Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 08 May 2017

:: National ::

According to exit polls Emmanuel Macron could become France’s President

Flag-waving crowds in front of the Louvre in central Paris broke into jubilant cheers as the first exit polls emerged, predicting centrist and independent candidate Emmanuel Macron’s victory in a bitterly fought presidential election.
Mr. Macron is predicted to win 65.5% of the votes against far-right candidate Marine Le Pen’s 34.5%, according to an Ipsos/SofraSteria poll, making the 39-year-old the youngest person to hold the office of President in the Fifth Republic.
While Ms. Le Pen may have lost, her party, Front National (FN), has beaten its previous record by a huge margin; the FN won 17.8% in the second round under Ms. Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, against Jacques Chirac in 2002.

Military personnel to receive revised pay

After a wait of about eight months, military personnel are likely to receive their revised pay recommended by the Seventh Pay Commission with arrears in May’s salary, say the general instructions issued by the three Services to their personnel.
The Union Cabinet issued orders last week for implementing the recommendations for military personnel. Following this, the three Services issued the general instructions stating the various recommendations that were approved.
The recommendations approved include extension of pay stages for junior commissioned officers (JCO) and other ranks from 24 to 40 to prevent stagnation, increase in index of rationalisation for Colonels and Lieutenant-Colonels from 2.57 to 2.67 and extension of pay stages for Brigadiers by two.
On the pension front, two recommendations approved are restoration of the percentage-based disability pension and an additional option for pension by pay fixation method in addition to the consolidation method, whichever is higher.
However, some of the core anomalies raised by the services are yet to be addressed, top among them are Non-Functional Upgrade (NFU) and higher Military Service Pay (MSP) for JCOs.
NFU entitles all officers of a batch who are not promoted to draw the salary and grade pay that the senior-most officer of their batch would get after a certain period.
In a reference to that the instructions notes: “Pay comparison between defence services, all India services and Group A services must be understood in totality and explained to rank and file to dispel apprehensions about discrepancies.

Japan keen to collaborate with India on Asia and Africa projects

Japan is keen on collaborating with India on projects in Asia and Africa as a counter to China’s Belt and Road initiative (B&RI), Tokyo’s Ambassador to New Delhi said.
Ambassador Kenji Hiramatsu revealed that the Japanese government was in talks with Tehran and New Delhi for a role in the Chabahar port project along with India.
India, Iran and Afghanistan signed a trilateral agreement in May 2016 to build trade and transit routes from the strategically located Iranian port into Afghanistan and Central Asia, a $20-billion investment for India, and will be seen as a rival to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor’s Gwadar port.
The Ambassador’s statement points to the growing discussions on strategic convergence between India and other “Indo-Pacific” powers for whom China’s recent economic moves like the BRI as well as an aggressive maritime stance in the South China Sea have been a matter of concern.
Backing Australia’s request to join the trilateral “Malabar” naval exercises between India, Japan and Australia, Ambassador Hiramatsu said.
“We cherish the cooperation with Australia, and we have just had a Japan-Australia-India strategic dialogue and a political dialogue between these three countries, and we will have to see how it develops.”

Union government aims to make northeast India a gateway to Southeast Asia

Union government aims to make northeast India a gateway to Southeast Asia and is making huge investments for the overall development of the region, but lack of cleanliness can hamper this dream, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said.
Addressing the centenary celebrations of the voluntary organisation Bharat Sevashram Sangha in Shillong through video conferencing, he said “only Gangtok had found a place among the first 50 clean cities” out of the 12 cities from the region surveyed as part of the recent nationwide cleanliness survey.
While four northeastern cities found a place between 100 and 200 clean cities, seven were positioned between 200 and 300, with Shillong being the 276th, he said, while stressing that cleanliness was a major challenge for everyone in the region.
He said the major thrust was to improve connectivity and develop the region for tourism purposes.
While an investment of Rs. 40,000 crore is being made to improve the road infrastructure in the entire region, 19 big railway projects have also been started, he said.
Announcing that the region would soon be connected with UDAN (UdeDesh ka Aam Nagarik) scheme, he said small airports were also being developed, while the extension of the runway at Shillong airport has been approved.

:: Science and Technology ::

Central parts of Antarctica’s ice sheet have been stable for millions of years

Central parts of Antarctica’s ice sheet have been stable for millions of years, even when conditions were considerably warmer than present, new research suggests.
The study of mountains in West Antarctica may help scientists improve their predictions of how the region might respond to continuing climate change. The findings could show how ice loss might contribute to sea level rise.
Although the discovery demonstrates the long-term stability of some parts of Antarctica’s ice sheet, scientists remain concerned that ice at its coastline is vulnerable to rising temperatures.
Researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh and Northumbria in the U.K. studied rocks on slopes of the Ellsworth Mountains, whose peaks protrude through the ice sheet.
By mapping and analysing surface rocks, researchers calculated that the mountains have been shaped by an ice sheet over a million-year period, beginning in a climate some 20 degrees Celsius warmer than at present.

:: Business and Economy ::

All about Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) is a United States federal law that requires United States persons, including U.S. citizens who live outside the United States.
They have to report their financial accounts held outside of the U.S., and requires foreign financial institutions to report to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) about their U.S. clients.
India had signed an agreement with the U.S. on July 9, 2015 which enables automatic exchange of financial information between India and the U.S.
The agreement provides that Indian Financial Institutions will provide the necessary information to the Indian tax authority i.e. CBDT, which information will then be transmitted to the U.S. automatically in the case of FATCA. The agreement came into effect on 2015.
The compliance is needed for bank accounts, mutual fund, national pension scheme and other such transactions. The compliance is needed to be done for all individual and entity accounts opened from July 1, 2014 to August 31, 2015.
Individuals and entities need to provide details of their country of birth, country of citizenship, country of residence for tax purposes, among others, to the respective financial institutions.
The self certification can be done online for bank accounts and mutual funds. The Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority has said it would come out with revised guidelines on FATCA shortly.

Several regional hubs to be started by Asian development bank

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has operationally started working to create several regional hubs including New Delhi as one for South Asia, the bank’s President TakehikoNakao said.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, India’s Governor to the ADB, had earlier urged the multilateral lender to establish a hub in New Delhi, so that it could expedite lending to development projects across the region.
Observing that the “time required to approve a proposal as well as the time lag between approval and disbursement of loans can be further reduced,” Mr. Jaitley had stressed that speedier financing would help lend an edge to the ADB.
The ADB, given its objective of combating poverty, also needed to sharpen its focus on affordable renewable energy, and in the urban development context, both drinking water and sanitation, Mr. Jaitley said.
“The major challenges remain in the realm of user charges and financial sustainability of urban bodies,” he observed, adding that the bank could leverage its expertise to promote models that would focus on these challenges.
Mr. Jaitley also exhorted the lender to step up its support for climate resilient agriculture and social infrastructure including health and education.
India, is a founding member of the ADB and its fourth-largest shareholder. The bank's current portfolio of financing in the country includes 87 sovereign loans totalling $13.2 billion.

Solar and Wind power still to be explored

Viewed against the backdrop of the energy history of the country, the main-streaming of wind and solar has been rather sudden. Just three years ago, few would have thought of them as meaningful sources of energy.
Today, they account for 7% of the country’s electricity production — small still, but firmly set to grow, by at least ten percentage points in the next five years.
Coal, on the other hand, while still being the dominant player, is on the back foot. Apart from being a source of pollution and global warming, it is also a water guzzler – in ten years, India’s coal-fired power plants will need 12,000 million litres each day,
There is a lot more juice left in wind and solar than has been squeezed out today. Newer materials such as perovskites that can replace silicon are showing up, giving solar panels more bang for the buck; the cost of offshore wind is falling dramatically so as to open up literally new areas — the seas.
The search for clean energy has not stopped with wind and solar. A phalanx of sources is waiting to be tapped into. Some—like Helium 3 from the moon—are on the very edge of science. But there are others that are not so far away.
Japan is ahead in hydrogen use, but more for automotive applications, with around 90 hydrogen filling stations to serve fuel cell powered cars made by Toyota.
But fuel cells are a lot more efficient, easier and cleaner way than burning it in combustion engines. Fuel cells are devices that split the hydrogen atoms into protons and electrons and get the electrons to flow through a circuit — flow of electrons is electricity.
Smaller fuel cells can be used in vehicles and in applications such as powering telecom towers — a Bengaluru-based company called Intelligent Energy is selling such products. Larger fuel cells, or stacks of them, can used for electricity for the grid.
There are many tricks to steal energy from the oceans. For instance, the Swansea Bay project, U.K., is to build a U-shaped wall — or, breakwater — on the coast where there is a tide, with the mouth open to the sea and place an array of turbines along the mouth.
Water comes in when the tide flows and goes out when it ebbs — it turns the turbines both times.
Cold fusion, as low energy nuclear reaction is commonly called, is not yet established science, but there is too much happening for it to be unreal.
Recently, the Anthropocene Institute brought out a list of 100 entities, half of them commercial R&D that have raised $250 million.
Commercial hydrogen, ocean energy and LENR could be a decade away, but they are all happening technologies that have the potential to replace coal. Extremely cheap, clean power is no longer unthinkable.