Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 22 December 2016

:: National ::

Income Tax department raided premises of TN chief secretary

In simultaneous searches, unprecedented in their scale and nature, the IT dept went through the premises of Tamil Nadu in Chennai, Bengaluru and AP and seized Rs. 30 lakh cash in new currency and five kg of gold.
Besides, they unearthed “undisclosed in-come” to the tune of Rs. 5 crore from the house of Mr. Rao's son Vivek Papisetty in Thiruvanmiyur.
Considering that the State police were under the Chief Secretary's command, the IT officers in the afternoon requisitioned deployment of armed personnel from the Central Re-serve Police Force to provide security.
Nearly 100 senior officials of the IT Dept were involved in theoperations which continued late into the night. The State Government did not react to the development.
On December 8, the IT Department cracked a case of money laundering after scrutinising the premises of Mr. Reddy, sand miner K. Sreenivasulu and their close associate Prem Kumar.

Centre approved promulgation of digital payment of salary ordinance

The Centre approved the promulgation of an ordinance to enable industries to pay wages by cheque or by direct credit into bank accounts of workers earning up to Rs. 18,000 a month, without taking their explicit consent as required under the law.
Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment Bandaru Dattatreya said wage payment through the banking system would only be optional, until the State governments or the Centre came up with a notification for specific industries.
The move is significant inview of the Centre promoting cashless transactions after its decision to scrap the old Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 currency notes.
The present law states that all payment of wages should be in cash, with a provision asking employers to obtain writ-ten permission of the worker to pay either by cheque, or by crediting the wages to his or her bank account.
The ordinance, which will need the President's assent to become law, pro-poses changes to Section 6 of the Payment of Wages Act of 1936.

Parliamentary committee on S&T has suggested a national policy to manage the fires

With fires raging across Central Indian forests and the Himalayan Pine forests, the frequency of such blazes has risen by a drastic 55 per cent in the past year.
The number has touched 24,817 in 2016, a “really alarming” rise, from 15,937 fires in 2015, says the report by the Parliamentary Stand-ing Committee on Science and Technology.
The committee has suggested a national policy on managing forest fires. The increase is seen even though 2015, considered a drought year, had seen a decline in the frequency of forest fires by around 16 per cent.
The three central States of Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh contribute a third of the forest fires. Madhya Pradesh has seen anearly ten-fold increase, from just 294 in 2015 to more than 2,600 in 2016.
The committee was formed after a series of devastating forest fires earlier this year, including the pro-longed one that charred 4,000 hectares of forest land across 13 districts of Uttarakhand.
In Himachal and Uttarakhand, over 17,502 acres have been ravaged this year due to forest fires — a rise of over 171 per cent.
The committee has re-commended the procurement of sweeping machines to clear roadsides of Chir pine needles, while advocating large-scale incentives and programmes to collect pines for use as fuel, and other incineration.
The re-port suggests replacing these forests with “broad-leaf” plants. The committee has also observed that a large number of posts of front line forest staff were lying vacant, while fire-fighting equipment is rudimentary in many cases.

:: International ::

US puts more sanctions on Russia over Ukraine conflict

The United States targeted more Russian businessmen and companies over Russia's annexation of Crimea and the conflict in Ukraine, slap-ping them with U.S. sanctions in a move Moscow criticised as hostile.
The measures come a month before U.S. President Barack Obama hands over power to President-elect Donald Trump, who has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and said it would be good if the two countries could get along.
Mr. Trump's nominee for U.S. Secretary of State, Exxon Mobil Corp CEO Rex Tillerson, has opposed U.S. sanctions on Russia, which awarded him a friendship medal in 2013.
The United States introduced sanctions on Russia after it annexed the Crimean peninsula fromUkraine in 2014 and expanded them over its support for separatist rebels.
But it is un-clear if the United States will maintain the sanctions on Russia under Mr. Trump.
The U.S. Treasury also sanctioned several companies and government enter-prises for operating in Crimea, including two Russian firms it said were help-ing to build a multi-billion-dollar bridge to link the Russian mainland with the peninsula, a project import-ant to Mr. Putin.

:: India and world ::

Hong Kong altered its visa agreement with India

Overstaying Indian nationals violating visa norms prompted Hong Kong, a China-administered territory, to alter its visa agreement with India.
Hong Kong, which used to be part of a block of countries that gave Indians unconditional visa-free entry, has introduced “pre-registration” for Indian nationals to prevent illegal immigration.
Under the previous visa agreement, Indian visitors could visit the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region for 14 days. However, the region had complained about abuse of the agreement by illegal immigrants from India.
Indian nationals must apply for, and success-fully complete, pre-arrival registration online before they can visit or transit the HKSAR visa-free.
It clarified that such registration would not be necessary for those transiting through the Hong Kong airport without leaving the airport transit area. The arrangement will be introduced on January 23.
Hong Kong's unilateral decision came a year after its government sent a delegation headed by the AssistantDirector of Immigration from the Immigration Department and the Hong Kong Police in December 2015.

:: Business and Economy ::

Govt has directed all public sector banks to lower fees

In order to further incentivise electronic trans-actions, the government on Wednesday announced that it has directed all public sec-tor banks to lower the fees they charge for various forms of digital transactions up to March 31, 2017.
For Unstructured Supplementary Service Data(USSD) transactions above Rs. 1,000, a further discount of fifty paise on these rates shall apply. NEFT transfers of up to Rs 10,000 attract a fee of Rs 2.5 per transaction.
Transactions between Rs. 10,000 and less than Rs. 1 lakh attract a fee of Rs. 5, those between Rs. 1 lakh and Rs. 2 lakh attract a fee of Rs. 15, and the fee for transactions above Rs. 2 lakh is Rs. 25. Ser-vice tax is charged on top of this.
This follows the RBI's notification in which it instructed banks to remove all charges on customers for transactions up to Rs.1,000 settled on IMPS, USSD or UPI systems between January 1, 2017 and March 31, 2017.

West Bengal tea-garden workers payment issue resolved

The deadlock over payment of wages to tea-garden workers in West Bengal seems to have been broken. Payment modalities through the State administration have been finalised and banks have agreed to set up facilities at all the gardens by March 2017.
Garden managements have also been told by the State government to help the workers to open bank ac-counts by March 31, 2017. It has been decided that the RBI will arrange for necessary currency including current and arrear wage dues.
It may be mentioned that hitches over routing payment through district magistrates, slapping of formula on garden owners, limiting payouts and lack of banking facilities had all compounded to cause misery for the nearly five lakh workers in West Bengal's 287 gardens.
It has been decided that while in areas where the financing bank is able to provide funds , payment will be through direct-banking mode.
In other areas, the concerned DM will route thefunds and this system will continue till January 31 or till banks are able to provide facilities in each garden.
It was decided at that meeting that all banks will set up ATMs, micro ATMs or business correspondents in all tea gardens by March 31.