enforce 13 of its directives. They include removal of roadside advertisements and posters that obstruct the view of drivers or distract them and a ban on sale of liquor on National and State highways.
The former Supreme Court judge K.S. Radhakrishnan, who heads the committee, met presspersons to discuss the committee’s work.
The panel has asked the Union Road Transport and Highways Ministry to introduce uniform crash tests for all categories of vehicles so that manufacturers do not discriminate between the base and higher models in the provision of safety features.

Being a Maoist is not a crime: Kerala HC

The High Court of Kerala has held that ‘‘being a Maoist is no crime, though the political ideology of the Maoist will not synchronise with our constitutional polity.” The “police cannot detain a person merely because he is a Maoist, unless the police form a reasonable opinion that his activities are unlawful.”
The court ordered the State to pay a compensation of Rs.1 lakh and Rs.10,000 as cost to the petitioner Shyam Balakrishnan from Wayanad in the case.
In his judgment, Justice A. Muhamed Mustaque held that “if the Maoist organisation is a proscribed organisation under the law, activities of the Maoist organisation can be interfered. If the individual or organisation abhors and resorts to physical violence, the law agency can prevent or take action against the individual or organisation.”
In this case, “the facts will clearly indicate that the petitioner was arrested as a suspected Maoist. At the relevant time, the police had no clue about the offence committed by the petitioner. The only reason on which the petitioner was arrested was that he was a suspected Maoist. No doubt, the police, on realising the mistake, released the petitioner without registering a case,” the judgment said.
The judgment pointed out that the “police violated the liberty of the petitioner by taking him into custody without satisfying that the petitioner was involved in any cognisable offence punishable under law.”
‘‘The police version that the petitioner was rescued from the agitated mob cannot be believed. The General Diary and other action on the part of the police in searching the house of the petitioner will clearly indicate that the petitioner was taken into custody as a suspected Maoist,” the judgment said.

Jayalalithaa all set to return as CM today (Register and Login to read Full News..)

BJP’s volte-face on full statehood for Delhi (Register and Login to read Full News..)

Mohan Kumar is new Defence Secretary (Register and Login to read Full News..)

:: International ::

IS tightens grip on Syria-Iraq border

The Islamic State group consolidated its control of the Iraq-Syria border after capturing an Iraqi provincial capital and a famed Syrian heritage site in an offensive that has forced a review of U.S. strategy.
The jihadists, who now control roughly half of Syria, reinforced their self-declared trans-frontier “caliphate” by seizing Syria’s Al-Tanaf crossing on the Damascus-Baghdad highway.
It was the last regime-held border crossing with Iraq. Except for a short section of frontier in the north under Kurdish control, all the rest are now held by IS.
The jihadist surge, which has also seen it take Anbar capital Ramadi and the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra in the past week, comes despite eight months of U.S.-led air strikes.
It has sparked an exodus of tens of thousands of civilians in both countries and raised fears IS will repeat at Palmyra the destruction it has already wreaked at ancient sites in Iraq’s Nimrud and Mosul.
The United Nations said Friday at least 55,000 people had fled Ramadi alone since mid-May.
President Barack Obama has played down the IS advance as a tactical “setback” and denied the U.S.-led coalition was “losing” to IS.
But French President Francois Hollande said the world must act to stop the extremists UNESCO chief Irina Bokova called the 1st and 2nd Century ruins “the birthplace of human civilisation”, adding: “It belongs to the whole of humanity and I think everyone today should be worried about what is happening.”
In Palmyra, at a strategic crossroads between Damascus and the Iraqi border to the east, IS executed at least 17 suspected loyalists of the Damascus government Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
IS proclaimed Palmyra’s capture online and posted video and footage of its fighters in the city’s air base, but not of the UNESCO world heritage site’s colonnaded streets, elaborately decorated tombs and temples.
Syria’s antiquities director Mamoun Abdulkarim urged the world to “mobilise” to save the treasures.
Also, a Syrian priest and his colleague were kidnapped from a monastery between Homs and Palmyra, the French NGO L’Oeuvre d’Orient said.
Father Jacques Mourad was preparing aid for an influx of refugees from Palmyra and was known to help both Christians and Muslims.

‘Myanmar should extend citizenship to Rohingya’

A senior U.S. diplomat urged Myanmar to extend “citizenship” to the oppressed Rohingya minority to address an ongoing migrant crisis that has hit Southeast Asia, leaving thousands stranded at sea.
More than 3,500 migrants have swum to shore or been rescued off the coasts of Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh since a Thai crackdown in early May on human-trafficking threw the illicit trade into chaos.
Myanmar, where many of the migrants start their journey, has faced increasing international pressure to stem the exodus from its shores and deliver urgent humanitarian relief to thousands still trapped at sea.
Myanmar said its navy had carried out its first rescue of a boat stacked with around 200 migrants in the Bay of Bengal, in a sign of compromise after widespread criticism for not taking any responsibility.
The widespread persecution of the impoverished Muslim community in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state is one of the primary causes for the current crisis, alongside growing numbers trying to escape poverty in neighbouring Bangladesh.
“They should have a path to citizenship,” Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in Yangon, referring to the Rohingya — 1.3 million of whom live in Myanmar yet are dismissed as Bangladeshi illegal immigrants.
In comments a day after talks with Myanmar leaders, Mr. Blinken added “the uncertainty that comes from not having any status is one of the things that may drive people to leave”. Myanmar’s government however reiterated its refusal. “We do not accept that term [Rohingya] here,” said Zaw Htay, director of the presidential office said .

U.K. town gets its first Sikh Mayor (Register and Login to read Full News..)

:: Business and Economy ::

HCL TalentCare to bridge skill gap

If you have completed engineering degree and could not get a placement, then HCL Corporation is at hand to help you.
HCL Corporation has come out with a six-month residential programme called HCL TalentCare. The objective is to hone the abilities of engineering graduate students with additional skills for effective employment and also to bride industry-academia skill gap.
HCL TalentCare would address a wide spectrum of entry-level employability needs by creating a ready talent pool of professionals for enterprises in IT, healthcare, insurance and banking sectors.
Launched on a pilot basis in Manesar last year, HCL TalentCare sourced, skilled and staffed over 600 graduates into entry-level roles. During the current year, the company aims to prepare 2,000 students by taking forward the programme to Chennai and Hyderabad, said S. Premkumar, Chief Mentor of HCL TalentCare. Pvt. Ltd.
“There is a talent divide that been created as more than 75 per cent graduates today are not job-ready. India Inc. is witnessing high attrition rates of 20 per cent and above because of expectation mismatch at 0-3 year experience band that is hurting enterprises very badly,” he said.

CCI orders probe against Ericsson (Register and Login to read Full News..)

:: Science and Technology ::

SpaceX cargo ship returns to Earth

SpaceX’s unmanned Dragon supply ship left the International Space Station and hours later splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California, NASA said.
The Dragon began its journey back to Earth at 7:04 am, when the U.S. space agency broadcast images of the white capsule floating away from the space station’s robotic arm. The vessel, aided by parachutes, splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Long Beach, California at 1642 GMT, SpaceX said.
The Dragon is the only supply ship capable of returning to Earth intact. This time it carried some1,400 kg of cargo back from the orbiting outpost.
The spaceship launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on April 14 and arrived at the space station three days later with a load of food and supplies.
The ISS is staffed with half a dozen global astronauts who typically live there for about six months at a time.
Two men, American astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, are spending one year at the lab to test the limits of the human body and mind to help scientists prepare for longer, deep space missions in the future. They will depart next March. The Dragon’s latest cargo mission is the sixth official trip of 12 scheduled as part of a SpaceX contract with NASA worth $1.6 billion.
SpaceX’s next supply trip is scheduled for June 26.
The other US commercial space station supplier, Orbital, is temporarily out of commission after its Antares rocket exploded shortly after liftoff in October 2014, destroying the Cygnus cargo craft.
Orbital said an engine failure was to blame for the explosion, citing a flaw with the decades-old Ukrainian-designed AJ-26s, that were refurbished by Aerojet Rocketdyne.
Russia’s space programme has also suffered setbacks, including the recent loss of an unmanned Progress spacecraft meant
to supply the ISS.
It lost contact with Earth, shortly after take-off on April 28, before disintegrating on re-entry less than two weeks later.

:: Sports ::

Naik to lead India

Cricket Association for the Blind in India (CABI), affiliated to Paralympic Committee of India (PCI) and World Blind Cricket (WBC) announced the side led by Shekar Naik for India’s tour to England.
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) had invited the Indian blind team to play three T20 and three One-Day matches from May 24-31, followed by a tour to Bahrain from June 1-4.
The players have trained in Valsad since May 18.