Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 30 June 2014

M.K. Narayanan has resigned as Governor of West Bengal

Two days after the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) recorded his statement as a witness in the probe into kickbacks in the 2010 AgustaWestland chopper deal, M.K. Narayanan has resigned as Governor of West Bengal.
The first Governor to be questioned by an investigative agency, Mr Narayanan is the fourth Governor to resign following pressure from the BJP government on appointees of the UPA government. A formal acceptance of the resignation by the President is awaited.
The 80-year-old Narayanan, a former director of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and National Security Adviser (NSA) in the first Manmohan Singh government, is considered close to the Congress and his tenure would have come to an end in January 2015.
As NSA, he had in 2005 participated in a meeting on the chopper deal. With Mr. Narayanan’s resignation, Goa Governor B.V. Wanchoo, who as chief of the Special Protection Group, had participated in the same meeting, will be under pressure to quit as the CBI will be examining him soon.

India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle C-23 successfully put five foreign satellites into orbit in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Indian Space Research Organisation’s spaceport in Sriharikota.
In a smooth 20-minute mission, the ISRO launched the 714-kg French earth observation satellite SPOT-7, the 14-kg German AISAT, the two 15-kg Canadian NLS7.1 (CAN-X4) and NLS7.2 (CAN-X5) and the 7-kg Singapore VELOX-1. Following a “perfect” lift-off at 9.52 a.m., the PSLV-C23’s four stages came to life and fell off as programmed — the 4-storey heat shield which protected the satellites from turbulence, split in two and fell into the Bay of Bengal. Soon, all five were in their slots at a height of more than 660 km.
Observing that 40 of the 67 PSLV satellites were put into orbit from 19 foreign countries, Mr. Modi said it was “a global endorsement of India’s capabilities”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked India’s space community to take up “the challenge of developing a Saarc satellite” which can be dedicated to “our neighbourhood, as a gift from India”.
He suggested that the Saarc satellite could provide a full range of applications and services to all neighbours of India. He also asked the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) “to enlarge the footprint of our satellite-based navigation system to cover all of South India.”
Mr. Modi, who addressed the ISRO employees from the Mission Control Centre (MCC) at Sriharikota after the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C23) successfully put five foreign satellites into orbit, wanted the ISRO to develop more advanced satellites with higher degree of computation, imaging and transmission. “We must expand our satellite footprint in terms of frequency and quality.”
The Prime Minister praised India’s space scientists for helping the country become a self-reliant space power. India could be proud that its space programme was indigenous and the country developed it despite international hurdles.

Israel issued a brusque warning to Hamas, demanding it prevent rocket fire from Gaza as fears grew of a new confrontation around the coastal Palestinian enclave.
Militants fired 14 rockets at southern Israel during the morning, sending tension soaring and drawing a warning from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that unless the Islamist movement cracked down on those behind the attacks the Israeli military would step in.
If this fire continues there are two possibilities: either Hamas stops it as the responsible authority in the area, or we will stop it.

The Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT),dismissed an appeal filed by Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) against capital market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), which rejected RIL’s consent application on an insider trading case.
The case involved trading in shares of RIL’s group company, Reliance Petroleum, in November, 2007.
“Since Section 15T(2) is deleted and Section 15JB (4) is inserted to the SEBI Act with retrospective effect from April 20, 2007, by Ordinance No: 2 of 2014, which bars appeal against any order passed in consent proceedings, we have no option but to dismiss the appeal,” said Justice J. P. Devadhar, Presiding Officer of SAT, in his order.