Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 14 December 2017

::National::

Deadline for linking Aadhaar extended to 31st March

• The government extended the December 31 deadline for linking bank accounts to Aadhaar numbers by three months to March 31, 2018.
• A senior government official said that the deadline for linking insurance policies and mutual fund holdings to Aadhaar would also be extended to March 31 next year, from the present December 31 deadline.
• The revenue department in the Ministry amended the relevant rules pertaining to maintenance of records by financial entities under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act of 2002, to drop the December 31 deadline specified for bank account holders to link Aadhaar and PAN.
• As per the notification, account holders will need to “submit the Aadhaar number, and Permanent Account Number or Form No. 60, by such date as may be notified by the Central Government.”
• The notification also stated that if Aadhaar was not linked to bank accounts as per the date notified by the government, the account would be blocked till the submission of Aadhaar and PAN numbers.
• The government submitted before the Supreme Court that it intended to issue a notification, extending the deadline for mandatory linking of Aadhaar with services from December 31 to March 31, 2018.The deadline for linking Aadhaar to mobile numbers, however, remains February 6, 2018.

Polavaram project to be completed in 2018

• All efforts will be made to complete the Polavaram project in 2018 itself, Union Minister for Water Resources Nitin Gadkari said.
• Speaking to mediapersons after a two-hour long meeting with Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, the Union Minister said that a target had been originally set to complete the project by 2019, but efforts were being made to provide water by gravity by 2018.
• Mr. Gadkari said he had spoken to different contractors of the project when the Chief Minister was away in South Korea and had told them clearly that work should continue without a break and that the project should be completed as planned.
• The Union Minister said all obstacles for Land Acquisition and R&R would addressed to ensure that work was not hindered in anyway. The issues with the DPR of the project would also be taken care of, he added.
• Mr. Gadkari said the Centre would give the contractors one month’s time to improve their performance. In case they fail to do so, the new contractors for which the State government has already called tenders would be asked to take over.
• The most important one was the tenders called by the State government for Spillway and Spill Channel concrete works that are currently being executed by Transstroy. He was accompanied by State Water Resources Minister Devineni Umamaheswara Rao.

Supreme court wants centre to notify a comprehensive action plan on Air pollution

• The Supreme Court directed the Centre to notify a comprehensive action plan mapping the sources of air pollution in Delhi and the National Capital Region within two weeks.
• The Bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and Deepak Gupta gave the Ministry of Environment two weeks to finalise the timeline for each action point in the plan with the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA).
• Sunita Narain, director general of Centre for Science and Environment and EPCA member, said: “This is the first ever comprehensive action plan that has been adopted officially to mandate a time-bound short-, medium- and long-term measures to clean up the air of Delhi and NCR with a compliance strategy.”
• This is the first ever mandatory plan that earmarks short-, medium- and long-term measures for all key sources of pollution with deadlines, and makes agencies responsible for implementation.
• If implemented with urgency and stringency and in a time-bound manner, this can help this region make sustained improvement in air quality, Ms. Narain said. Delhi-NCR may require to reduce particulate pollution by at least 74% to meet clean air standards, CSE said.

India, Japan and Australia have growing convergences

• India, Japan and Australia have “growing convergences” in the Indo-Pacific region, said officials of the three countries after meeting for a trilateral in New Delhi.
• The three sides stressed the need for greater collaboration on maritime security and domain awareness and disaster response capabilities. They also renewed their resolve to fight the scourge of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and stressed the need for enhanced cooperation on counter-terrorism.
• The fourth trilateral between Foreign Secretaries S. Jaishankar and his counterparts, Ms. Adamson and Japanese Vice-Minister Shinsuke Sugiyama, was held in Delhi a month after the first meeting of the Quadrilateral, or Quad, which includes the U.S., was held in Manila. Ms. Adamson said the two processes would continue to “exist together”.
• Significantly, the statement issued after the trilateral also underlined “support for ASEAN centrality in the political and security architecture of the Indo-Pacific region”, indicating the possibility of trilateral military cooperation along with East Asian nations as well.
• India is hosting a commemorative ASEAN-India summit in Delhi on January 25, while all 10 ASEAN-nation leaders will be the chief guests at the coming Republic Day parade.
• The theme of the engagement this year would focus on the three “C’s” of Commerce, Connectivity and Culture, and would also underline similar convergence on issues in the Indo-Pacific, as the East Pacific-Indian Ocean region is popularly referred to.

Bitcoin comes under IT scanner

• Bitcoin transactions, an emerging instrument of investment unregulated by any law, have come under the Income Tax Department scanner. I-T officials started a survey of nine bitcoin traders/agencies in a nationwide operation.
• Survey was being conducted on multiple locations of bitcoin traders in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, New Delhi, Gurugram, Ghaziabad, and Hyderabad, where most of these traders are located.
• The survey launched by the I-T Department’s Investigation wing in Bengaluru was initiated after unearthing investments in bitcoins by an individual during a search operation recently.
• Investment in bitcoins has emerged as a “safe haven” since there is hardly any regulation. The department wanted to ascertain what is the extent of investment, who are investing, whether investments are accounted for and what they are doing with the return on investment.

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::International::

Left alliance emerged as the largest party in Nepal

• The Left alliance has won a majority in Nepal’s provincial and parliamentary polls, with the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) (CPN-UML) emerging as the largest party with 80 seats.
• The alliance bagged 116 seats out of a total 165 under the first-past-the-post system. CPN-UML chairman K.P. Oli is likely to lead the new government.
• The combined strength of the two Madhesi parties, Rastriya Janata Party and Federal Socialist Forum Nepal, has reached 21. RJP secured 11 seats whereas FSFN won 10. The remaining four seats were divided among three fringe parties and an independent candidate.
• In the Provincial Assemblies, out of a total 330 seats, the CPN-UML secured highest number of 168 seats followed by the Maoist-Centre with 73 seats.
• Under proportional voting system, the CPN-UML was leading the Nepali Congress with a thin margin. The CPN-UML had received 2.25 million votes where as the Nepali Congress has secured 2.16 million votes.

::Business and Economy::

Foreign workers in U.S. get a big relief

• Foreign workers in the U.S. on an H-1B work visa may work for more than one company, the country’s immigration agency has said.
• “In general, H-1B workers may work for more than one employer but must have approved I-129 for each,” the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) tweeted. “New employer must submit an I-129 petition before you may begin working,” it said.
• Form I-129 is a form submitted for a non-immigrant worker to the USCIS used by employers or prospective employers to obtain (or amend the details of) a worker on a non-immigrant visa status.
• Meanwhile, an American think-tank, the Cato Institute, in a report said that in 2015, a total of 56% of all supposed employment-based green cards went to the family members of workers.
• Further, according to the institute, about 85% of those who received an employment-based green card were already legally living in the U.S.

Nothing concrete came out of WTO meet

• In the final stages of the ongoing summit-level negotiations of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), India upped the ante to protect its food security right, even as the U.S. refused to agree to the demands of developing nations on the issue.
• Initially, India was bargaining hard for improving an already available mechanism that safeguards government purchase of staple foodgrain from low-income and resource-poor farmers at subsidised prices for stockpiling, and then distributing them to the country’s economically weak.
• However, in the crunch phase of the talks, India sought to foolproof such a mechanism through an amendment of WTO rules on dispute settlement, to entirely prevent countries from legally challenging its food security programmes, according to sources privy to the negotiations.
• The mechanism, called the ‘Peace Clause’, shields developing countries like India from being dragged by other countries to the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism for breaching the ceiling on product-specific domestic support (10% of the concerned crop’s value of production).
• The ‘Peace Clause’ is available to developing nations, including India, till a ‘permanent solution’ is found by the WTO members to the issue of public stockholding for food security purposes.
• Members had agreed during the Ministerial Conference (or MC — the WTO´s highest decision-making body) in 2013 to find a ‘permanent solution’ by the 2017 meet. The decision to expedite work on the ‘permanent solution’ was noted in the 2015 Nairobi MC decision.
• Thanks to ‘Peace Clause’, which is available in perpetuity (as reaffirmed in the Nairobi MC), even without a ‘permanent solution’, India would not have much trouble in implementing its food security programmes.
• However, the Peace Clause’s onerous conditions (on notification etc.) make it tough for developing countries to use. Therefore, at Buenos Aires, India, along with other developing nations, wanted the ‘Peace Clause’ provisions to be improved upon and converted into a permanent solution — a demand the U.S. showed little interest in accepting.
• Almost three-fourths of the nations that comprise the 164-member World Trade Organisation have backed a declaration seeking women’s economic empowerment by expeditiously removing barriers to their participation in trade, a decision that the WTO termed as ‘history-making’.
• India, an influential WTO member, was however among the minority group that chose not to endorse the move saying that while it strongly supports gender equality, it could not concur with the view that gender is a trade-related issue.

Current account deficit widened in second quarter

• The country’s current account deficit (CAD) for the quarter ended September widened to $7.2 billion, or 1.2% of GDP, from $3.4 billion (0.6%) recorded during the same period of the previous fiscal year, latest data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) showed.
• “The widening of the CAD on a year-on-year (y-o-y) basis was primarily on account of a higher trade deficit (US$ 32.8 billion) brought about by a larger increase in merchandise imports relative to exports,” the central bank said.
• Sequentially, the CAD narrowed from the first-quarter figure of $15 billion, which was 2.5% of GDP.
• Net foreign direct investment at $12.4 billion in the July-September quarter, “moderated from its level in Q2 of 2016-17,” the RBI added.
• Portfolio investments shrank to a net inflow of $2.1 billion last quarter, from $6.1 billion in the year-earlier period on account of net sale in the equity market.
• “In Q2 of 2017-18, there was an accretion of $9.5 billion to the foreign exchange reserves” on Balance of Payment (BoP) basis, the RBI said.
• The BoP surplus, compared with $8.5 billion in Q2 of 2016-17 and $11.4 billion in the preceding quarter.
• For the first-half, CAD increased to 1.8% of GDP, from 0.4% in the year-earlier period, as the result of a widening in the trade deficit.

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