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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 27 November 2014

National

Parliament passes Apprentices Bill 2014

• A Bill seeking to remove imprisonment as punishment for violating the provisions of the Apprentices Act, 1961 and allowing employers to fix the hours of work and leave as per their discretion or policy was passed by the Rajya Sabha.
• The Apprentices (Amendment) Bill, 2014 was passed by voice vote with a majority of speakers favouring the legislation, saying it is aimed at enhancing the skills of youth and make them employable.
• It had been passed by the Lok Sabha in the last session.
• Some members, however, had reservations saying certain provisions in the Bill are “draconian” as employers have been given full powers to deal with apprentices in any manner.
• Replying to the debate, Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya said the Bill was being brought to implement the Apprenticeship Policy by March 2015 which would help impart skills to youths and make them employable.
• He said the government had brought the policy keeping transparency in view and it would involve all stakeholders.
• Earlier, Satish Chandra Misra (BSP) said the government should not give so much power to the employers to deal with apprentices. “Don’t make such provisions which are draconian or do away with the penal provisions,” he said.
• Naresh Agarwal (SP) and CPI(M) members Tapan Sen and P. Rajeeve also made some observations on providing protection to apprentices and said the penalty of Rs. 500 was not adequate deterrent for employers on violating the Act.

Jaipur literature festival offers eclectic fare

• The Jaipur Literature Festival, scheduled from January 21 to 25, is likely to be more varied and diverse than its previous editions, as it promises to bridge historical, political and geographical boundaries. Nearly 200 writers, both from India and abroad, have confirmed participation.
• Ruth Padel, British poet and great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, British playwright Simon Armitage, Palestinian American poet Fady Joudah and poet Ashok Vajpeyi are among the writers lined up for the sessions.
• Underlining the global presence will be maestros of Nordic noir Hakan Nesser and Nils Nordberg; Pulitzer-winning American biographer Kai Bird; Helon Habila, one of the leading lights of Nigerian literature, and Mark Gevisser from South Africa, whose biography of the former South African President Thabo Mbeki won him international acclaim.
• At the poetry chapter of the festival, Pulitzer-winner Vijay Seshadri will join Hindi poet and Jnanpith award winner Kedarnath Singh and Hindi writer Vinod Kumar Shukla.
• Throwing light into the adaptation of her autobiography, Aaydan , for theatre, Marathi Dalit writer Urmila Pawar will speak along with Mumbai-based thespian Sushma Deshpande about their collaboration.
• As an integral part of the Indian narrative, a prominent theme of the festival will be cinema and its relationship with novels and theatre — Kannada writer and Jnanpith award winner Girish Karnad will be in conversation with prominent contemporary film-makers and British theatre director Tim Supple will explore the influence of Shakespeare in contemporary Indian cinema.
• Cinema giants and festival favourites Javed Akhtar and Prasoon Joshi will once again analyse the chemistry and magic common to poetry and Indian cinema.

Photographers of ‘The Hindu’ win prestigious awards

• Two photographers of The Hindu won prestigious awards for their work. Manob Chowdhury, the newspaper’s Jharkhand photographer, was awarded the Press Institute of India – International Committee of the Red Cross (PII-ICRC) award 2014 in the category ‘Best Photograph on a Humanitarian Subject’.
• He was chosen for his work documenting tribal communities affected by the armed conflict between Maoists and security personnel.
• Editor and columnist Prem Shankar Jha presented the award. The award ceremony was preceded by a panel discussion on the theme “Reporting on the Fate of Victims of Armed Violence.”
• K.R. Deepak, The Hindu ’s photographer in Vishakapatnam, was selected for the annual Media Foundation of India award in the arts and culture category. He won third place.

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Persons in news

Anoop Mishra will be new Lok Sabha Secretary-General

• Anoop Mishra, former Uttar Pradesh Chief Secretary, will be the new Secretary-General of the Lok Sabha.
• Speaker Sumitra Mahajan announced the appointment. Mr. Mishra, a former IAS officer of the 1978 batch, will have the rank and status of Cabinet Secretary with effect from December 1, 2014 to November 30, 2016 or until further orders.
• Mr. Mishra has held several important positions at the Centre and in Uttar Pradesh. He had been the Chief Secretary for a year with overall responsibility of the State administration, superintendence of law and order and development and infrastructure schemes.
• During his stint at the Centre, Mr. Mishra held, among several, the post of Joint Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, with the responsibility of strategic Ministries of Home, Defence, External Affairs, Atomic Energy and Space and the economic Ministries of Finance and Commerce, besides the Planning Commission.

International

OPEC meet keeps world on the edge

• As oil ministers of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meet in Vienna to press for a one million barrels a day production cut to support falling Brent crude oil prices, speculation is rife that Brent crude prices may stabilise at the current level or may plunge further to $75 a barrel due to lack of consensus among members.
• As some major oil producers have hinted at continuing their production to retain the market share, some analysts have predicted that the prices may plunge to $60 a barrel level, which seems unlikely.
• The price of Brent crude oil peaked this year at $115.15 a barrel on June 19. Since then, prices are down 31per cent to below $79 a barrel.
• “Most of the oil price declines occurred after Saudi Aramco started a price war on October 1 for all its exports, reducing those bound for Asia to the lowest level since 2008.
• The move suggests that the biggest member of the OPEC is prepared to let prices fall rather than cede market share by paring output to clear a supply surplus,” said Aviral Gupta, Founder & Investment Strategist, Mynte Advisors.
• “Saudi Arabia would need to reduce output about 500,000 barrels a day to eliminate the supply glut now stemming from the highest U.S. output in three decades.
• It is expected that crude oil prices could plunge to $60 a barrel if OPEC does not agree on a significant output cut when it meets in Vienna,” he added.
• However, this level would be unsustainable and might not be achieved, said experts. “To my mind, the price may not go down that much. The price has come down is due to the additional production coming from the U.S. from the shale reserves.
• Now there is a cost involved in producing such fuel and in case the price goes below $70, it may not be sustainable and there could be an automatic correction in prices,” said Rajesh Mokashi, Deputy Managing Director, CARE Ratings Ltd.

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Business & economy

WGC & IIM-A set up ‘India gold policy centre’

• In a unique initiative, the World Gold Council (WGC) along with the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), has set up ‘India Gold Policy Centre’ to conduct research on all aspects of the domestic gold industry.
• The objective of the centre is to develop insights into how the significant stocks of gold India owns can be used to advance growth, employment, social inclusion and economic wealth of the nation, a joint statement from the two organisations says.
• The centre aims to conduct research that has a practical application and that the industry and all stakeholders can use. “It has been estimated that India holds around 22,000 tonnes of gold, valued at over $1 trillion,’’ World Gold Council PR, MD, India, Somasundaram said in the statement.
• The centre will commence its operations from December, and is situated within the campus of IIMA. It is being set up with a financial grant from the WGC and will operate independently.
• “As part of the initiative taken by the IIMA to connect more closely with practice, and in line with our vision to contribute and reach out to industry, the gold centre will provide innovative solutions and insights for the gold industry through cutting-edge research,’’ Professor Ashish Nanda, Director, IIMA, said.

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Sports

Cricketer Phillip Hughes dies of injuries

• Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes died in hospital in Sydney, two days after the international batsman was struck on the head by a ball during a domestic match.
• Governing body Cricket Australia (CA) confirmed the 25-year-old had lost his fight for life, casting a pall over a cricket-mad nation which is co-hosting the World Cup early next year.
• "We are extremely sad to announce that Phillip Hughes has passed away at the age of 25," CA said on its Twitter feed.
• "Our thoughts go out to Phillip's family, friends, and the entire cricket community on this incredibly sad day. "He was not in pain before he passed and was surrounded by his family and close friends.
• "As a cricket community, we mourn his loss and extend our deepest sympathies to Phillips family and friends at this incredibly sad time."

Rio de Janeiro wins legal battle over Olympic golf course

• A Rio de Janeiro judge denied a request from prosecutors to halt construction of the Olympic golf course because of environmental concerns, curtailing fears that the venue won’t be ready in time for test events.
• Judge Eduardo Antonio Klausner said in his decision that there is “no new fact justifying ... a halt in the implementation of the golf course for the Olympics.”
• It wasn’t clear if state prosecutors would seek to appeal Wednesday’s ruling, but legal challenges were expected to continue.
• In a 27-page legal brief made public last week, prosecutors had termed “laughable” proposals by the city and the course developer to modify the layout to reduce the environmental impact.
• The judge ruled that by changing one of the holes of the golf course, the developers did enough to preserve the local vegetation.
• He said that the relocation of hole No. 12 made way for a 32-metre-long wildlife corridor that will keep the vegetation intact. He also said that the type of grass being used on the golf course does not endanger the vegetation already in place in the area.
• Prosecutors initially said they wanted a wildlife corridor of about 400 meters long to make sure the local environment was properly preserved.
• The course, estimated by local media to be about 70 percent completed, is being cut out of a nature reserve in western Rio near the main cluster of Olympic venues and is part of a complex of luxury apartments selling for $3 million to $7 million.
• Prosecutors have argued the environment must be the primary concern not the Olympics or the real estate development.

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Science & technology

Scientists found a new class of potent anti-malarial drugs

• An international team of scientists has found a new class of molecules that showed a high level of potency against human malaria parasites in animal trials.
• The new compounds, known as pyrazoleamides, were effective against Plasmodium falciparum as well as Plasmodium vivax, the two most prevalent parasite species causing human malaria, say Akhil B. Vaidya of the Drexel University College of Medicine in the U.S. and the other scientists in a paper just published in Nature Communications.
• Globally, there were about 207 million malaria cases and some 627,000 deaths in 2012, according the World Health Organization’s estimates.
• “Many of the existing antimalarial drugs stop working because of resistance development, [and] so it is essential to feed the pipeline with new antimalarial drugs through discovery and development,” remarked Prof. Vaidya in an email.
• “The compounds we describe in this paper work very rapidly through a novel mechanism in malaria parasites, and thus would work against drug resistant parasites currently infecting humans.”
• At one stage in its complicated lifecycle, the parasite infects red blood cells and replicates inside them. Using a mouse model carrying human red blood cells, the scientists examined the drug’s effect on P. falciparum, which causes the most dangerous forms of malaria.
• As the parasite matures inside the red blood cells, it produces a change in the permeability of the membrane around those cells. That leads to a sharp increase in sodium levels in the red blood cells.
• The new pyrazoleamides affect a molecular pump the parasite relies on to control its own sodium levels. As a result, the parasite swells rapidly, followed by what the paper described as “dramatic apparent bursting.”

Deep Ocean has no role in sea level rise: study

• In these times of global warming, it is a well-known fact that the sea levels of the Earth’s oceans are rising due to melting icebergs and glaciers and thermal expansion due to ocean warming caused by the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases.
• A new study by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) scientists has found that the contribution to sea level rise is only from the upper half (0-2,000m) of the ocean and the ocean below this depth has no role to play in sea level rise.
• This conclusion was arrived at by subtracting the sea level changes occurring at 0 to 2,000 metres depth from that of the entire water column. The subtraction provided only zero values.
• The total contribution to sea level rise from the entire water column was determined using satellite altimetry (measuring height) using NASA’s Jason-1 and Jason-2 satellites. Satellite altimetry measured the changes in sea level and annual mean sea level increases were obtained for the study period (2005 to 2013).
• From the values obtained by this method the contributions due to thermal expansion as measured by the Argo array of floats were subtracted. Water expands as it gets warmer. The sea level is rising partly because of this expansion.
• Scientists have been recording the temperature and sea levels of the top half of the ocean directly since 2005, using a network of 3,000 floating temperature probes called the Argo array of floats.
• The Argo floats are used to measure sea level variations due to thermal expansion (steric sea level) of the ocean in the 0-2,000m ocean layer.
• To subtract the sea level variations due to ice berg and glacier melt data from the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) of NASA were used.