(Current Affairs) International Events | April: 2016

International Events

Syrian rebel targets will continue to be bombed by Russia

  • The Turkish army shelled Kurdish militia in northern Syria for a second day on Sunday, while Russia made clear it would continue bombing Syrian rebel targets, raising doubts that a planned ceasefire would bring much relief.

  • Major powers agreed on to a limited cessation of hostilities in Syria but the deal does not take effect until the end of this week and was not signed by any warring parties — the Damascus government and numerous rebel factions fighting it.

  • Russian bombing raids directed at rebel groups are meanwhile helping the Syrian army to achieve what could be its biggest victory of the war in the battle for Aleppo, the country’s largest city and commercial hub before the conflict.

  • The situation has been complicated by the involvement of Kurdish-backed combatants in the area north of Aleppo near the Turkish border, which has drawn a swift military response from artillery in Turkey.

Nationwide campaign in Brazil against Zika virus

  • Brazil’s government launched a nationwide campaign to fight the Zika virus, with President Dilma Rousseff and Cabinet Ministers personally visiting homes and handing out leaf-lets along with 220,000 troops.
  • Under a scorching sun in the neighbourhood of Zepellin in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, which will host the Olympic Games in August, Ms. Roussef said everyone needed to take part in the battle against the mosquito carrying Zika, suspected of causing the birth defect microcephaly.
  • The so-called National Day for “Zero Zika” is focused on raising awareness about the disease, Ms. Rousseff said. Other operations specifically aimed at spreading larvicides and eliminating breeding spots will be launched later this month.
  • The Zika outbreak is affecting large parts of Latin America and the Caribbean and is likely to spread to all countries in the Americas except for Canada and Chile.

More reforms needed to make dream of ‘Make in India’ a reality

  • Thousands of people and mascots of lions swarmed the weekend opening of a “Make in India” drive to attract foreign direct investment, pitched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as “the biggest brand that India has ever created”.
  • But even as the Make in India hype scales new heights, some bosses question Mr. Modi’s delivery on promises to make it easier to do business, while marketing experts caution against creating unrealistic expectations.
  • More pressingly, key legislation such as a goods and services tax and land acquisition bill are stuck in parliament, just as global competitors such as Vietnam step up their own reform efforts.
  • Make In India has scored major wins, including a pledge by Tai- wan’s Foxconn to invest $5 billion in a new electronics manufacturing facility.
  • That has helped foreign direct investment to nearly double to $59 billion last year, the seventh most in the world, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
  • Yet in critical aspects, India remains far behind its goals. The proportion of manufacturing to gross domestic product has been stuck at around 17 per cent for five years, below the government’s goal to ramp it up to 25 per cent.
  • India has only created 4 million manufacturing jobs since 2010, according to Boston Consulting. At the current rate, India may only create 8 million jobs by 2022, well below the government’s goal of 100 million.

Lot of things are associated to High speed trains

  • High Speed Rail means different things in different contexts.One widely accepted definition applies to new lines running at 250 kmph and above, and existing lines that are able to run at 200 kmph and above.

  • High speed rail programs have been successful in Japan, China and several European countries such as France, Germany and Spain.

  • The benefits include reduced journey times that impact individuals and business, connectivity benefits to populations and markets, increased passenger comfort, mode shifts from more polluting air and road transport and consequently, lower road congestion.

  • High speed rail can create agglomeration benefits i.e., benefits that accrue from the clustering together of firms and labour markets, and regeneration benefits for an area.

  • The actual construction also provides an opportunity for employment and the potential for technology transfer.

  • The high speed lunch, like all other lunches, is not free. Environmental degradation along the route, dislocation of people, noise pollution, as well as regionally imbalanced development are potential pitfalls that need to be carefully negotiated.

  • How the high speed line interacts with existing transport choices is also crucial for the strength of the overall case.

  • India has been toying with the idea of high speed trains for fifteen years. The High Speed Rail Corporation (HSRC) of India was set up by the government in 2012 to de- sign and implement the country’s high speed projects.

  • Through this, feasibility studies for various segments of the ‘Diamond Quadrilateral’, a proposed high speed network spanning the country, connecting Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, were initiated.

  • Simultaneously, the government has pushed ahead with plans to develop a Rs.980 billion, 505 km segment be- tween Ahmedabad and Mumbai on which it will run “bullet” trains, as high speed trains are often called.

  • Higher speeds imply higher costs which may then necessitate higher ticket prices. Tickets will cost approximately Rs.2,800 and the journey will take approximately two hours.

  • This bullet train has brought into focus the parameters associated with high speed rail that need careful consideration.

  • The United Nations Environment Pro- gram (UNEP) and the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) published a study on the Ahmedabad-Mumbai train line last year.

  • The report points out that the region in question is highly active economically.

  • It is also a high density corridor (18 million passengers in 2010); connecting dense urban areas has been a key success factor for high speed rail in China and Europe.

  • Travel demand between 2010 and 2050 is expected to increase four-and- a-half times to 58.2 billion passenger kilometers according to the study.

  • In the HSR scenario, high speed trains cater to one-fifth of the total travel demand in 2050, and the growth rate of air travel slows, because of competition from high speed trains.

  • The HSR solution is also cleaner; CO2 emissions in 2050 are also lower by 0.2 MT and further emission drops are possible with decarbonisation of electricity, accord- ing to the UNEP.

  • In general, per passenger km, high speed rail has lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than road or air transport. It also supports lower emissions over the longer term as road and air passengers shift to trains.

  • Increasing the operating speed of existing lines would be one possible way forward for transforming India’s rail systems.

  • High speed lines require huge investments and cause long term demographic and economic impacts.

  • Their success depends on getting a comprehensive, context-specific optimal solution; at the very least this means getting speed, pricing, and distance right.

Violence in eastern Ukraine may start new Cold War

  • Violence in eastern Ukraine is intensifying and Russian-backed rebels have moved heavy weaponry back to the front line, international monitors warned as Moscow responded by accusing Kiev of violating a peace deal.

  • In the latest sign that peace efforts have made scant progress almost two years since Moscow annexed Crimea, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev described East- West relations as having “fall- en into a new Cold War” and said NATO was “hostile and closed” towards Russia.

  • Implementation of a deal agreed in Minsk a year ago, which would allow for the lifting of sanctions on Russia, and a lull in violence late last year raised hopes that the conflict that has killed more than 9,000 people could be resolved quickly.

Pope Francis first pontiff to meet Russian Orthodox Church

  •  Pope Francis became the first pontiff to ever meet a patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, as the two Christian leaders set aside centuries of division in a historic encounter.
  • The meeting was richly symbolic: Pope Francis, lead- er of the world’s 1.2 billion Ro- man Catholics, stood with Patriarch Kirill, leader of the largest church in the Eastern Orthodox world, with an estimated 150 million followers.
  • But it was also about geopolitics, rivalries among Orthodox leaders and, analysts say, the manoeuvrings of President Vladimir Putin of Russia — who is closely aligned with the conservative Russian church.
  • For Pope Francis, the meeting was an ecumenical and diplomatic coup that eluded his predecessors but that also opened him to criticism that his embrace of the Russian patriarch would indirectly give a boost to Mr. Putin as hewages a war in Syria and continues to meddle in Ukraine.

Ceasefire plan for Syria agreed between U.S. and Russia

  • Diplomats agreed to work toward a temporary “cessation of hostilities” in Syria’s civil war within a week, although efforts to secure a lasting ceasefire fell short.
  • The deal appeared to be the result of a compromise between the U.S., which had wanted an immediate ceasefire, and Russia, which had proposed one to start on March 1.
  • Although foreign ministers from the International Syria Support Group managed to seal an agreement to “accelerate and expand” deliveries of humanitarian aid to besieged Syrian communities beginning this week, their failure to agree on a ceasefire leaves the most critical step to resuming peace talks unresolved.
  • It was not clear from their comments afterward if deep differences regarding the truce and which groups would be eligible for it could be overcome.

Meet between Roman Catholic pope and Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church

  • The Roman Catholic Pope and the patriarch of Russian Orthodox Church are meeting for the first time in a bid to heal the 1000 year old rift between the western and the eastern branch of Christianity.
  • The meet between the two religious leaders has been on the cards for some time.
  • Roman Catholic Church has 1.2 billion members worldwide and Russian Orthodox Church has around 250 million members.

After US saying only political solution to Syria, Russia continues military action

  • For months now the U.S. has insisted there is no military solution to the Syrian civil war, only a political accord be- tween President Bashar Al- Assad and the fractured, divided opposition groups that have been trying to topple him.
  • But after days of intense bombing that could soon put the critical city of Aleppo back into the hands of Mr. Assad’s forces, the Russians may be proving the U.S. wrong.
  • There may be a military solution, one senior U.S. Official conceded, “just not our solution”, but that of President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
  • The Russian military action has changed the shape of a conflict that had efectively been stalemated for years.
  • Suddenly, Mr. Assad and his allies have momentum, and the U.S.-backed rebels are on the run.
  • His colleagues in the administration, however, fear that a three-month-long efort to begin the political process is near collapse.
  • If it fails, it will force Kerry and President Barack Obama, once again, to consider their Plan B: a far larger military effort, directed at Mr. Assad.
  • At the core of the U.S. strategic dilemma is that the Russian military adventure has been surprisingly effective in helping Mr. Assad reclaim the central cities he needs to hold power, at least in a rump-state version of Syria.

Political reconciliation process started in Maldives

  • Days after calls made separately by a visiting delegation of European parliamentarians and former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed for resumption of talks with political parties, Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom has announced his plan to hold negotiations with the parties again.

  • The move would be in the interest of progress, development and national unity.

  • Earlier this week, the delegation, consisting of three Members of the European Parliament, wanted the government to release political prisoners immediately and ensure full independence of judiciary and uphold freedom of expression and rightsof the political parties.

Zika virus reached China

  • China hasconfirmed its first case of the Zika virus in a man who had recently travelled to South America, the official Xinhua news agency said.
  • The virus, which is causing international alarm after spreading through much of the Americas, was detected in the eastern province of Jiangxi.
  • Chinese health authorities downplayed the risk of the mosquito-borne virus spreading because of the winter cold, Xinhua added.
  • Hong Kong’s Port Health office has stepped up inspections at the airport in response and reinforced training for boundary control inspectors, the statement added.

To face Taliban attack more troops send to U.S.

  • Hundreds more U.S. troops are headed for Afghanistan’s strife-torn Helmand province to shore up security forces who have struggled in the face of sustained Taliban attacks.
  • The core of the new force will provide more security and act as advisers to the Afghan army’s 215th Corps.
  • Security forces in the southern province have been plagued by high desertion and casualty rates.
  • The NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan declared its com- bat mission over at the end of 2014.

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