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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 17 October 2019

::NATIONAL::

PM says India will deny water share to Pakistan

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that India will not allow its share of river water to flow to Pakistan. Addressing an election rally at Charkhi Dadri in Haryana, Mr Modi said, for 70 years, the water which belongs to India and the farmers of Haryana flowed to Pakistan.
Prime Minister said, his government will stop this water from flowing to Pakistan and bring to the houses in Haryana.
Mr Modi said, during the past five years, BJP government has laid foundation of development. Talking of the role of villages in development of the country, the prime minister said the villages have emerged as the source of new energy and social change.
Mr Modi said our villages, while maintaining their culture and tradition, are leading the society towards new thinking and new path.Assembly elections in Haryana will take place on October 21 and the election results will be declared on October 24.

CIC claims courts have curtailed powers of information panels

Chief Information Commissioner Sudhir Bhargava has accused government officials of violating the Right to Information Act with impunity, taking advantage of court orders that they cannot be penalised except in cases of mala fide intent.
He was speaking at a public meeting for users of the RTI Act, organise by the Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS) on Wednesday, when retired Supreme Court judge Madan Lokur emphasised the need for penalties to be imposed against the officials who delay or wrongly deny information under the Act.
Mr. Bhargava agreed that penalties were needed to ensure effective implementation of the transparency law, but indicated that the State and Central information commissions (CIC) had their powers curbed by judicial orders requiring proof of mala fide intent on the part of the offender.
“Public information officers take advantage of this as it is very hard to prove mala fide intent,” he said.
RTI activists say that the CIC and SICs are not using their powers to impose penalties even in cases where proof of mala fide intent is not necessary.
Data from the commissions showed that they failed to impose penalties in 97% of the cases where violations of the RTI Act took place in201819.

::ECONOMY::

Finance ministry to give priority to reviving of PSB’s

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has said that the Indian public sector banks had the worst phase under the combination of former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan.
She said that giving all the public sector banks a lifeline is her primary duty today.
She was delivering a lecture on the topic 'Indian Economy: Challenges and Prospects' at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs yesterday.
Referring to Article 370 abrogation in Jammu and Kashmir, she said article 370 denied women from the state inheritance rights and this was a serious human rights violation that no one spoke about but human rights has become a global buzzword following the revocation of the temporary Constitutional provision.
She said that Article 370 denied fundamental rights to the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
The event was also attended by former NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya, Professor and Economist Jagdish Bhagwati and India's Consul General in New York, Sandeep Chakravorty.

Government assures commitment to safeguard IP content

Services Exports Promotion Council (SEPC), set-up by the Ministry of Commerce & Industry, has brought out the India Intellectual Property (IP) Guide at Cannes in MIPCOM 2019, being held from 14-17, October 2019, for the Media and Entertainment (M&E) industry.
The guide features a catalogue of over 60 Indian IPs, popular in over 160 countries. It comprehensively breaks the narrative of only low-end work being done in India.
In a message, to the industry in the India IP Guide released at 36th MIPCOM at Cannes, Commerce Secretary, Anup Wadhawan, said that the Government of India is committed to safeguard against infringement of originality and creativity of the makers to give a boost to services exports.
IP is the most important asset for its creators in the media and entertainment sector and the message by Commerce Secretary further said that India firmly believes in the significance of IPR as the centrepiece of the industry’s future growth.
One of the key objectives at SEPC is to facilitate service exporters of India and handhold medium and small enterprises to expand their global footprint and to present IPs from India to the buyers and distributors from across the globe. The IP Guide is to illustrate strengths of the Indian content creators.

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::INTERNATIONAL::

Maldives to improve trade collaborations with India

Maldives has called for better collaboration with Indian business entities to explore new avenues to diversify its economy. Speaking at the inauguration of Indian expo in Male, Maldives Minister for economic development Fayyaz Ismail said there is a huge potential in the economies of both the countries, especially in the quest to diversify.
The Minister said medical tourism and food processing offer numerous possibilities. The minister said the close cooperation between Maldives President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih and Prime Minister Narendra Modi led to a very good development between the two countries in the last year.
He said both the leaders share a special bond that has been instrumental in creating this atmosphere, besides the cultural and traditional relationship.
AIR correspondent reports that Indian expo mainly focuses on exploring business opportunities between the Maldives and Kerala. It is being attended by several Indian companies in collaboration with FICCI.

Srilanka condemns political parties misusing war victories for presidential campaign

Sri Lanka's National Election Commission has stressed that use of war, war-victory or war crimes for the presidential election campaign is prohibited.
Chairman of the Elections Commission Mahinda Deshapriya said at a media briefing yesterday that political parties have been warned not to use the war or military victories or other related activities in the presidential election campaign.
He also condemned an advertisement published in a newspaper by the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) presidential candidate Gotabhaya Rajapaksa using a statement from the current Army commander Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva.
The chairman said the army commander should make a clarification on the issue otherwise it can be assumed that the advertisement was placed with Lt. General Silva's consent and he will be held liable for violating election law.
He said his institution had called for an explanation from the Secretary Ministry of Defense and from the President’s office on the matter as well.

::SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY::

Study finds peanut butter not the solution for severe malnutrition

Deaths due to severe acutemalnutrition (SAM) in India could be about a tenth of what was earlier believed, which implies that instead of taking emergency measures such as providing Ready ToUse Therapeutic Food(RUTF), there needs to be a focus on nonfood interventions such as sanitation,health, clean drinking water along with an emphasis on nutrition, suggests a new study published in a peerreviewed medical journal.
During the study, the researchers observed 2,704 children in West Singbhum district in Jharkhand and Kendujhar district in Odisha, who were born between October 1, 2013 and February 10, 2015 and alive at six months of age. They were followed up at 9, 12 and18 months.
According to WHO, RUTF is a thick paste of peanuts, vegetable oil, sugar and milk powder and a complex of vitamins and minerals.
The findings echo results from three other Indian studies, which found fatality rates for SAM to range between 2.7% to 5.2% among children older than 6months.
According to government,data shared before Parliament, there were 93.4 lakh SAM children based on National Family Health Survey4 in 20152016.

::SPORTS::

Yashaswi Jaiswal becomes youngest to score 200 in ODI’s

Mumbai teenager Yashasvi Jaiswal today ed history as he became the youngest cricketer in the world to score a double century in One Day cricket.His is the ninth instance of an Indian scoring a List A double-ton.
Playing in his debut Vijay Hazare season, the 17-year-old scored 203 off 154 balls against Jharkhand at Alur, Karnataka.
His score comprised 12 sixes and 17 fours. Riding on Jaiswal's quickfire double hundred, Mumbai posted 358 for 3 in 50 overs and bowled out the opposition for 319.