Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 08 December 2015

:: NATIONAL ::

In the first visit by a Cabinet Minister of the Modi Government to Pakistan, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj will travel to Islamabad on Tuesday to attend an Afghanistan conference, and meet Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and her counterpart Sartaj Aziz.
The Ministerwill lead India’s delegation at the ‘Heart of Asia’ conference which will include Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar. “The deadlock in India-Pakistan ties has ended to some extent,” Mr. Aziz said

Taken into account the safety issues for women who drive, so they will not be included in this formula. It will mean that all women drivers, even those who are driving cars registered under someone else’s name, will not be stopped
The Aam Aadmi Party government had announced this move in December, after coming under fire from the High Court, which said living in Delhi was like living in a gas chamber.
Air quality in the Capital has been very poor this year, with it only expected to get worse as temperatures dip.

India and Russia are exploring the possibility of setting up a joint venture in India to improve supply of spares for the Sukhoi-30 frontline fighter aircraft. The two sides are also in advance negotiations for a long term agreement for spares for the fleet, of which just over 50 percent are operational at any given point of time.
The agreement will simplify the bureaucratic procedures for procuring spares and hence cut the time required to process any request from the Air Force by simplifying procedures like customs, bank guarantees, letter of credit and so on. The prices for spares and a method for price escalation will also be factored in
The idea is to eventually in-crease serviceability to 75 percent for the Air Force’s Sukhoi fleet. Sukhoi’s are the mainstay of the Air Force but have poor availability due to spares and maintenance issues
India and Russia started working on a long-term agreement in 2006 and eventually agreed on a technical assistance agreement in 2012for aircraft maintenance and spares which brought downtime of repairs of aircraft to be sent to Russia from 8-15months to 60 days.

India adopted an aggressive position and asked developed countries how their economies could grow without growth in India and other developing nations.
India is being asked for a peaking date for coal use, as China has provided, and urged to adopt a five-yearly periodic review of its national emission reduction pledges.
India had no problem with freezing the world’s carbon emissions at the cur-rent level, to avoid any further man-made rise in global temperatures over 0.8 degrees C, but that would leave no space for growth.
Developed countries had already occupied two-thirds of the 3gigatonne carbon emissions space in the atmosphere available to stop a rise in temperatures beyond 2 degrees C.
On the second contentious issue of a periodic review under a Paris agreement, India is arguing that the voluntary pledges submitted are for a10-year cycle from 2020.
After that period, it could give more progressive INDCs. What is evident, however, is that there is pressure from vulnerable countries such as islands and many poor nations that will be affected the most due to climate events, to tighten the emission targets in shorter cycles.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also called for “regular five-year cycles” for the review mechanism while addressing the opening of the high level segment of the CoP21

India announced a programme to open eight more long-term ecological observatories to study the effects of climate change.
The new facilities under the Indian Long Term Eco-logical Observatories (I-LTEO) would assess the health of eight different biomes (types of habitat)and come up with long-term research findings on the changes there that were happening due to climate change.
It will cover the Western Himalayas to Western Ghats, Eastern Himalayas to Andaman and Nicobar islands, central India to the Sundarbans, and from Jam-mu and Kashmir to Rajas-than and Gujarat.
The ILTEO would scientifically monitor flora and fauna to assess how climate change is affecting “natural and closely associated human systems in agriculture and pastoralism.

Fitch Ratings affirmed India’s sovereign rating at ‘BBB-’, the lowest in-vestment grade and just a notch above ‘junk’ status, and kept the outlook Stable.
The affirmation balances strong GDP growth outlook and favourable external finances with the high government debt burden and difficult-but-improving business environment.
It forecast real GDP growth to accelerate to 7.5 per cent in the current financial year, followed by 8 per cent in 2016-17.
The pick-up in growth, it said, will be largely driven by sup-port from the government’s “beefed-up capex spending and gradual implementation of a broad-based structural reform agenda”.
Real growth averaged 6.7per cent over the past five years, which is considerably higher than the ‘BBB’ range median of 3.0 per cent
India moved up four places in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings, but is still the worst-performing of all ‘BBB’ range sovereign state 130th out of 189 countries, the rating agency pointed out
It also cautioned that the centre-plus-states’ debt bur-den could rise to 68.8 per cent of GDP, one of the highest of ‘BBB’ range sovereigns and far of the ‘BBB’ category median of 42.8 per cent of GDP. The increase largely results from state government staking part of the power distribution companies’ debt on-to their own balance sheets, following the Government’s Uday initiative

The host remained ‘invictus’ to win the Freedom Series, conceptualised as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, with a 3-0 verdict.
It also pushed India to second place in the ICC rankings.

Saina Nehwal and Lee Chong Wei earned a whopping $1,00,000 each in a closed door bid at the auctions for the Premier Badminton League.
World No. 2 Saina and World No. 4 Lee were picked by Awadhe Warriors and Hyderabad Hunters respectively for the league.
P.V. Sindhu generated a huge interest among Delhi Acers, Chennai Smashers and Bengaluru Top Guns and it was finally Chennai which bagged the young Indian star for $95,000.