Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 22 July 2015

:: National ::

PM Modi to Release Vision 2050 for Indian Agriculture on July 25

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will release 'Vision 2050' for Indian agriculture prepared by the country's premier agriculture research institute in Patna on July 25, said Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh today.
This is also the first time that celebrations of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) foundation day will be organised outside Delhi.
PM Modi will also inaugurate three new projects - Farmers First, Arya and Mera Gaon Mera Gaurav (My village my pride), and ask agriculture scientists from all over the country to speed up the process to provide new technologies to farmers, which will lead to a quantum jump in agriculture productivity.
Assembly elections are due Bihar in a few months. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is hoping for some new announcements.
Speaking to reporters in Patna, Mr Kumar said, "There is not much hope of PM announcing anything new in the package he is expected to announce.
His announcement would be a packaging of the existing ones initiated by me and approved by the UPA."
The country's first agriculture research and education institute - 'Indian Agricultural Research Institute', then known as Imperial Institute of Agricultural Research, was established at Pusa in Samastipur district here in 1905.

:: International ::

Greece braces for next vote

Greek government said on Tuesday that it wants to see a final deal on its international bailout hammered out by August 20, as it presented Parliament with more draft legislation on the cash-for-reforms agreement.
Lawmakers are due to vote on a second batch of reforms Wednesday in a fresh test of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ authority, after he suffered a major rebellion in his radical-left party Syriza during a vote on a first tranche of bailout measures last week.
After Parliament has voted on the second bill — which must pass if Greece is to receive the bailout worth up to €86 billion ($93 billion) over three years — the government “will immediately resume negotiations with the (lender) institutions, EU, ECB and IMF, which should take until August 20 at the latest,” said government spokeswoman Olga Gerovassili.
Tsipras managed to push the first series of unpopular reforms through Parliament last Wednesday — including sweeping changes to Greece’s taxes, pensions and labour rules — but only with the help of pro-European opposition parties.
Within Syriza, 32 of the party’s 149 MPs voted against the measures, including former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. A further six abstained.
The second bill includes an EU directive, adopted after the financial crisis in Cyprus in 2013, that guarantees bank deposits up to 100,000 euros ($108,000), as well as civil justice reforms designed to speed up legal proceedings and reduce their costs.

BRICS bank opens in Shanghai

The Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) grouping has formally opened the New Development Bank (NDB) as a dedicated channel of alternate finance, which will focus on emerging economies and the Global South.
Top officials of the new bank, which opened on Tuesday in Shanghai, stressed that the NDB would not rival but complement the western backed International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, born out of the Bretton Woods Conference of the forties.
However, the emergence of the NDB and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) — a China-led initiative to fund infrastructure in Asia — was hastened by the reluctance by the West, especially the United States, since 2010, to grant emerging economies a greater say within the IMF.

Hotline for closer ties

Rejecting the possibility of a rivalry between the two newly established banks, NDB’s first President Kundapur Vaman Kamath stressed that after a meeting in Beijing with the AIIB, the NDB had decided to establish a “hotline” with the AIIB to forge closer ties between “new institutions coming together with a completely different approach”.
The AIIB and the complementary $ 40 billion Silk Road Fund are expected to fund some of projects along Beijing-proposed Belt and Road initiative, aimed at the integration of Eurasian economies.
Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, who along with economist Nicholas Stern conceptualised the formation of a BRICS-led bank, has said the NDB is “going to try to be a 21st century institution”. In an interview with the website Democracy Now, Mr Stiglitz observed: “The other institutions have been trying to adapt from the 20th century — 1944 was when they were founded — but, you know, it’s difficult to move these big institutions, particularly difficult.”
The NDB will have an initial capital of US$50 billion, which will be raised to US$100 billion within two years.
The NDB planned to issue its first loans in April next year, Mr. Kamath, a former head of ICICI Bank had announced earlier this month. China will pitch in $41 billion to the NDB — the highest within the BRICS group. Consequently, it will have a 39.5 per cent share of voting rights.
Brazil, India and Russia will each pump in $18 billion, while South Africa’s contribution would stand at $ 5 billion. The bank is expected to start operations at the end of this year or early in 2016.

:: Sports ::

Eden garden will host World Twenty20 final

The iconic Eden Gardens in Kolkata will host the World Twenty20 final in April next year, the Indian board said on Tuesday as it announced the venues for the tournament.
The BCCI named eight venues for the biennial event, which has been staged across three cities in each of its previous five editions.
The 16-nation men’s tournament will be played alongside the women’s event across various venues in India from March 11 to April 3.
Bangalore, Chennai, Dharamsala, Mohali, Mumbai, Nagpur and New Delhi will be the other venues for the competition, the board said in a statement.
India co-hosted the 50-over World Cup in 2011 with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and went on to win the tournament.
BCCI president Jagmohan Dalmiya will head a managing committee for the 16-team tournament featuring 10-Test playing nations and six associate teams.
The final schedule will be announced in consultation with the International Cricket Council (ICC).
The 2016 event will be the sixth edition of the popular tournament that began in 2007. The last event was won by Sri Lanka in Bangladesh in 2014.

Duleep Trophy vanish from BCCI calendar

The Indian cricket board on Tuesday clarified that the prestigious Duleep Trophy has been shelved, and that the tournament remains an “integral part of the domestic calendar” and will be the curtain-raiser of the 2016-17 domestic season.
Several reports on Monday suggested the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has scrapped the traditional tournament for good from the upcoming 2015-16 domestic season.
“BCCI wishes to clarify that this is incorrect and reiterate that the Duleep Trophy remains an integral part of the domestic calendar,” the board said in a release on Tuesday.
“India will play 12 Test matches at home in the next season (2016-17) between October-March. Duleep trophy will be the curtain-raiser for the forthcoming domestic season and provide a platform for the players to stake a claim.”
The BCCI on Monday revealed its plans to conduct 900 matches in six months during its 2015-16 domestic season, which will start from October this year and end in March 2016. The 2015-16 domestic fixtures list, released on Monday, did not have a place for the Duleep Trophy.
The BCCI decided not to hold the Duleep Trophy in the 2015-16 season in order to accommodate the 2016 World Twenty20 championship, which will be played in India after the completion of the domestic season in March 2016.