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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 27 September 2014

International

Obama wants Modi to join fight on IS, Ebola

• In his summit discussions with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the coming days U.S. President Barack Obama is likely push strongly towards having India play an active role on the global stage, including in the fight against the Islamic State and the scramble to contain Ebola.
• In a media briefing with senior administration officials on 26th september the U.S. was also quick to clarify that the summons issued against Mr. Modi in the Federal District Court of New York could not be delivered to him while he was in the U.S. and he was immune from prosecution at this time. The allegations in the case pertain to the role that the plaintiffs perceived Mr. Modi to have played in presiding over the anti-Muslim pogrom that occurred in Gujarat in 2002.
• Previewing some of the likely subjects of discussion between the two leaders the officials recognised that their summit would occur at a “remarkable time in international affairs,” including the fight against IS in West Asia and the challenge of tackling Ebola in West Africa.
• The officials also reiterated the summit meeting’s intention to address a broad spectrum of policy issues including security cooperation, defence, trade, and India’s positive role in numerous trilateral contexts.

National

Apple Festival starts in Himachal Pradesh

• The Himachal Pradesh State Tourism Department has launched an Apple Festival to showcase and promote locally produced apples and apple made products among tourist.
• The Tourism Departments also plans to take the tourists to the apple orchards itself so that they may have a more hands-on experience of the plucking, packaging and marketing processes involved. The department also conducted a competition for farmers growing exotic varieties of apples. Various local hotels and food chains have also set up stalls selling apple based products.

The ‘Save Kappatagudda’ campaign

• The ‘Save Kappatagudda’ campaign, to urge the State government not to drop the plans to declare Kappatagudda hill ranges in Gadag district a wildlife sanctuary, was launched.
• Environmental activists, religious leaders, farmers, academics, students, wildlife experts, residents of villages surrounding Kappatagudda and others, led by the former chairman of the Western Ghats Task Force Anant Hegde Ashisar and Nandiveri Math seer Sri Shivakumara Swami, conducted a meeting near the Deputy Commissioner’s office.
• Mr. Ashisar said the government had dropped declaring Kappatagudda a wildlife sanctuary citing the livelihood of the poor. However, the wildlife sanctuary status for the region would not affect the livelihood of the people as there was no proposal either to vacate village residents or ban farming activities. It will only prevent mining activities. If it is not declared a wildlife sanctuary, it will provide scope for the exploitation of the mineral deposits and harm the ecology, he explained.
• Mr. Ashisar said the seer of Gadag Tontadarya Math, Siddhalinga Swami, who led the agitation against setting up the POSCO steel plant, and Annadaneshwara Mahashivayogi Math seer, Abhinava Annadaneshwara Swami, have extended support to the ‘Save Kappatagudda’ campaign.

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Sports

Asian games 2014: 8th day

• India earned their second gold medal in the 17th Asian Games after the men’s compound archery team bagged the yellow metal by getting the better of South Korea.
• The Indian women’s compound team, meanwhile, settled for a bronze after beating Iran in the third-place play-off. The Indian men’s trio of Abhishek Verma, Rajat Chauhan and Sandeep Kumar eked out a narrow 227-225 victory over the hosts to give the country their second gold medal in eight days.
• Indian women had earlier lost the semi-finals by a slim margin of 224-226 against Chinese Taipei to set up a bronze-medal play-off with Iran.
Sandeep Sejwal’s bronze in 50m breaststroke
• Sandeep Sejwal won a rare swimming medal for India at the Asian Games, with his coach insisting that better facilities at home would have fetched him the gold.
• Sejwal won the bronze in the 50m breaststroke with a timing of 28.26s, and it was only the third Asiad medal in the pool by an Indian in the last 28 years.
• Khajan Singh clinched a silver in 200m butterfly at Seoul in 1986 and Virdhawal Khade bagged a bronze in the 50m butterfly event in Guangzhou four years ago.

Science & technology

Earth’s water is older than the solar system

• Up to half the water on Earth is likely older than the solar system, raising the likelihood that life exists elsewhere in the galaxy, according to a study.
• The research in the journal Science found that “a significant fraction” of the water on Earth was inherited from interstellar space, and was there before the Sun was formed some 4.6 billion years ago.
• Researchers can tell where the water comes from by examining the ratio of hydrogen to deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen, in water molecules. Water or ice that comes from interstellar space has a high ratio of deuterium to hydrogen, because it forms at such low temperatures.
• But scientists have not known how much deuterium was removed in the process of the Sun’s birth, or how much deuterium-rich water-ice the solar system would have produced when it was first born.
• Scientists simulated the origin of a planet under conditions where all the deuterium from space ice has already been eliminated.