Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 23 January 2017

:: NATIONAL ::

GPS to be mandatory for all commercial vehicles by year-end

Autos, cars, trucks and buses must install device in line with Centre and apex court direction.
Installation of the global positioning system (GPS) will be made mandatory for all commercial transport vehicles in the State by this year-end to bring in transparency.
All commercial vehicles, including autorickshaws, cars, trucks and buses, have to install GPS in line with the Centre and the Supreme Court’s direction.
Those violating the rule will not be given permission to use the vehicle for commercial purposes or transportation. Owners have to install GPS devices at their own cost, which runs into a few thousand rupees, depending on the manufacturer.
Delhi Integrated Multi-modal Transit System (DIMTS), a firm, which has bagged the contract for installing GPS in commercial vehicles in Delhi, has submitted a detailed proposal for adoption of devices in Karnataka.
The company, which bags the bidding, would be permitted to monitor the functioning of GPS in vehicles.
Adoption of devices would help the Transport Department to keep a tab on mineral-laden trucks and crack down on illegal transportation of minerals, loading to unloading and also crack down stolen vehicles.

Jallikattu verdict spurred a flood of animal right cases in SC

The Supreme Court has declared that animals have a right to protect their life and dignity from human excesses.
In recent years, the Supreme Court has upheld the rights of animals and birds to lead a life of “intrinsic worth, honour and dignity,” even at the cost of popular faith and practices of human beings.
The starting point of the trend dates back to May 7, 2014 the day of pronouncement of the judgment banning jallikattu, a bull-taming sport practised in Tamil Nadu.
In Animal Welfare Board of India versus A. Nagaraja , the Supreme Court historically extended the fundamental right to life to animals.
It held that bulls have the fundamental right under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution to live in a healthy and clean atmosphere, not to be beaten, kicked, bitten, tortured, plied with alcohol by humans or made to stand in narrow enclosures amidst bellows and jeers from crowds.
In short, the Supreme Court declared that animals have a right to protect their life and dignity from human excesses.
Article 21, till then, had been confined to only human life and dignity. In May 2014, with its jallikattu verdict, the Supreme Court Bench of Justice stretched the fundamental right to include “every species.”
Since May 2014, the court has heard a flood of cases dealing with the rights of the animal world ranging from bulls, elephants, horses, dogs, roosters to even exotic birds.
The apex court has spent precious judicial hours contemplating how to induce humans to treat animals with compassion. Often, the court has played a game-changing role in the way animals are treated during religious events and festivities.
In Andhra Pradesh, the Supreme Court did not lift the ban on rooster fights conducted during the Makarsankranthi festival. The court only stayed the power of the police to arbitrarily raid farmsteads and private property for prize roosters.
In both jallikattu and cock fight cases, the Supreme Court refused to heed the common argument that a ban would destroy the livelihoods of farmers and end the indigenous species of bulls and roosters, respectively.

Indian model to predict impact of climate change

The IITM is preparing its models for the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report that is expected to be ready by 2022.
There will, however, be an interim IPCC report, in 2018, on the impact of global warming of 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways.
Scientists at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune, are likely to unveil in December a computerised model that can forecast the impact of climate change on the Indian monsoon until 2100.
This model is significant because it is the first time India will be submitting a home-grown assessment to the IPCC, and hugely influential to policymakers and governments on the risks posed by climate change.
A test version of the model is already available on websites of research groups affiliated to the IPCC.
The IPCC summarises projections from such models, developed by scientists from around the world, to report on the level of consensus, among scientists, of the extent to which specific pollutants and gases.
So far, IITM scientists have customised significant parts of a model, called CFS 2 (Climate Forecast System version 2) and used it to give three month forecasts of the Indian monsoon, to project how the it will be altered by climate change over the next century.
To be viable, the model has to first reasonably simulate land and ocean temperatures that existed in the 1850s, or before the carbon dioxide-spewing Industrial Revolution, and also capture droughts and floods in the years up to the present.

Delhi airport bags prestigious Golden Peacock Award:

The Delhi International Airport (Private) Limited (DIAL) has won the ‘Golden Peacock Award for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the transportation sector under the Aviation category for the year 2016.
Delhi Airport has also been adjudged the world’s number one airport in ACI ASQ survey in 25- 40 Million Passengers Per Annum (MPPA) category for two consecutive years - 2014 and 2015.

Urdu lyricist Naqsh Lyallpuri dies at 89:

Renowned Urdu poet and lyricist Jaswant Rai Sharma, known to the world by his pen name Naqsh Lyallpuri, died.He was 89.
Born in Lylallpur in the part of Punjab now in Pakistan, the poet came to Mumbai in the late 1940s to make a career in Hindi cinema.
Though he got his first break in 1952 as a song writer, real success eluded him till the early 1970s.
Some of his best songs include: Main to har modh par , Na jane kya hua , jo tune chhu liya , Ulfat me zamane ki har rasm ko thukroa and Do deewane shaher mein .

:: International ::

Smart jacket to diagnose pneumonia by Ugandans:

A team of Ugandan engineers has invented a “smart jacket” that diagnoses pneumonia faster than a doctor, offering hope against a disease which kills more children worldwide than any other.
The idea came to Olivia Koburongo, 26, after her grandmother fell ill, and was moved from hospital to hospital before being properly diagnosed with pneumonia.
Ms. Koburongo took her idea to fellow telecommunications engineering graduate Brian Turyabagye, 24, and together with a team of doctors they came up with the “Mama-Ope” (Mother’s Hope) kit made up of a biomedical smart jacket and a mobile phone application which does the diagnosis.
Pneumonia is a severe lung infection which kills up to 24,000 Ugandan children under the age of five per year, many of whom are misdiagnosed as having malaria, according to the UN children’s agency UNICEF.
A lack of access to laboratory testing and infrastructure in poor communities means health workers often have to rely on simple clinical examinations to make their diagnoses.
With the easy-to-use Mama-Ope kit, health workers merely have to slip the jacket onto the child, and its sensors will pick up sound patterns from the lungs, temperature and breathing rate.
The processed information is sent to a mobile phone app (via Bluetooth) which analyses the information in comparison to known data so as to get an estimate of the strength of the disease.
The jacket, which is still only a prototype, can diagnose pneumonia up to three times faster than a doctor and reduces human error, according to studies done by its inventors.Traditionally doctors use a stethoscope to listen for abnormal crackling or bubbling sounds in the lungs.
The team is also working on patenting the kit, which is shortlisted for the 2017 Royal Academy of Engineering Africa Prize.
According to UNICEF, most of the 900,000 annual deaths of children under five due to pneumonia occur in south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. This is more than other causes of childhood death such as diarrhoea, malaria, meningitis or HIV infections.

Mauritius PM announces that he would be stepping down:

Mauritius Prime Minister Anerood Jugnauth announced that he would be stepping down to make way for his son Pravind, a move that could spark turmoil in the Indian Ocean island.
In 2014, Mr. Jugnauth was elected to his sixth term as Prime Minister, 22 years after first being voted in. He also served as President from 2003 to 2012.
Pravind Jugnauth, the current Minister of Finance, is also leader of the Militant Socialist Movement (MSM), the largest party in the governing coalition.
Some people believe that Pravind Jugnauth should not be able to succeed his father without elections.
Mauritius is a multi-ethnic archipelago nation of 1.2 million people off the east coast of Africa. It is the only Hindu-majority country in Africa.
Mauritius was colonised by the Dutch in the 17th century, then the French and finally Britain before gaining independence in 1968.

:: BUSINESS ::

Ministry of Power recommends- renewable energy be given a zero-rate tax status:

The Ministry of Power has recommended that renewable energy be given a zero-rate tax status under the Goods and Services Tax, predicting several adverse effects to the economy if there was any increase in power tariffs due to the new tax regime.
Any further tariff increase due to GST may have a multiplier effect on economic development (such) as: (i) difficulty in passing through the impact to agriculture and domestic consumers, (ii) adverse impact on industrial production and GDP, (iii) adverse impact on Make in India, and (iv) adverse impact on export competitiveness of Indian products and services.
The Ministry took a benchmark GST rate of 18% and calculated that, if renewable energy was taxed at this rate, then capital expenditure in the sector would increase between 10% and 12% and tariffs for wind and solar energy could increase by as much as Rs. 0.5 per unit.
The Power Ministry’s recommendation was for the GST Council to choose one of two options: either give renewable energy supply a zero-rate status, or give it a deemed export status.
The Ministry also asked for the inclusion of all hydro projects as renewable energy projects. Currently, only small hydro projects of a capacity of up to 25 MW are deemed renewable energy projects.
The Ministry also requested that supplies made to under-construction hydro power projects be granted deemed export status in line with what is being contemplated for solar projects.

Aadhaar eKYC for outstation users buying SIM:

Telecom regulator TRAI is likely to recommend to the Department of Telecom (DoT) that Aadhaar-based eKYC be allowed even for outstation customers who want to get a mobile connection in a particular service area.
Further, the regulator may suggest that the existing mobile subscribers in the country should be encouraged to go in for Aadhaar-based electronic Know Your Customer verification, for which telecom service providers could offer incentives such as free data or talk time.
The facilitation of Aadhaar-driven eKYC for the existing customer base would ensure proper verification of subscribers and address the security concerns pertaining to fake or bogus mobile connections.
It would also help telecommunication operators to avoid the hassle of storing physical customer verification paper documents that could get damaged or misplaced in the long run.

:: SPORTS ::

Saina Nehwal wins Malaysia Masters Grand Prix Gold:

Indian badminton ace Saina Nehwal notched up her first title after a career-threatening injury by claiming the Malaysia Masters Grand Prix Gold with a hard fought victory in the summit clash.
Up against 18-year-old Thai Pornpawee Chochuwong, the top-seeded London Olympics bronze medallist triumphed 22-20, 22-20 in a 46-minute clash.
This was her 23rd title overall and the first after last year’s Australian Open.
The 26-year-old world No.10, who had been desperately looking for a title to boost her confidence after recovering from a knee surgery, was squaring off against a rival ranked more than 50 places below her at 67th.