(Current Affairs) International Events | October: 2015

International Events

Facebook in defensive mode on Internet.org

  • Facebook has defended its Internet.org initiative as a “gateway” to provide low cost access to the internet after a government panel on net neutrality opposed it saying that the social networking giant was playing the role of a gatekeeper.

  • “Internet.org acts as a gateway, as opposed to a gatekeeper, to internet access by breaking down the cost, infrastructure and social barriers that exist today,” Facebook vice president for Mobile and Global Access Policy Kevin Martin said in a statement.

  • The government panel discussed Facebook’s Internet.org while preparing the report and found that it provided free access for only a few websites until April 2015.

  • Net neutrality implies that equal treatment be accorded to all internet traffic and no priority be given to an entity or company based on payment to content or service providers such as telecom companies, which is seen as discriminatory.

  • The neutrality debate gained momentum in India after telecom operator Airtel launched a platform, Airtel Zero, that would allow free access of some websites on it network. The companies were asked to pay Airtel for joining the platform.

  • Internet.org, on the other hand, is a Facebook-led initiative which aims to bring 5 billion people online in partnership with tech giants like Samsung and Qualcomm as well as mobile operators.

Taiwan to elect first woman President

  • Taiwan’s top two political parties have each nominated a woman for President in 2016, a historic first signalling acceptance of female leadership.
  • The ruling Nationalist Party on Sunday picked as its candidate Hung Hsiu-chu (in picture), a former teacher and the current deputy legislative speaker.
  • Ms. Hung, who supports friendly relations with China, will run against Tsai Ing-wen, the opposition Democratic Progressive Party chairwoman.Tsai leads in opinion polls.

British monarchy’s comes under attack

  • When the famously ill-spoken Prince Phillip, the present British monarch’s husband, recently visited a community centre, he reportedly asked the women “So whom are you sponging on?” His hosts politely ignored his comment.

  • The public response to the latest royal family controversy however suggests that the culture of monarchical exceptionalism in this country is changing.

  • With the British media carrying reports of a “livid” Queen Elizabeth ordering an inquiry into the source of the leak of video footage dating back to 1933, showing her throwing the Nazi salute as a child, the furore over the publication of so-called ‘private’ royal family material is roiling public opinion in Britain.

  • The issue has thrown up issues of media freedom vis-à-vis the monarchy — an institution that most Britons of a earlier generation instinctively feel must be shielded from the darker aspects of its past, of which its well-documented links with fascism, and more notably the Third Reich, are a part.

  • The Sun , owned by the Murdoch empire, is a defiantly sensationalist newspaper, who critics say had an eye on the circulation spurt that the publication of such a report would generate. It claims it obtained the footage from a ‘legitimate source’ and discussed its publication editorially for weeks, and also got it cleared from its lawyers.

Greek Banks Reopen after a long gap

  • Greeks queued outside banks on Monday as they reopened three weeks after closing to stop the system collapsing under a flood of withdrawals, the first cautious sign of a return to normal after a deal to start talks on a new package of bailout reforms.

  • However capital controls will remain and payments and wire transfers abroad will still not be possible - a situation which German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday was “not a normal life” and warranted swift negotiations on a new bailout.

  • The stock market will also remain closed until further notice.

  • Queues formed outside bank branches in central Athens as people waited to take care of business frozen during the three week-long bank holiday.

  • Limits on cash withdrawals have been made slightly more flexible, with a weekly limit of 420 euros in place of the daily 60 euro limit previously.

  • Greeks will be able to deposit cheques but not cash, pay bills as well as have access to safety deposit boxes and withdraw money without an ATM card.

  • Bankers said there may be minor disruptions after the three-week interruption to services but they expected services to resume largely as normal.

  • The bank closures were the most visible sign of the crisis that took Greece to the brink of falling out of the euro earlier this month. But Tsipras is eyeing a fresh start and swift talks on the bailout that will keep Greece afloat.

Greece braces for next vote

  • Greek government said on Tuesday that it wants to see a final deal on its international bailout hammered out by August 20, as it presented Parliament with more draft legislation on the cash-for-reforms agreement.

  • Lawmakers are due to vote on a second batch of reforms Wednesday in a fresh test of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ authority, after he suffered a major rebellion in his radical-left party Syriza during a vote on a first tranche of bailout measures last week.

  • After Parliament has voted on the second bill — which must pass if Greece is to receive the bailout worth up to €86 billion ($93 billion) over three years — the government “will immediately resume negotiations with the (lender) institutions, EU, ECB and IMF, which should take until August 20 at the latest,” said government spokeswoman Olga Gerovassili.

  • Tsipras managed to push the first series of unpopular reforms through Parliament last Wednesday — including sweeping changes to Greece’s taxes, pensions and labour rules — but only with the help of pro-European opposition parties.

  • Within Syriza, 32 of the party’s 149 MPs voted against the measures, including former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. A further six abstained.

  • The second bill includes an EU directive, adopted after the financial crisis in Cyprus in 2013, that guarantees bank deposits up to 100,000 euros ($108,000), as well as civil justice reforms designed to speed up legal proceedings and reduce their costs.

BRICS bank opens in Shanghai

  • The Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) grouping has formally opened the New Development Bank (NDB) as a dedicated channel of alternate finance, which will focus on emerging economies and the Global South.

  • Top officials of the new bank, which opened on Tuesday in Shanghai, stressed that the NDB would not rival but complement the western backed International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, born out of the Bretton Woods Conference of the forties.

  • However, the emergence of the NDB and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) — a China-led initiative to fund infrastructure in Asia — was hastened by the reluctance by the West, especially the United States, since 2010, to grant emerging economies a greater say within the IMF.

Hotline for closer ties

  • Rejecting the possibility of a rivalry between the two newly established banks, NDB’s first President Kundapur Vaman Kamath stressed that after a meeting in Beijing with the AIIB, the NDB had decided to establish a “hotline” with the AIIB to forge closer ties between “new institutions coming together with a completely different approach”.

  • The AIIB and the complementary $ 40 billion Silk Road Fund are expected to fund some of projects along Beijing-proposed Belt and Road initiative, aimed at the integration of Eurasian economies.

  • Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, who along with economist Nicholas Stern conceptualised the formation of a BRICS-led bank, has said the NDB is “going to try to be a 21st century institution”. In an interview with the website Democracy Now, Mr Stiglitz observed: “The other institutions have been trying to adapt from the 20th century — 1944 was when they were founded — but, you know, it’s difficult to move these big institutions, particularly difficult.”

  • The NDB will have an initial capital of US$50 billion, which will be raised to US$100 billion within two years.

  • The NDB planned to issue its first loans in April next year, Mr. Kamath, a former head of ICICI Bank had announced earlier this month. China will pitch in $41 billion to the NDB — the highest within the BRICS group. Consequently, it will have a 39.5 per cent share of voting rights.

  • Brazil, India and Russia will each pump in $18 billion, while South Africa’s contribution would stand at $ 5 billion. The bank is expected to start operations at the end of this year or early in 2016.

China begins assembling world’s largest radio telescope

  • China today started assembling the world’s largest radio telescope, whose dish has the size of 30 football grounds, in the mountains of southwest Guizhou Province to enhance its ability to observe outer space.
  • China today started assembling the world’s largest radio telescope, whose dish has the size of 30 football grounds, in the mountains of southwest Guizhou Province to enhance its ability to observe outer space.
  • The Chinese technicians began to assemble the telescope’s reflector, which is 500 meters in diameter and made up of 4,450 panels. Each panel is an equilateral triangle with a side length of 11 meters.
  • Once completed, the single-aperture spherical telescope called ‘FAST’ will be the world’s largest, overtaking Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, which is 300 meters in diameter, state-run Xinhua news agency reported..
  • Wu Xiangping, director-general of Chinese Astronomical Society, said that for years Chinese scientists have worked on “second hand” data collected by others and failed to achieve breakthrough.
  • With a perimeter of about 1.6 km, it will take about 40 minutes to walk around the telescope. The giant dish is built upon a naturally-formed bowl-like valley in the southern part of Guizhou.
  • The Karst formation in the local landscape is good for draining rainwater underground and protecting the reflector, Sun said.
  • The construction of the telescope began in March 2011 and is set to finish next year.

China;s Ambitious Search For aliens

  • China is currently in the process of building the world’s largest single-aperture telescope, FAST, according to reports emerging in its state media.
  • Its reflector the size of more than 30 football fields, the telescope is an attempt by China (under the project Breakthrough Listen, envisioned by American physicist Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner) to find signs of alien life after NASA’s groundbreaking announcement that an ‘Earth 2.02 was discovered by its planet-hunting Kepler telescope.
  • According to Xinhua, built in the deep mountains of China’s Guizhou province, the diameter of the telescope’s reflector will be 500 meters and will be made up of 4,450 panels, easily surpassing Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, “only” 305 meters in diameter.
  • With a perimeter of more than 1.5 km, it will take about 40 minutes to complete one round of the telescope.
  • The valley in Guizhou has “radio silence,” with no habitation in the radius of five kilometers and only one county in the radius of 25 kilometers

WTO strikes $1.3tn deal to wipe out IT trade tariffs

  • The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has agreed to eliminate trade tariffs on more than 200 technology products, paving the way for price cuts across a range of IT offerings from 2016.
  • These products include semi-conductors, magnetic resonance imaging machines, manufacturing tools for printed circuits, telecommunications satellites, touchscreens and more.
  • Furthermore, the agreement also sets out a commitment to addressing other barriers to trade in the IT sector, while maintaining a roll-call of products that could be included on the list at a later date.
  • The move marks an expansion of a similar deal waved through by the WTO in 1996, which benefited 81 of the organisation’s members and saw prices fall across a range of products.
  • However, many of the technology products that consumers and businesses rely on today weren’t covered by the 1996 deal, so in 2012 members began work on expanding it.
  • As a result, the updated arrangement will benefit all 161 members of the WTO, allowing them to take advantage of duty-free market access on the 201 listed products when participating in trades with one another.
  • This latest deal was voted for by 54 of the WTO’s 161 members, who now have until October to draft guidelines that outline how the terms of the proposals will be met, in the hope of having them officiated by December 2015.
  • This, the WTO claimed, should lead to tariffs being cut on some of the listed products by 2016, and all of them within the next three years.
  • Roberto Azevêdo, director-general of the WTO, said the “landmark deal” should open up new economic opportunities across the globe.

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