Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 3 AUGUST 2019

SSC CGL Current Affairs

::NATIONAL::

In a significant judgment, the Supreme Court on Friday held that a judicial magistrate is empowered to order a person to give a sample of his voice for the purpose of investigation.
The judgment authored by Chief Justice Gogoi said “the fundamental right to privacy cannot be construed as absolute and must bow down to compelling public interest”.
The Bench, also comprising Justices Deepak Gupta and SanjivKhanna, held that giving voice sample to an investigating agency was not a violation of the fundamental right against self-incrimination. Article 20 (3) of the Constitution mandated that “no person accused of any offence shall be compelled to be a witness against himself”.
The 87th Report of the Law Commission of India in 1980 describes a voice print as a “visual recording of voice”. Voiceprints resemble fingerprints, in that each person has a distinctive voice with characteristic features dictated by vocal cavities and articulates.
The court dismissed an argument that the making of such far-reaching interpretations in the Criminal Procedure Code – which is silent on whether a court can order a person to give voice sample to police – should be best left to the legislature.

Census 2021 is unlikely to collect “caste wise” data as a similar exercise conducted in 2011 by another ministry threw up about 40 lakh caste names that were difficult to tabulate, a senior government official said on Friday.
The decennial exercise would involve 31 lakh trained enumerators, with data collected digitally using Android based mobile phones.
The Census data would be available by the year 2024-25 as the entire process would be conducted digitally and data crunching would be quicker, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The 2011 caste data, collected as part of the Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC), is yet to be released by the Centre. As per the National Commission for Backward Classes, there are 2,479 entries in the Central list of the Other Backward Classes (OBC).

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has mandated that the elected directors of public sector banks (PSBs) are to be appointed by the nomination and remuneration committee of the board of the respective banks.
The RBI has come out with guidelines on ‘fit and proper’ criteria of elected directors in PSBs and said all these banks were required to constitute a nomination and remuneration committee consisting of a minimum of three non-executive directors from the board, out of which not less than one-half will be independent directors and should include at least one member from the risk management committee of the board.
“The non-executive chairperson of the bank may be appointed as a member of the committee but shall not chair such a committee,” the RBI said.
On the tenure, the RBI said an elected director can be appointed for three years and could be re-elected but cannot hold office for than six years. “The candidate should not be holding the position of a Member of Parliament or State Legislature or municipal corporation or municipality or other local bodies,” the RBI said.
Candidates engaged in stock broking, or a member of any other board of a bank or financial institution, connected with hire purchase, financing, money lending, investment, leasing and other para banking activities cannot be considered for the appointment.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has emphasised on better connectivity between India and other member countries of the Mekong Ganga Cooperation (MGC) bloc for developing a vibrant economic growth corridor.
The MGC, is a sub-regional cooperation organisation comprising India and five ASEAN countries, namely, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.
The Minister also emphasised on the need to quickly finalise the India-Myanmar-Thailand Motor Vehicle Agreement to facilitate seamless movement of goods and passengers across borders. He said, the move, will lead to greater trade and tourism. India had earlier announced a one billion dollar Line of Credit for connectivity projects in the ASEAN.
During the meeting, the new MGC Plan of Action 2019-2022 was adopted that envisages project-based cooperation in various areas including tourism and culture, education, public health and traditional medicine, agriculture and allied sectors, transport and communication, MSMEs and water resources management.

The heat wave that smashed temperature records in Western Europe last month was made more intense by man-made climate change, according to a study published Friday.
The rapid study by a respected team of European scientists points to an array of evidence that man-made global warming was behind the continent’s most recent heat wave.
In countries where millions of people sweltered through the heatwave, temperatures would have been 1.5 to 3 degrees Celsius lower without human-induced climate change, the study said.
While the heat wave broke in Western Europe after a few days late last month, the extreme temperatures have since shifted north and are causing massive ice melts in Greenland and the Arctic.
The scientists calculated the odds of this type of heat occurring now and how often it would have happened in a world without man-made global warming and compared them. They created the simulations by using eight different sets of complex computer models.
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2016 studied this new scientific method of climate attribution and pronounced it valid.

In Shooting, young Adarsh Singh outclassed his rivals in the SardarSajjan Singh Sethi Memorial Masters competition, winning the gold medal in both the men and junior 25 metres rapid fire pistol event in New Delhi today.
The 17-year-old Adarsh shot 584 to top the qualification rounds, his score way above the second-ranked shooter in both the competitions.