Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 19 April 2017

:: National ::

India is likely to get ‘normal’ monsoon rains, according to the first official forecast of the season by the India Meteorological Department (IMD).
Rains are likely to be 96% of the 50-year average of 89cm for the monsoon season of June to September. They are expected to fan out favourably and “help agriculture.”
There is, however, a significant element of uncertainty in this forecast. For one, there’s the looming threat of El Nino. Secondly, the IMD has adopted a new weather model this year, and it is still a work-in-progress.
The IMD’s estimate of 96% rains falls at the bottom edge of what it considers ‘normal’ monsoon rains.
Every number forecast by the IMD has a built-in 5% error margin. India saw drought years in 2014 and 2015. As for 2016, it received 3% less than the 89 cm average, despite an IMD forecast of ‘above normal’ rains.

The Centre said it was studying the implications of the Australian government’s decision to scrap a visa programme that benefited Indians, and warned that the move could have an impact on negotiations on the CECA.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced that he was scrapping the Australian “457” visa programme that allowed Australian companies to hire Indians in a number of skilled jobs.
He said he would in due course replace the programme with a more stringent system, making it difficult for companies to hire non-Australian citizens.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks on Afghanistan, the West Asian region and the Korean peninsula with the visiting U.S. National Security Adviser, Lt. General H.R. McMaster.
Lt. Gen. McMaster, the first high official of the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to visit India, met Mr. Modi after completing his trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The meeting, however, did not yield an announcement of a date for Mr. Modi’s visit to Washington.
The meeting held at the Prime Minister’s official residence was attended by India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval, Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar and a few other officials.
Earlier, the U.S. NSA and Mr. Doval held detailed discussions on India-U.S. relations, especially the security aspect of the ties, sources said.
During his stopover in Kabul, Lt. Gen. McMastertold an Afghan TV channel that Pakistan should deal with terror “less selectively” than it had done in the past.
A U.S. Embassy statement issued after the departure of Lt. Gen. McMaster that the bilateral talks “emphasised the importance of the U.S.-India strategic relationship and reaffirmed India’s designation as a major defence partner”.

Bharat Biotech International Ltd in Hyderabad will start the Phase I clinical trial of Zika virus vaccine (MR 766) in two centres in India next month.
It will be a randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial involving 48 adults, both men and women (who are not pregnant).
Each volunteer will receive two vaccine doses on days 0 [the starting day] and 30 and will be followed-up for a year for both safety and immune response. Three different dose ranges will be tested.
There will be three arms in the trial, and each one will recieve one of the three different dose ranges.
The Phase I is being initiated based on the promising results in animals trials. In the animal trials, two doses of the vaccine made using an African Zika virus strain conferred 100% protection against mortality and disease in mice.
The protection was the same when the mice were infected with an Asian and an African Zika strains.
While the viral load was “undetectable” in the case of vaccinated mice, the amount of virus in unvaccinated mice shot up four days after being infected.
All the unvaccinated mice died eight days after infection by the African strain and 12 days after infection by the Asian strain.

The Union government told the Supreme Court that it had constituted a task force to frame a road map for implementation of the Law Commission’s recommendations on decriminalisation of politics.
A Bench of Justices asked the Centre to file an affidavit during the day on a PIL petition seeking debarring of convicts for life from contesting polls and stopping them from entering the judiciary and the executive.
The Union Law and Justice Ministry, in its affidavit, told the court that the government was actively considering a law panel report titled “Electoral disqualifications”, and had appointed a team of senior officials to look into the issue.
The Law Ministry said that the disqualification period specified under the Representation of the People Act, 1951, is a policy decision which has been enacted by Parliament after due deliberations for curbing the entry of persons with criminal antecedents into the political arena.
On the issue of setting up of special courts for MPs or MLAs for disposal of criminal cases, the Ministry said such a prayer was “unwarranted” as long as cases are disposed of within a year.

Banks may not invest more than 10% of unit capital of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and Infrastructure Investment Trusts (InvITs), the RBI said.
During the first bimonthly policy review of 2017-18, the central bank allowed banks to invest in such funds, within the overall ceiling of 20% permitted for direct investments in capital markets (including venture capital funds).

State Bank of India (SBI) surpassed ONGC to become the country’s most valued state-owned firm in terms of market valuation. At end of trade, the market cap of SBI was Rs. 2,35,307.51 crore.
This was about Rs. 2,961.79 crore more than ONGC’s Rs. 2,32,345.72 crore. ONGC once used to be the country’s most-valued company in terms of market valuation.
Among the top-10 most valued companies list, SBI is at fifth position.

The pace of road construction rose to 22.5 km per day in 2016-17, up from 16.6 km per day in 2015-16, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said.
In 2016-17, 16,271 km of road projects were awarded as against 10,000 km awarded in 2015-16. The pace of road construction rose 36% to 8,231 km in 2016-17 compared to the previous financial year.
The Road Transport and Highways Ministry had targeted awarding 25,000 km road length projects and completing road length of 15,000 km in 2016-17.
Mr. Gadkari told the National Highways Authority India (NHAI) to speed up the pace of road construction in 2017-18, in a review meeting. He announced an award for the best performing project director and regional officer in NHAI.
The Ministry has targeted constructing 15,000 km of national highways during 2017-18 that translates into 41 km of road construction daily.

The IMF trimmed India’s annual growth forecast by 0.4 percentage points to 7.2% for 2017, citing the impact of demonetisation.
“In India, the growth forecast for 2017 has been trimmed by 0.4 percentage point to 7.2 per cent, primarily because of the temporary negative consumption shock induced by cash shortages,” IMF said in its World Economic Outlook (WEO).
The Indian government in February had pegged GDP growth at a higher-than-expected 7.1% for the current fiscal despite the note ban.
However, analysts had raised concerns over the figure, saying it had not taken into account the full impact of demonetisation.