Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 20 October 2015

:: International ::

Canada's new prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is moving back to the house where he grew up.
The Liberal leader, son of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, led his party to victory in a federal election on Monday, defeating Stephen Harper's Conservatives by a wide margin.
While the final vote count was not yet complete, Trudeau's Liberals were on track to win 174 of Parliament's 338 seats, according to Elections Canada.
That means Trudeau is on track to break the record for the biggest gain in seats in an election, which was previously held by the Conservatives, who added 111 seats in the 1984 election.
It is the largest percentage increase in seats ever gained by a party in an election.
The stunning win returns Trudeau, 43, to the prime minister's official residence at 24 Sussex Drive where he lived for almost 12 years while his father was in office.
Trudeau, who took over a party in shambles in 2013, trailed early in the campaign, brushed off by his opponents as being more style than substance and an intellectual lightweight who was not ready for the job.
But a bold pledge to run a budget deficit and boost spending to spur the economy, as well as a positive message and his gregarious nature, helped the Liberals engineer a turnaround.

Parents of children under 16 who have been influenced by extremism can now write directly to the British Passport Office to cancel their passports, according to the provisions of the government’s Counter-Extremism Strategy (CES), Prime Minister David Cameron announced on Monday.
The CES contains a raft of tough new measures that empowers the government and its arms with far greater powers than at present in respect of pre-emptive action to counter extremist action.
Calling Islamic extremism the “challenge of our generation”, Mr. Cameron said that the scheme had been tried and “comes after a series of successful court order applications by local authorities to protect children at risk of travelling, either by their own choice or as part of a family unit.”
In the last year, the CES states, there were 338 counter-terrorism related arrests: 157 were linked to Syria and 56 are under 20 years old, which is a growing trend
The new measures beef up the ‘prevent strategy’ and will put much of the onus on identifying extremist tendencies on institutions like schools, universities, the government sector, charities, the National Health Service and prisons as a “statutory duty.”

In his keynote address on Day 1 of the CII Big Picture Summit in New Delhi, Col. Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Minister of State for Information & Broadcasting, assured industry players that the government policies would be supportive and calibrated in order to enhance the modernization and monetization of the sector.
“In phase II of the auction of the frequencies for the radio, there was no provision for broadcasting news.
This was changed during the phase III auction, when private radio was allowed to broadcast the news of the All India Radio for a specified time,” he said, hinting that the government was open to the demand of the private broadcasters to have news bulletins.
Talking on the issue of foreign direct investment in the news media sector, he said, “I can’t really say that we are going to make it happen in a given timeframe, but the very fact that we have started thinking about it, means we have started moving ahead with it.”
He mentioned that a lot of initiatives were being taken by the government to support the M&E industry in the country, such as channelizing more advertisements to the digital media like You Tube, outsourcing some of the creative works of Doordarshan and All India Radio to the industry. He added, “We are reducing advertisement in newspapers and spending more on digital to increase our digital strength for future.”

The rising wave of extremism and social intolerance across the country wormed its way into cricket with world body ICC deciding to withdraw prominent Pakistani umpire Aleem Dar from officiating in the remaining matches in the ongoing India-South Africa series.
The ICC decision also put an immediate question mark on India's ability to safely host the World T20 event next year.
Dar was scheduled to officiate in the fourth and fifth ODIs of the ongoing series in Chennai and Mumbai respectively.
The decision came hours after the Shiv Sena stormed its way into the Indian cricket board (BCCI) headquarters in Mumbai to disrupt talks with the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB). They also threatened to disallow Dar from officiating in the Mumbai ODI.
A senior BCCI official told TOI that the decision to remove Dar - coupled with the disruption of talks by the Sena between board president Shashank Mahohar and his Pakistani counterpart Shaharyar Khan - could have a bearing on the ICC World T20 event scheduled to be held in India next March.