(FREE) UPSC Current Affairs 2024 PDF

Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 22 July 2015

Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 22 July 2015

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will release 'Vision 2050' for Indian agriculture prepared by the country's premier agriculture research institute in Patna on July 25, said Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh today.
This is also the first time that celebrations of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) foundation day will be organised outside Delhi.
PM Modi will also inaugurate three new projects - Farmers First, Arya and Mera Gaon Mera Gaurav (My village my pride), and ask agriculture scientists from all over the country to speed up the process to provide new technologies to farmers, which will lead to a quantum jump in agriculture productivity.
Assembly elections are due Bihar in a few months. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is hoping for some new announcements.
Speaking to reporters in Patna, Mr Kumar said, "There is not much hope of PM announcing anything new in the package he is expected to announce.
His announcement would be a packaging of the existing ones initiated by me and approved by the UPA."
The country's first agriculture research and education institute - 'Indian Agricultural Research Institute', then known as Imperial Institute of Agricultural Research, was established at Pusa in Samastipur district here in 1905.

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.

In a first, the genetic mystery of why some fish are able to adjust to warming oceans has been unlocked.
Higher levels of certain stress and immune genes help fish cope with warming temperature in water over the years, the findings showed.
Researchers examined how the fish's genes responded after several generations living at higher temperatures predicted under climate change.
Using cutting-edge molecular methods the research team identified 53 key genes that are involved in long-term, multi-generational acclimation to higher temperatures.
The findings appeared in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The project involved rearing coral reef fish at different temperatures for more than four years, and then testing their metabolic performance

Coordination among India, Japan and the U.S. on security cooperation and economic ties are essential because they can fundamentally talk about how they can “shape China’s rise in a peaceful way”, said Nicholas Szechenyi, Deputy Director and Senior Fellow – Japan Chair at the Centre for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS).
“India has unique interests with China, as does Japan and as does the U.S. They may not always align completely, but fundamentally if we are going to encourage China’s rise in a way that favours regional stability, I think this element of regional coordination among likeminded states is critical. Therefore India, Japan and U.S. have an important role to play,”
The Japanese Cabinet on Tuesday approved a defence white paper for 2015 which sounded alarm over China’s “one sided maritime activities” in the South China Sea.
China’s land reclamation in South China Sea has increased tensions in the resource rich region which is contested by several nations.

The iconic Eden Gardens in Kolkata will host the World Twenty20 final in April next year, the Indian board said on Tuesday as it announced the venues for the tournament.
The BCCI named eight venues for the biennial event, which has been staged across three cities in each of its previous five editions.
The 16-nation men’s tournament will be played alongside the women’s event across various venues in India from March 11 to April 3.
Bangalore, Chennai, Dharamsala, Mohali, Mumbai, Nagpur and New Delhi will be the other venues for the competition, the board said in a statement.
India co-hosted the 50-over World Cup in 2011 with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and went on to win the tournament.
BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya will head a managing committee for the 16-team tournament featuring 10-Test playing nations and six associate teams.
The final schedule will be announced in consultation with the International Cricket Council (ICC).
The 2016 event will be the sixth edition of the popular tournament that began in 2007. The last event was won by Sri Lanka in Bangladesh in 2014.