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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 21 July 2014

Parliament to discuss Gaza violence today

Rajya Sabha will have a short-duration discussion on violence in Gaza, where hundreds of people have lost their lives.
The government was placed in a tight spot over its reluctance to hold a discussion on the issue even after the motion was admitted by the presiding officer.
The discussion in Rajya Sabha will see the participation of Congress leaders Ghulam Nabi Azad and Jairam Ramesh, JD(U)’s K.C. Tyagi and CPI(M)’s P. Rajeev among others.

IMD says monsoon deficit has come down to 31%

The monsoon deficit has come down to 31 per cent with rains picking up in July across the country, giving relief to farmers.
Central and northwestern India have been receiving deficient rainfall, but even in these parts the monsoon has been making progress.
The monsoon is expected to remain good for the next two weeks in north, central, southern peninsula and eastern India.
However, parts of northwestern India, which includes western Rajasthan and Kutch region, may still receive weak rainfall.
In the next 24 to 48 hours, the weather system will bring in widespread good monsoon rains over Telangana, Chhattisgarh, east Madhya Pradesh and Vidarbha. The rain belt will gradually shift to bring rest of Madhya Pradesh and adjoining Maharashtra under its purview. By July 22-23, a fresh weather system will bring rains over Gangetic West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha.

Most rape victims in 2013 knew culprits: NCRB

The report titled “Crime In India 2013” says that a total of 33,707 cases of rape were registered under Section 376 of the IPC in the year and in 31,807 cases (94.4 per cent) the culprits were known to their victims.
According to the report, the cases of “incest rapes” too are on rise with 536 cases being registered in 2013 compared to 392 in 2012. Shockingly, most of the victims are in the age group of 10-18 years.
This situation cannot be dealt with merely by enacting laws. Society has to take strong initiatives to deal with this situation.

‘Google must adhere to map restriction policy’

Surveyor-General of India Swarna Subba Rao said "Google, which has been populating geospatial data in the cyber space for some time, has to follow the law of the land and adhere to the map restriction policy of the country".
Map restriction policy of the country does not allow detailed maps of defence and sensitive locations to be available in public domain.
The Government of India has specific guidelines laid down with regard to publication of maps in the public domain and all the maps have to be vetted by defence authorities before being published and Google has refused to follow it.
The Survey of India is redefining vertical data of the country and in due course benchmarks like the mean sea level may be corrected in line with the new data.
The work on building the national reference framework for the purpose of creating an indigenous land based GIS system is going on and it would take time to be completed.

Combing operations stepped up in Maoist-affected districts

Combing operations have been stepped up in Maoist-affected Ganjam, Gajapati and Kandhamal districts of Odisha following the arrest of top left wing extremist leader Sabyasachi Panda.
Police suspect that Maoist cadres from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh were still active in Kandahmal-Gajapati-Rayagada and Rayagada-Kandhamal-Kalahandi border areas.
OMP, which had been formed by Panda in 2012, had been dominating the southern districts of Ganjam, Gajapati, Kandhamal, Rayagada and Nayagarh during the last several years and the rebel is believed to have been involved in over 60 different cases in these districts.

Ukrainian investigators find 196 bodies at MH17 crash site

Ukrainian investigators have found 196 bodies at the crash site where a Malaysian passenger plane carrying 298 people was brought down by a missile in pro-Russia rebels-held eastern part of the country.
The Boeing 777 was on a scheduled flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur and it had not made a distress call.
It is still not clear if the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down purposely or mistakenly.
The rebels also have allegedly recovered the black boxes from the plane and will hand them over to the International Civil Aviation Organization, a rebel leader said.
The Ukrainian government and the pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country have blamed each other for the alleged shooting down of the plane.
Three air crash investigators from Ukraine accompanied the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
Western and Australian countries fear that tempering of evidence has happened.
On other hand Britain, Germany and France agreed that they should be ready to ratchet up sanctions on Russia over the downing of a Malaysian jet carrying 298 passengers.

Women from 20 countries take battle against sexism online

Everyday Sexism project, a website that Ms. Laura Bates set up for women to share their experiences of sexism and harassment in their daily lives.
Two years on, what started as a simple idea has become a movement that is steadily gaining momentum, galvanising support from politicians, police and thousands of women and men from Britain and beyond.
The project has collected 70,000 posts from some 20 countries, describing a wide range of unwelcome behaviour and offences from a colleague’s casual comment to unreported rapes. Many tell of assault, threats of violence and verbal abuse in public places. Others report seemingly innocuous behaviour and comments.

World Bank chief to meet Modi, review key development priorities

World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week to understand his development priorities.
“The historic mandate from the people of India represents a tremendous opportunity to unlock India’s growth potential and take advantage of its immense demographic dividend,” said Mr. Kim
Mr. Kim will visit World Bank-supported project sites in Tamil Nadu to see the challenges of India’s rural-urban transformation, and how, empowered with the right skills, rural women in the state are taking advantage of emerging urban employment opportunities.
World Bank Group’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) has successfully mobilised its $1 billion offshore rupee bond program, aimed at strengthening India’s capital markets and attracting foreign investments.
India is home to the largest operations of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International Development Association (IDA), and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).
World Bank Group assistance to India between July 2013 and June 2014 amounted to $6.4 billion.

Chasing black money, India gets Swiss invite for discussions

Swiss authorities have invited Indian officials to Berne to discuss further cooperation in these matters.
Switzerland has been refusing to share details on names obtained by Indian authorities through other countries, namely France and Germany, saying they figured in lists stolen by certain ex-employees of the concerned banks and no details can be shared on the basis of illegally-obtained information.
Typically, there are two types of information exchange frameworks followed by Swiss authorities — ‘spontaneous’ exchange where details are given voluntarily to a foreign country if any irregularity is found with regard to a foreign client; and exchange of information in reply to a request.
A high-level delegation from Switzerland had held discussions on tax matters with the Indian government officials in New Delhi in February this year.
Latest data from the Swiss National Bank showed that total money of Indians in Swiss banks increased to Rs. 14,100 crore at the end of 2013, from Rs. 8,547 crore a year ago.
Following amendments to the Double Taxation Avoidance Convention (DTAC) with Switzerland in October 2011, India has made several requests seeking information about its nationals holding bank accounts in Swiss Banks.

Higher weight of food items causing high retail inflation: Govt

The high inflation in India owes to “higher weight for the food basket (about 50 per cent)” as against 14 per cent and 32 per cent weights for Korea and China, respectively, according to the data.
The consumer price index-based inflation remained elevated at 9.5 per cent in 2013 and 10.2 per cent in 2012.
In 2013, CPI inflation or retail inflation in China stood at 2.6 per cent, Korea 1.3 per cent, Sri Lanka 6.9 per cent, Indonesia 6.4 per cent, Malaysia 2.1 per cent and Thailand 2.2 per cent.
The difference in inflation in Asian countries may be on account of several factors such as composition, base, weights of respective CPI basket, structure of the economy, resource endowments and distribution of income.
To bring down inflation, government has made several announcements in Budget 2014-15 including technology driven second green revolution with focus on higher productivity and protein revolution.
Apart from these, a price stabilisation fund has been proposed to mitigate risk of price volatility in agriculture produce. Restructuring of Food Corporation of India (FCI) and reducing cost of transportation, distribution losses and improving efficacy of public distribution system are amongst other measures announced.