Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 28 March 2014

Amnesty report

• Indian President Pranab Mukherjee rejected the mercy petitions of 18 prisoners on death row in 2013, the highest number of rejections by any President in the last 25 years, according to Amnesty International’s annual review of the death penalty worldwide.Only one execution took place in India – that of Mohammad Afzal Guru in February last year.

• Amnesty has raised concerns about the fairness of Afzal Guru’s trial, noting that he did not receive legal representation of his choice or a lawyer with adequate experience at the trial stage.
  Despite a marked global trend towards the abolition of the death sentence, the pattern was disrupted by a sharp spike in the number of executions in Iran (369) and Iraq (169) in 2013, leading to a 15 per cent increase in the global figure for executions as compared to 2012.

• Amnesty International says that it stopped publishing Chinese execution numbers from 2009 in protest against the Chinese government’s refusal to provide the organisation with figures.

• Nevertheless, it claims China accounts for the single largest number of executions, running “into thousands.”

• Significantly, the USA is the only country to have carried out executions in the Americas, although the numbers fell by four between 2012 and 2013 that saw 39 executions.

• There were 3108 people on death row last year, with Texas accounting for 41 per cent of all executions in the country.

Prithvi II missile

• India has recently successfully test-fired its nuclear-capable Prithvi-II surface-to-surface missile from a military base in Odisha.
• The indigenously-developed ballistic missile with a maximum range of 350 km was fired from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur in Balasore district, about 230 km from Bhubaneswar.
• The Strategic Forces Command (SFC) of the Indian Army conducted the test as part of a regular training exercise.
• Prithvi is India’s first indigenously-built ballistic missile. It is one of the five missiles being developed under the country’s Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme.
• The battlefield missile, with flight duration of 483 seconds and a peak altitude of 43.5 km, can carry a 500-kg warhead.
• The missile has features to deceive anti-ballistic missiles and uses an advanced inertial guidance system with manoeuvring capabilities and reaches its target within a few metres of accuracy.
• It has a higher lethal effect compared to equivalent missiles in the world.

IAF Super Hercules

• A recent and most modern acquisition of the Indian Air Force from the United States, the C-130J Super Hercules military transport aircraft, crashed near Gwalior, killing all five IAF personnel on board.

• The wreckage of the aircraft was strewn along the Madhya Pradesh-Rajasthan border, near Karauli district, about 165 km from Jaipur. Those killed in the crash are Wing Commander Prashant Joshi, Wing Commander Raji Nair, Squadron Leader Kaushik Mishra, Squadron Leader Ashish Yadav (navigator) and Warrant Officer Krishnapal Singh (flight engineer), IAF officers said.

• The aircraft took off from Agra for a routine flying training mission. A court of inquiry has been ordered to investigate the cause of the accident.

GSLV Mark III

• India took the first step towards the liftoff of the experimental mission of its gigantic Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mark III when the rocket’s core stage, weighing more than 110 tonnes, was flagged off from the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre, Mahendragiri, near Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu, to Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.

• The significance of the mission is that it will be a forerunner to India sending its astronauts to space. For, the GSLV-Mk III in this flight will carry a crew capsule without astronauts. The capsule will return to earth with the help of parachutes. The mission will take place in June or first week of July.

• The Indian Space Research Organisation calls its mission to send Indian astronauts to space the Human Space Flight (HSF) programme.

• GSLV-Mk III is the “muscular sibling” of GSLV-Mk II which has an indigenous cryogenic engine. GSLV-Mk III can put a communication satellite weighing four tonnes into geo-synchronous transfer orbit or a 10-tonne satellite into low-earth orbit.

Semi-final spot for India fixed

• If any proof was needed that the firestorm of controversy from home had not blown as far as Bangladesh, India provided it in resounding fashion.
• M.S. Dhoni’s men advanced to the semifinals of the ICC World T20 rather imperiously at the Sher-e-Bangla stadium mauling a hapless Bangladesh by eight wickets.
• India needed 139 to win, and matters were wrapped up with nine balls to spare.

India’s external debt

• India’s total external debt stock stood at $ 426.0 billion on 31 December 2013, 5.2 per cent higher than that on 31, March, 2013. The external debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio has marginally worsened from 23.3 percent to 21.8 per cent.

• The increase in external debt was due to long-term debt, especially Non Resident Indian (NRI) deposits.

• Component-wise, according to the release, commercial borrowings accounted for 31.5 per cent of the total external debt, followed by NRI deposits (23.2 per cent) and multilateral debt (12.3 per cent). Government sovereign external debt stood at $76.4 billion, (17.9 per cent of total external debt) on 31 December 2013 against $81.7 billion (20.2 per cent) on 31 March 2013

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Sources: Various News Papers & PIB

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