Current Affairs For SSC CGL Exam - 07 December, 2013

Current Affairs For SSC CGL Exam

India has had its way on the Bali Package at the Ninth Ministerial of the World Trade Organisation here.
The draft Ministerial Decision put up for endorsement to the member-countries is the draft India submitted; it takes care of India’s position on both food security and trade facilitation.
Cuba and Venezuela and one other country are holding up/delaying the adoption of the Ministerial text for some issues they have with it.
The deliberations are going on. It has been decided to adopt the draft at the closing ceremony early on Saturday.
Adoption of the text would be the first major decision of the century on global trade after the WTO came into being.

The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the Union government, the Reserve bank of India and the Central board of Direct Taxes and others on a public interest litigation petition seeking a probe into the affairs of auditing and advisory firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
A Bench of Chief Justice P. Sathasivam and Justices Ms. Ranjana Desai and Ranjan Gogoi was hearing the petition filed by Centre for Public Interest Litigation.
Prashant Bhushan, counsel for the petitioner, said: “the apparent violations of various regulations, policies and statues, prima facie , makes a fit case for thorough investigation and any inaction of the relevant authorities to investigate could result in jeopardising and undermining of [the] public interest, rule of the law and the regulatory structure besides probable loss to the public exchequer.”

Anthropologists have said they had decoded the oldest DNA ever found in the human family, extracted from a 400,000-year-old thigh bone found in a pit in Spain.
The feat expands knowledge of human genetics by some 300,000 years, they said, but also suggests the odyssey of Man’s evolution may have been more convoluted than thought.
The bone was dug up at a presumed burial site dubbed the Sima de los Huesos (“Pit of Bones”), preserved by a deep subterranean chill in Spain’s northern Sierra de Atapuerca highlands.
“Our results show that we can now study DNA from human ancestors that are hundreds of thousands of years old,” said Svante Paabo, director at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, which took part in the study published in the journal Nature .

Buoyed by healthy farm output and narrowing current account deficit, India is the seventh most economically confident country in the world, a study by global research firm Ipsos has said.
Saudi Arabia is the most economically confident country, followed by Germany, Sweden, Canada, China and Australia in that order, according to the study.
India's economic confidence jumped sharply by 11 points to 51 per cent in November from the previous month.
According to the study 'Ipsos Economic Pulse of the World', India's economic confidence revived substantially due to healthy farm output, a sharp boost in exports and narrowing of current account deficit.
Saudi Arabia continues to dominate the global ratings of national economies as 85 per cent of respondents in Saudi Arabia are confident about their country's economy, followed by Germany (68 per cent), Sweden (67 per cent), Canada (66 per cent), China (65 per cent) and Australia (64 per cent).
Three in ten (32 per cent) Indians believe that the local economy which impacts their personal finance is good.

The sporting community paid tribute to Nelson Mandela after the former South African president and Nobel Peace Prize winner passed away aged 95 on Thursday.

A fired-up Mitchell Johnson dismissed England captain Alastair Cook cheaply in a hammer blow for the tourists after Australia declared for a mammoth first innings of 570 to be firmly in control after day two of the second Ashes Test on Friday.
A day that began with promise for England quickly unravelled in the field as Australia captain Michael Clarke and his deputy Brad Haddin scored glittering centuries in a record sixth-wicket partnership at Adelaide Oval.
Adding insult to injury, Clarke, who struck 148 for his second ton in successive Tests, waited until 34-year-old paceman Ryan Harris had compiled his second Test fifty before declaring on 570-9 after tea in glorious sunshine.