Current Affairs For SSC CGL Exam

17 October, 2013

YOUNGEST MAN BOOKER PRIZE WINNER

• Eleanor Catton, the 28-year old author from New Zealand has won the Man Booker prize 2013 for her novel, The Luminaries , published by Granta.
• She is not only the youngest novelist to win the coveted literary prize, but has set a new record for the longest winning novel. The Luminaries is 852 pages.

• The prize was announced by Robert Macfarlane, Chair of the panel of judges, live on BBC News from London’s Guildhall. The Duchess of Cornwall presented Ms. Catton with a trophy, and Emmanuel Roman, Chief Executive of Man presented her with a cheque for £ 50,000.

• Ms. Catton is also the last winner of the Booker prize in its present format, confined to writers from the Commonwealth countries and Ireland. From next year, the prize will be opened up to writers from all countries.

• The Luminaries is a murder mystery set in New Zealand during the gold-rush of the late 19th century, with astrology a running theme through the book. It was described by Mr. Macfarlane in his announcement speech as being “animated by a weird struggle between compulsion and conversion: within its pages, men and women proceed according to their fixed fates, while gold — as flakes, nuggets, coins and bars — ceaselessly shifts its shapes around them”.

Slum-free cities

• Recently released census figures on urban slums reveal two distressing facts.
• First, that Indian cities are amongst the most unequal and least inclusive in the world.
• Second, the enumeration of the urban poor and their places of habitation are grossly incomplete and thus inaccurate.
• Data from 2,613 of the 4,041 statutory towns show that the population living in slums has increased by 25 per cent in the last decade, reaching 65.4 million in 2011.
• The figures would have been much higher — and the disparity would have appeared even wider — had the enumeration been diligent and complete.
• Other estimates place the population living in slums at over 90 million.
• Similarly, many State governments have failed to implement the National Urban Housing and Habitat Policy’s recommendation to allocate 15 per cent of land in residential projects for housing the poor.

• The census also discloses another disquieting fact. Though there are more than 13.7 million households living in abysmal conditions, States have formally notified only about a third of them as slums. This leaves a large number of others in a more vulnerable condition: health and sanitation facilities hardly reach non-notified slums, and they are prone to forced eviction. In situ rehabilitation of existing slums without any discrimination is imperative.

• Following the failure of many earlier schemes, the government launched a new one entitled Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) in 2011
• RAY has promised slum free cities in future, and commits to rehabilitate existing slum dwellers in the same place where they are living, provide secure tenure and improve access to services and sanitation.
• The State governments should implement this ambitious scheme across cities without delay and dilution.
• Realising this, the National Advisory Council, in its suggestion to improve RAY, has recommended that cities should earmark about 25 to 40 per cent of land in their development plans for social housing.

Protect yourself ,eat vegetable

• A naturally occurring molecule has been shown in laboratory tests to protect mice and rats from lethal doses of radiation.
• Scientists hope that this substance will be similarly beneficial for people who have to undergo radiation therapy for cancer as well as those who get exposed to radiation from a nuclear accident.
• A diet rich in vegetables like cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli has been linked to a lower risk of several sorts of cancer.
• These vegetables contain a compound, indole-3-carbinol, which is broken down in the stomach to DIM (3,3'-diindolylmethane). Both compounds are being studied for their cancer prevention properties.
• Two groups of mice were exposed to lethal doses of gamma ray radiation.
• One group received daily injections of DIM for two weeks, with the first dose being given 10 minutes after irradiation, and 60 per cent of those mice were still alive 30 days later.
• The other group did not get DIM and all the mice died within 10 days of receiving radiation, the scientists reported in a paper just out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) .
• When the first dose of DIM was given one day before the administration of radiation, a much lower dose sufficed to protect the mice.

Legality of aadhar

• The Supreme Court interim order on Aadhaar, ruling that it could not be made compulsory for accessing public services, has already been appealed, with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) joining the appeal earlier this week.
• This is only the latest round in a continuing debate that is not unique to India.
• Other countries wrestle with questions of identification and ID requirements, too.
• For instance, the ongoing dispute over the United States' state voter ID laws pits those urging more restrictive photo IDs to combat alleged voter fraud against those arguing that this will discourage the country's poorest citizens, most of whom are less likely to have them, from voting.
• That there is a debate on Aadhaar should not be a big surprise, especially as the UID programme is very unusual.
• Globally, the use of biometric ID systems is growing rapidly.
• Our ongoing work at the Centre for Global Development surveyed about 160 cases across 70 developing countries.
• Some are multi-purpose national identity programmes (NIDs).

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