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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 04 October 2017

::NATIONAL::

INS Chakra suffered damage in an accident

India’s nuclear-powered attack submarine INS Chakra reportedly suffered some damage in an accident.
It is not known whether it happened while sailing off the coast of Visakhapatnam or while negotiating the narrow channel while entering the harbour. Sources say that the sonar dome, which is located in the bow of the submarine just below the torpedo tubes, was damaged.
INS Chakra is based at INS Virbahu, the submarine base in Visakhapatnam, and the Eastern Naval Command is tight-lipped about the incident.
The Akula-class attack submarine (SSN) is on a 10-year lease period from Russia and is the second nuclear sub after the indigenously built INS Arihant .
ThoughINS Chakra is a nuclear submarine it does not carry any nuclear-tipped missile.
Originally named as K-152 Nerpa, the sub was handed over to the Indian Navy in 2011 and was commissioned as INS Chakra.
It was basically inducted to serve as a training ground for officers and crew who would later handle India’s indigenously built SSBN INS Arihant class of nuclear submarines.

Northeast monsoon to be normal

The northeast monsoon this year is most likely to be normal over the south peninsula, according to a bulletin from the Indian Meteorological department.
The forecast outlook released for the northeast monsoon over the south peninsula predicted that the region, including Tamil Nadu, coastal Andhra Pradesh, Rayalaseema, Kerala and south interior Karnataka, would receive between 89% and 111% of the long period average (LPA) rainfall for the region.
The LPA of the monsoon in the region based on data between 1951 and 2000 is 332.1 mm. However, weather enthusiasts in the State were disappointed as there was no specific prediction for Tamil Nadu, which gets 50% of its annual rainfall from the northeast monsoon.
Officials of the meteorological department here noted that the forecast for Tamil Nadu would not have been included as the forecasting models may not have sufficient skill to predict the monsoon.
The northeast monsoon usually sets in around October 20.

Excise duty on petrol, diesel cut

The government slashed the excise duty on petrol and diesel by Rs. 2 per litre, effective from October 4.
This decision has been taken to cushion the impact of rising international prices of crude petroleum oil and petrol and diesel on retail sale prices as well as to protect the interest of common man.
The move comes days after senior Ministers defended the high tax levies on petroleum products.
Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley have reiterated several times in recently that the government was not considering a cut in the excise duties in the face of rising fuel prices.
According to official data, the retail selling prices (RSP) of petrol and diesel in Delhi rose to Rs. 70.88 per litre and Rs. 59.14 per litre respectively, on October 3, 2017. These prices were Rs. 63.13 and Rs. 53.47, respectively, three months ago.

Soumya Swaminathan appointed as Deputy directors general of WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) appointed Soumya Swaminathan one of two deputy directors general, the first time such a post has been ever created within the organisation.
The position is also the highest post held by an Indian in the WHO. Dr. Swaminathan is currently the Director General of the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
Dr. Swaminathan has been appointed as Deputy Director General for Programmes and Ms. Jane Ellison, who was Special Parliamentary Adviser to the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, has been appointed as a Deputy Director General for Corporate Operations (DDC).
Dr. Swaminathan is a paediatrician and a globally-recognised researcher on tuberculosis and HIV, who has over 30 years of experience in clinical care and research. From 2009 to 2011, according to the WHO, she also served as Coordinator of the UNICEF/UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) in Geneva.
She has been a member of several WHO and global advisory bodies, including the WHO Expert Panel to Review Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property, the Strategic and Technical Advisory Group of the Global TB Department at WHO. She was also the Co-Chair of the Lancet Commission on TB.
The announcement was made by WHO’s director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Representatives from 14 countries were chosen to be part of Ghebreyesus’ team and 60% of them are women, according to a statement from the organisation.

SC issues notice on donations to parties

The Supreme Court asked the Centre and the Election Commission to respond to a petition challenging the various amendments made through Finance Act 2017 and Finance Act 2016 in various statutes, saying these changes have opened the floodgates for unlimited corporate and foreign donations to political parties.
A Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra issued notice on the petition filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms and Common Cause seeking to strike down the amendments made to the Companies Act, the Income Tax Act, the Representation of the People Act, the Reserve Bank of India Act and the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.
The petitioners, represented by Prashant Bhushan and Neha Rathi, said the amendments, introduced as money Bills, legitimise electoral corruption, while ensuring complete non-transparency in political funding.
“The amendments in question have opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate donations to political parties and anonymous financing by Indian as well as foreign companies which can have serious repercussions on the Indian democracy. The said amendments have removed the caps on campaign donations by companies and have legalised anonymous donations,” the plea said.

SC questions Kerala HC on the annulment of inter-religion marriage

After ordering an NIA probe almost two months ago into the alleged conversion and marriage of a Hindu woman to a Muslim man in Kerala, the Supreme Court questioned the very annulment of the inter-religious marriage by the Kerala High Court and the legality of the woman’s father keeping her in his custody for the past several months.
A Bench of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud asked how the Kerala High Court had, on May 24, annulled the marriage of the woman, who is an adult, while exercising writ jurisdiction under Article 226 of the Constitution.
“We will hear logical and legal arguments on two issues — can the HC nullify a marriage exercising jurisdiction under Article 226 and was an NIA probe necessary,” Chief Justice Misra said, posting the case for October 9.
The Court said it could either appoint a loco parentis or send her somewhere safe. Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta for the NIA countered that the SC under Chief Justice Misra’s immediate predecessor, Justice (now retired) J.S. Khehar, had on August 16 transferred the case from the Kerala Police to the NIA, which had found a “pattern” of such conversions and marriages.
Senior advocate Dushyant Dave and advocate Haris Beeran, appearing for the Muslim man and the woman’s husband, Shafin Jahan, strongly objected to the SC order for an NIA investigation.
Mr. Jahan has filed a plea for a recall of the order. “The order for an NIA investigation strikes at the very foundation of multi-religious society... Call the girl here,” Mr. Dave submitted. The State government, which had agreed in the SC to hand over the probe in favour of the NIA, also came forward with a plea to file an affidavit.

Ministry of Health grabs Swachhta Pakhwada award

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has been adjudged as the best department for its contribution during ‘Swachhta Pakhwada’, an inter-ministry initiative of the Swachh Bharat Mission. The Ministry observed the Swachhta Pakhwada from February 1-15.

The award was presented on the third anniversary of the Mission on October 2. Health Secretary C. K. Mishra received the award on behalf of the Ministry.

“Swachhta Pakhwada was observed within the Ministry offices, in Central Government Hospitals, and in public health facilities in all the States/UTs,” noted a release issued by the Ministry.

Untrained teachers can now access training material

Fifteen lakh untrained school teachers have enrolled for a training course with the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS), an autonomous institution under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, to get themselves trained by 2019 to be able to retain their jobs.
This has happened just after Parliament passed an amendment to the Right to Education Act to offer them a last window to acquire proper training, something seen as essential to the provision of quality education in government and private schools.
The highest number of applications has been received from Bihar — over 2.8 lakh — followed by Uttar Pradesh (1.95 lakh), Madhya Pradesh (1.91 lakh), West Bengal (1.69 lakh) and Assam (1.51 lakh).
The NIOS has designed online courses to enable them to acquire a Diploma in Elementary Education (D.El.Ed).
The course will be offered through ‘Swayam’, a platform for online education, imparting knowledge through Dish TV. This is for the first time in the world that such high number of applications have been received for an online course.
Among the over 12-lakh untrained teachers who have enrolled for the course, 9.25-lakh are from private schools and 3.53-lakh are employed in government schools.
While only those can acquire this diploma who scored at least 50% in Class-12, Prof. Sharma said at the launch that those who could not could appear again with the NIOS to try and get the requisite marks.
A mobile application has also been developed to help teachers seek any clarifications and solutions.
The course will spread over four semesters and have 1,080 lectures accessible in 10 languages.

::INDIA AND WORLD::

India-Bangladesh

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley arrived ahead of India and Bangladesh signing the third line of credit (LoC) agreement involving $4.5 billion to be spent on infrastructure and social sector development.
“His visit will be marked by the signing of the deal... that was announced during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s New Delhi visit,” a Bangladesh finance ministry spokesman told reporters.
He said two agreements for the implementation of the third LoC and the ‘Joint Interpretative Notes on the Agreement between India and Bangladesh for the Promotion and Protection of Investments’ would also be signed in the presence of Mr. Jaitley and his Bangladesh counterpart A.M.A. Muhith.
The two countries signed the first LoC in August 2010. The second one was inked in March, 2016.
According to the tour schedule, Mr. Jaitley would call on the Bangladesh premier and inaugurate, along with his counterpart, a new scheme for cashless transactions in visa services run by the State Bank of India on behalf of the Indian High Commission.

::INTERNATIONAL::

Congress delays vote on gun silencers

The U.S. Congress shelved a controversial plan to make it easier to purchase gun silencers, as U.S. President Donald Trump signalled that a future debate about the nation’s gun laws was possible. The announcement about the Bill came days after the tragic shooting massacre in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“That Bill is not scheduled now,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters, referring to a measure that also includes language making it more difficult to classify certain ammunition as “armour piercing”.
The Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act advanced through a key House committee in mid-September, setting up a possible floor vote.
Following the Las Vegas shooting, gun-control groups and several Democrats warned that the measure would only make it more difficult to locate such shooters. The devices, also known as suppressors, do not eliminate gunshot noise entirely.
Democrat Hillary Clinton was among those expressing concern about easing access to silencers.
Mr. Ryan also spoke out against the “horror” of the shooting but stressed that “we can not let the actions of a single person define us as a country”.

Madrid under its worst political crisis

Protesters blocked roads, public transport slowed to a crawl and FC Barcelona refused to train as Catalonia observed a general strike over police violence at a banned weekend independence referendum.
Schools and some businesses also shut in a dramatic protest bound to further ratchet up fever-pitch tensions with Spain’s central government, as Madrid comes under growing international pressure to resolve its worst political crisis in decades.
The Port of Barcelona reduced services to a minimum, and protesters stood on roads and highways across Catalonia, blocking traffic. On the AP7 highway linking Barcelona to France, two youths set up a folding table and played chess.
Catalan pro-separatist trade unions, schools and cultural institutions called for the stoppage to “vigorously condemn” the police response to the Sunday poll, in which regional authorities confirmed over 90 people were injured.
Catalonia’s leader said 90% of voters backed independence from Spain, but the central government has vowed to stop the wealthy northeastern region — which accounts for a fifth of Spain’s economy — from breaking away, dismissing the poll as a “farce”.
The government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy held emergency talks after Catalan president Carles Puigdemont that Catalonia had “won the right to an independent state”.
Mr. Puigdemont has appealed for international mediation to help solve the crisis and called for police deployed to Catalonia from other parts of Spain for the vote to be removed.
The regional government said 2.26 million people took part in the poll, or just over 42% of the electorate.
Mr. Puigdemont has said he will now present the results to the region’s Parliament, where separatist lawmakers hold a majority, and which has the power to adopt a motion of independence.

Bakhshali, Jambudvipa and India’s role in science

London’s Science Museum unveiled a new exhibition that traces India’s contribution to science and technology over the past 5,000 years. Bringing together pieces from scientific institutes and museums across India as well as those held by British institutions, the Indian High Commission and the museum hope to be able to bring the exhibition to India too.
The highlight is a folio from the Bakhshali manuscript, loaned to the exhibition by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, which contains the oldest recorded origins of the symbol “zero”.
In September, the Bodleian revealed that new carbon dating research into the manuscript revealed it to be hundreds of years older than originally thought and that it could be dated back to the third or fourth century.
Another remarkable piece is an 1817 version of Jambudvipa, or Jain map of the world, and a spectrometer from 1928 designed by Nobel Prize winner C.V. Raman. The exhibition also covers significant recent contributions — from the Jaipur foot that has been used across 27 countries to the Intel Pentium processor and the Embrace Nest Neonatal pouch.
The exhibition also highlights writings by some of the most influential figures, including letters from S.N. Bose to Albert Einstein, held by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and selected papers of Srinivasa Ramanujan, held by Trinity College Cambridge.
It also includes an index chart of the great trigonometrical survey of India from 1860, which it says “no map in the world at that time could rival” for scale, detail and accuracy.
A separate exhibition charts the growth of photography in India. One section of it focusses on 1857 and includes the bizarre growth of what it refers to as “mutiny tourism”, which led to sites of conflict and suffering getting turned into “postcards, stereocards and prints for a burgeoning British tourist industry”.
It also includes works by artists like Ahmad Ali Khan, the court photographer to the last king of AVadh, and Felice Beato. The exhibition also focuses on 1947, and includes works by photojournalists Henri Cartier Bresson and Margaret Bourke-White.

::SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY::

Second Submarine- Khanderi begins sea trials

Slowly but steadily, the Scorpene submarine programme is making progress. While the first submarine awaits commissioning, the second one has just begun sea trials, and Mazagon Docks Ltd. (MDL) is gearing up to launch the third vessel.
After the monsoon, the second Scorpene Khanderi began sea trials last week. As per schedule, it is expected to be commissioned within this year.
The third submarine, Karanj, is on track to be launched by the year-end.
Khanderi, named after an island fort of Maratha ruler Chhatrapati Shivaji, was launched in January and had undergone some testing. Trials were held up by the rough sea.

Noble prize in physics awarded for discovery of gravitational waves

U.S. astrophysicists Rainer Weiss, Barry Barish and Kip Thorne and were awarded the Nobel Physics Prize for the discovery of gravitational waves — a phenomenon that opens a door on the extreme Universe.
Predicted by Albert Einstein a century ago as part of his theory of general relativity, but only detected in 2015, gravitational waves are “ripples” in space-time, as the theoretical fabric of the cosmos is called.
They are caused by ultra-violent processes, such as colliding black holes or the collapse of stellar cores.
“Their discovery shook the world,” said Goran K. Hansson, the head of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, which selects the Nobel recipients.
They made their discovery in September 2015 and announced it in February 2016, a historic achievement that culminated from decades of scientific research. And since then, they have clinched all the major astrophysics prizes to be had.
Mr. Thorne and Mr. Weiss co-created the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) at the prestigious California Institute of Technology, which has taken home 18 Nobels since the prizes were first awarded in 1901. Mr. Barish then brought the project to completion.
The first-ever direct observation of gravitational waves was the result of an event some 1.3 billion light years away. “Although the signal was weak when it reached Earth, it is already promising a revolution in astrophysics. Gravitational waves are an entirely new way of following the most violent events in space and testing the limits of our knowledge,” the Academy said.
Since 2015, the enigmatic ripples have been detected three more times: twice more by LIGO and once by the Virgo detector located at the European Gravitational Observatory in Cascina, Italy.

3-fold rise in extreme rainfall events in Central India

There has been an average 10% decline in summer monsoon (June to September) rainfall over central India between 1950 and 2015 as a result of weakening of the summer monsoon winds.
However, the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall (more than 150 mm per day for two-three days covering an area of 250 by 250 km) events during the same period over central India (from Gujarat in the west to Odisha and Assam in the east) has been on the rise.
There has been a three-fold increase in widespread extreme events over central India during 1950-2015. In the 1950s, there were two extreme rainfall events per year, while in recent years the number of events has increased to six per year.
Models suggest further increase in extreme events over most parts of the Indian subcontinent by the end of the century.
The weakening of the monsoon winds has resulted in less supply of moisture to the Indian subcontinent. The warm ocean temperatures in the northern Arabian Sea result in large fluctuations in the monsoon winds leading to occasional surges of increased moisture transport.
These sudden surges of the monsoon winds bring in plenty of moisture and that is what is causing extreme rainfall events across the central Indian belt.
While the central Indian Ocean has warmed up, the Indian peninsular region has not warmed up compared to other regions in the tropics leading to reduced land-sea temperature difference.
Probably the cooling caused by aerosol and the reduced land-sea temperature difference in recent years is what is causing the weakening of the monsoon winds and decline in monsoon rainfall.
At the same time, the northern Arabian Sea is becoming increasingly warm leading to more moist air over the Arabian Sea. In addition, the northern Arabian Sea gets warmer (1-2 degrees C) 2-3 weeks prior to extreme events.
As a result, there is 20-40% more evaporation and increased moisture levels over the Arabian Sea before an extreme event. This gets transported over central India resulting in extreme rainfall events. The results were published in the journalNature Communications .
The Arabian Sea supplies more moisture to the extreme rainfall events than the Bay of Bengal and the central Indian Ocean combined.
The study found that the Arabian Sea contributes 36% of the total moisture to central India, while the Bay of Bengal’s is 26% and the Indian Ocean’s is 9%.
Interestingly, land evotranspiration contributes 29% moisture, which is much more than even the Bay of Bengal. Moisture from land evotranspiration is often neglected in monsoon studies.

::BUSINESS AND ECONOMY::

Core sector registered a five-month high at 4.9% in Aug.

Core sector registered a year-on-year growth of 4.9% in August – the highest since the 5.2% reading in March this year — thanks to a low base and good performance by coal and electricity, according to data released by the commerce and industry ministry.
The performance of eight core industries – which comprise 40.27 % of the weight of items included in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) – in August 2017, was higher than 3.1% in August 2016 and 2.6% in July 2017.
Its cumulative growth during April to August, 2017-18 was 3%. According to rating agency ICRA, “Given the favourable base effect and the expected rebuilding of inventories prior to the festive season, we expect the IIP growth to improve in August relative to the initial estimate of 1.2% for July 2017.”
Coal production recorded 15.3% in August 2017, up from a low base of (-) 9.7% contraction in growth in August 2016. Electricity output grew by 10.3% in August from a low base of 2.2% growth in August 2016.
Steel production registered a 3% growth in August, down from 16.7% in August 2016, while cement sector growth fell to (-)1.3% in August from 3.1% growth in August 2016.
Fertilizer output also contracted by (-) 0.7% in August as against 2.5% growth in the same month a year ago.
Natural gas registered a 4.2% growth in August this year from a low base of (-) 5.9% fall in August 2016, while refinery products output stayed almost at the same level with 2.4% growth this August as against 2.5% growth in August last year. Crude oil production shrunk by (-)1.6% in August from negative growth of (-)3.9% in 2016.

China’s value-chain and relocations to help growth in emerging markets

China’s move up the value chain and the relocation of low-end manufacturing to lower-cost countries will continue to create opportunities and support strong economic growth in some of Asia’s “frontier” emerging markets including India, according to Fitch Ratings.
The countries best-placed to take advantage over the next few decades will be those offering workable business environments and relative macroeconomic and political stability to complement low wages, strong demographics and geographical advantages, it said in a report released.
The average Chinese manufacturing wage is now higher than in Asia’s other major emerging economies, including India, it said. Finding cheap labour in China is only likely to become harder, with urbanisation rates already high and the working-age population set to shrink by 0.4% a year on average over 2015-2035.
A significant drop in China’s low-end manufacturing over the coming decades would leave a large gap for lower-cost countries to exploit. China’s global share of exports of clothing, footwear and furniture is still almost 40%, up from 34% in 2010, and only peaked in 2014, according to UN Comtrade.
The decline now appears to be gathering momentum — China’s exports of these labour-intensive goods fell by 10% in U.S.dollar terms in 2016, Fitch said. Bangladesh and Vietnam already have strong footholds in these sectors — together they accounted for 8% of global clothing, footwear and furniture exports in 2015, up from 3% in 2010, it added.

WEF’s India Economic summit

World Economic Forum’s 33rd India Economic Summit will kick off, in partnership with industry body CII. The theme of the conference, which will be attended by key ministers of the government, including Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and industrialists such as Sunil Bharti Mittal, is ‘Creating Indian Narratives on Global Challenges’.
“More than 650 leaders from 35 countries are taking part, allowing Indian business, society and government leaders to interact and collaborate with peers from across the globe,” WEF said in a statement.
The summit would discuss issues such as climate change, infrastructure and gender parity, besides demonetisation and the GST.

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