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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 4 July 2015

Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 4 July 2015

Ira Singhal topped the prestigious civil services examination to select IAS and IPS officers, with four of the top five positions going to women, according to results announced by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on Saturday.
A total of 1,236 candidates cleared the test and were recommended for appointment to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS), Indian Police Service (IPS) and various Central services.
The first four positions went to Ira Singhal, Renu Raj, Nidhi Gupta and Vandana Rao, with Suharsha Bhagat the sole male in the top five.
Besides 590 candidates from the general category, the test was cleared by 354 candidates from Other Backward Classes, 194 from Scheduled Castes and 98 from Scheduled Tribes.
The result of one candidate was withheld, according to the official announcement from the UPSC.
This was the first time that the UPSC declared the final results within four days of the closing date for the personality tests or interviews.
The annual civil services examination is conducted by the UPSC in three stages – preliminary, mains and interviews – to select candidates for the elite services.

Chief Economic Adviser (CEA) Arvind Subramanian shared data on Thursday that suggests that before the introduction of the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme (DBT) one in four subsidised LPG cylinders were going to “ghost beneficiaries.”
The elimination of ghost beneficiaries is estimated to have saved the government Rs. 12,700 crore on its subsidy bill in 2014-15, he said.
The savings during the current year are estimated at Rs. 6,500 crore. He said contrary to the government’s expectations the sales of commercial LPG rose after the shift only marginally — by 6 per cent.
Savings from the shift to the DBT would be even greater if the tax policy could be rationalised, the CEA said.
This is because a huge chunk of the difference between the subsidised and the market prices of LPG is accounted for the various central and State taxes.

The French government has rejected an asylum request from Julian Assange, saying he is “not in immediate danger” while holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in west London.
The WikiLeaks founder wrote an open letter to President Francois Hollande urging the French government to grant him refugee status, even though such a move would offer him no realistic chance of freedom.
Swedish prosecutors have been trying since 2010 to question Mr. Assange about allegations of rape and sexual molestation. Mr. Assange denies the claims.
Prominent French figures, including footballer Eric Cantona, and the bestselling economist Thomas Piketty, appealed for France to grant Mr. Assange haven.

The government denied what appeared to be a major shift in India’s policy on Israel, particularly on UN votes related to the Palestinian cause, after it abstained from a vote against Israel at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on Friday.
The resolution (A/HRC/29/L.35) had welcomed the UN Human Rights Council report, which found evidence of “alleged war crimes” committed by both Israel and Hamas during the Gaza conflict in 2014, particularly calling for accountability of Israeli officials.
Significantly, India had voted against Israel and in favour of the UNHRC resolution in July 2014 that had instituted this very inquiry report into the Gaza violence in which more than 2,300 had been killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.

However the government denied any policy shift, indicating that India abstained because the UNHRC resolution had included a reference to taking Israel to the International Criminal Court, which India considers “intrusive.
Forty one countries voted in favour of the resolution against Israel, while only the U.S. voted against.

About a third of the world’s polar bears could be in imminent danger from greenhouse gas emissions in as soon as a decade, a U.S. government report shows.
U.S. Geological Survey said scientific models don’t bode well for polar bear populations across the world. Greenhouse gases are blamed for the climate warming that’s reducing polar bears' summer sea ice habitat.
Scientists saw no rebound in population in the projections that stretched to the year 2100.
The scientific models attempted to predict the effects on polar bear populations under two scenarios — one in which greenhouse gas emissions stabilised, and the other in which they continued unabated.
Under either scenario, the bears in the Alaska, Russia and Norway group with an estimated population of about 8,500 would start to be affected in either 2025 or 2030, said lead author Todd Atwood, an Alaska-based USGS research wildlife biologist.
Polar bears use sea ice for feeding, mating and giving birth. When the ice retreats in the summer, polar bears are forced to the land.
A study found the land-based food would not help it adapt to the loss of sea ice. USGS didn’t predict specific number declines and instead projected whether a population would see a decrease.

The government has evolved a mechanism for supplying coal to stressed power companies without blocks through an auction route, under which two e-auction windows would be created, Union Minster for Coal, Power and Renewable Energy, Piyush Goyal said.
He also said that the Centre was coming out with a tariff policy and a policy for bidding for Ultra Mega Power Plants (UMPP).
Addressing members of the Bharat Chamber of Commerce here on Friday, he said that the Ministry has decided to create two separate e-auction windows for coal, under which the floor price of coal would be linked with the status of the power purchase agreements that the companies hold.
Power companies without a PPA (Power Purchase Agreement) will have to bid at prices, which are 40 per cent above the CIL notified price and they would be free to sell the power.
Those companies with PPAs but without a letter of assurance (for coal supply) will bid at 20 per cent above the CIL price, the minister said that each of these category of companies would get an initial amount of five million tonne of coal as the Ministry finalises its new auction-based coal linkage policy.