Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 14 January 2016

:: NATIONAL ::

Media reports suggest JeM chief detained in Pak

A decision on Foreign secretary meet had been deferred after an announcement in Pakistan that security forces carried out a crackdown on the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), accused of the Pathankot airbase attack, and that its founder Masood Azhar had been detained for questioning.
However government sources said, “No information has been received from Pakistan on the arrests”, indicating that a decision would be taken on Foreign Secretary talks only after Pakistan conveyed the nature of action it has taken to the government.
“Based on the initial investigations in Pakistan, several officials belonging to the Jaish-e-Mohammad have been apprehended,” a statement from Mr. Sharif’s office said.
It added that the government would send a Special Investigative Team to India to gather “additional evidence.”
Finally, Mr. Sharif constituted a team to “probe the allegations of alleged involvement of certain individuals in the Pathankot attack.” The six-member team included the Punjab police counter-terror chief, Rai Tahir, as well as the Director IB in Lahore, and officials of the Federal Investigation Agency, ISI, and Military Intelligence.
Within a few hours, Pakistani police told local media that they had detained JeM founder Masood Azhar, the man India believes masterminded the attack, his operations chief and brother Rauf Azhar and other associates for questioning.
However, the information was not confirmed by the government. However Indian officials said they felt the news of Azhar’s arrest could have been a “deliberate plant” and had not been confirmed through official channels.

More than 3200 farmers suicide in Maharastra in 2015

The year that had recorded 2,590 suicides until October -- the highest ever since 2001 -- went on to register 610 more deaths in just the last two months.
Maharashtra has recorded 20,504 farmer suicides since 2001. Data obtained from the government shows Vidarbha, the region Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis hails from, was the worst hit last year, with around 1,541 farmers from Amaravati and Nagpur division committing suicides.
As many as 1,130 farmers ended their lives in the Aurangabad division of Marathwada.
Of the 3,228 suicides, the state has found only 1,841 eligible for government aid, while 903 were found ineligible. While 484 cases are pending for inquiries, ex-gratia aid has been extended to 1,818.
Maharashtra had recorded a 75% deficit in rainfall between June and September last year.
While the CM had announced a Rs 10,512 crore package of farmers in December 2015, he had refrained from announcing any loan waivers.

Govt working to increase the movement of Goods by waterways

The Union government is working on a strategy to increase the movement of goods and passengers through waterways by nearly five-fold from a mere 3.5 per cent now to 15 per cent by 2019.
The passenger and cargo traffic share in the country through water transport will be increased to at least up to 15 per cent by 2019.
Currently, the share of passenger and cargo traffic is only 3.5 per cent as against the average of 30 to 40 per cent in countries such as China, South Korea, United Kingdom, Germany and France.
Development of waterways would reduce the logistics cost, enabling India to effectively compete in the international market.
Coastal shipping and inland water transport is a fuel efficient, environment friendly and cost effective mode, especially for bulk goods.
While the road transportation cost per km is Rs.1.50 and for the Railways it is Re.1, for waterways, it would be 25 to 30 paise.
To encourage transportation of goods by coastal shipping, service tax has been brought on par with road and rail transport.
The government has also relaxed cabotage (right to operate transport services within a particular territory) for specialised vessels like Ro-Ro, Hybrid Ro-Ro, car carriers and truck carriers for a period of five years.

:: INTERNATIONAL ::

U.S. President gave four point agenda for the future

U.S. President Barack Obama has outlined a four-point agenda that he said was about focusing on the future beyond the next year — making the economy work for everyone, making technology work for everyone, retaining American leadership in the world “without becoming its policeman,” and overcoming the current hostility in U.S. domestic politics.
In his last State of the Union address, Mr. Obama said despite the growth in manufacturing and employment, the nature of the global economy allowed workers less leverage for a raise and encouraged companies to “put quarterly earnings over long-term returns.”
Outlining his idea of America’s global leadership in the coming decades, which he said would be of instability in West Asia, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in parts of Central America, Africa and Asia, Mr. Obama said: “We can’t try to take over and rebuild every country that falls into crisis.”
Mr. Obama said, listing the new opening with Cuba, the nuclear deal with Iran, the Trans Pacific Partnership that would limit China and establish U.S. leadership in Asia as examples of his internationalism.
Repudiating the anti-immigration, anti-trade and anti-Muslim rhetoric of the Republican candidates’ campaign, Mr. Obama wondered: “Will we respond to the changes of our time with fear, turning inward as a nation, and turning against each other as a people?”
Mr. Obama said for the American leadership to sustain, the country had to fix its internal politics.

:: SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY ::

Crab Pulsar

Scientists have discovered the most energetic light ever detected in the universe from the centre of a supernova known as ‘Crab pulsar’ which is situated 6,500 light years away from Earth.
The Crab pulsar is the corpse left over when the star that created the Crab nebula exploded as a supernova.
It has a mass of 1.5 times the mass of the Sun, concentrated in about a 10 km diameter object, rotating 30 times per second.
It is surrounded by a region of intense magnetic field 10 thousand billion times stronger than that of the Sun.
The pulses were found by researchers working with the Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov (Magic) observatory in the Canary Islands, Spain.
The Crab pulsar, created in a supernova explosion that occurred in 1054 A.D., is located at the centre of a magnetised nebula visible in the Taurus constellation.
The Crab is the most powerful pulsar in our galaxy and it is one of only a few pulsars detected across all wavelengths, from radio up to gamma rays.
In its rotating magnetic field, electrons and positrons are accelerated up to relativistic energies and emit radiation that arrives to our telescopes in the form of pulses every 33 millisecond, each time the neutron star rotates and meets our telescopic sight.

:: BUSINESS and ECONOMY ::

World Development Report critical of Digital spread

With 60 per cent of the world’s population still offline, institutional and regulatory barriers to efficiency are exacerbating the problem of low and unevenly distributed “digital dividends” from growing Internet penetration across countries, a new World Bank study has found.
In its annual World Development Report (WDR) the Bank appeared to strike a balance between outlining the positive outcomes from a deepening digital economy in countries such as India, and the fact that automation of jobs was in some cases leading to inequalities in the labour market between high-skill and low-skill workers.
The 2016 WDR issue titled “Digital Dividends,” noted that almost 1.063 billion Indians were offline even though India ranked among the top five nations in terms of the total number of Internet users, along with China, the U.S., Japan and Brazil.
Commenting on the report’s findings that 40 per cent of the world’s population is connected by the Internet, Kaushik Basu, Chief Economist for the World Bank, said, “While these achievements are to be celebrated, this is also occasion to be mindful that we do not create a new underclass.”
With nearly 20 percent of the world’s population unable to read and write, the spread of digital technologies alone is unlikely to spell the end of the global knowledge divide.
The report also cautioned that with the advent of big data, which includes the likes of India’s Aadhaar unique identity project, “secret snooping by governments can be for legitimate law enforcement reasons, but sometimes violates laws and rights.”
In fact, the Bank found that a large proportion of Indians believed that their online information was entirely private.
The WDR noted, “57 percent of Indians believe private information on the Internet is very secure, but only 18 percent of French and 16 per cent of German respondents do.”
Yet, there were numerous examples worldwide of success stories where the power of the Internet had been leveraged to improve, for example, the delivery of public services.

Moody’s says Indian banks will see some respite in NPA

The Indian banking sector could expect some respite from bad loans that have increased sharply over the last three years with ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service.
Its unit ICRA, stating that the pace of growth in non-performing assets will moderate over the next 12-18 months.
The ratings agencies noted fresh NPA generation had moderated during the first half of the current financial year despite withdrawal of regulatory forbearance.
Banks are now mandated to make standard restructured asset provisioning on par with NPA provisioning from April 1, 2015.
According to RBI data, gross bad loans in the banking system increased to 5.1 per cent of gross advances as of September 2015, from 3.4 per cent in March 2013.
During the same period, stressed assets, which are defined as gross NPA plus standard restructured advances, increased to 11.3 per cent from 9.2 per cent.
The ratings agency noted that while public sector banks reported some moderation in their bad-loan ratios during the first six months of the financial year ended March,31, 2015, their holdings of weak standard assets represented 2-2.5 times their total gross non-performing assets.
ICRA said that while credit growth for the public-sector banks may remain low until at least end-FY17, such growth is still likely to outpace internal generation, thereby adversely affecting capital adequacy.
The ratings agency estimate public sector banks need to raise Rs.3.3 lakh crore of tier-I capital between FY16 and FY19.
The government has said that it will infuse Rs.70,000 crore in the public sector banks in four years, starting from this financial year. “With current plan to infuse Rs.70,000 crore, credit growth will have to drop to 8-10 per cent.

:: SPORTS ::

Sania Mirza and Martina Hingis equaled record for longest winning streak in doubles

Sania Mirza and her Swiss partner Martina Hingis have equalled the record for the longest women’s doubles winning streak by advancing to the WTA Sydney International semifinals with a straight-set win.
The top seeds got the better of China’s Chen Liang and Shuai Peng 6-2, 6-3 in less than an hour and remain on course for a second successive title this year.
With Wednesday’s result, Mirza and Hingis won their 28th consecutive match to equal the record set by Puerto Rican Gigi Fernandez and Belarus’ Natasha Zvereva in 1994.