Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 24 February 2017

:: National ::

BJP continued its dominaance on Maharashtra

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) continued its political dominance in Maharashtra with resounding electoral victories in key municipalities and zilla parishads across the State.
It won eight of the 10 municipal elections that were held on February 21. The Shiv Sena, its erstwhile ally, won in Mumbai and Thane.
In the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), it was a close call, with the Sena winning 84 out of the 227 seats and the BJP 82.
In Thane, the Sena won 67 of the 131 seats, while the BJP won only 23, fewer than the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which bagged 34 seats.
In eight other municipal zones, the BJP swept the elections, giving Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis a major image boost as well as an upper hand against the Sena, a party that is a part of the government.
In Pune, the BJP won 98 of the 162 seats, with the NCP coming a distant second with 40 seats and the Sena bagging a mere 10.

Kerala will soon have a sex offenders’ register

In a first in the country, Kerala will soon have a sex offenders’ register and a comprehensive victim relief fund.
Announcing this in the course of his customary policy address to the Assembly, Governor P. Sathasivam said the register, to be kept in the public domain, would contain all identification details of sex offenders.
Interim relief would be provided to the survivors of sex crimes, both children and adults, from the proposed relief fund.
Although some of the survivors of sex crimes do receive some amount of money, the relief due to them for the damages they suffer are delayed for want of a comprehensive victim relief fund, the Governor pointed out.
The State government would also set up all-women police stations at the taluk level and would make visit of a woman police officer to the panchayat on a pre-announced date and time mandatory.
The Nirbhaya cells functioning under the Social Justice Department would be modernised and upgraded to ensure minimum standards of care.
The government, he said, would also soon come out with a comprehensive law covering citizens charter, transparency, accountability and social audit, the core of which would be public service delivery.
Massive reforms would be initiated to put the State at the top in ‘ease of doing business’. Kerala would stick to the Five Year Plan mode with special component plan and tribal subplan components.

India to jointly develop a medium range surface-to-air missile with Israel

Ahead of the first visit of an Indian Prime Minister to Israel later this year, India has approved a deal to develop jointly a medium range surface-to-air missile (MR-SAM) system for the Army in a Rs. 17,000-crore deal.
This is the latest in a series of other variants of SAM systems for the Navy and the Air Force being jointly developed with Israeli help under deals estimated at billions of dollars.
The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which met on Wednesday, gave the go-ahead for the deal to be executed by the DRDO and Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI).
Mr. Modi is likely to visit Israel in June, and preparations were currently under way in both countries. The deal is for five regiments of the missile, which consists of 40 units and 200 missiles. It has a range of 50-70 km.
The systems will be manufactured in India and would have an 80% indigenous content. The DRDO would play a crucial role in developing the target homing system. Deliveries would begin in 2023.
The two countries are also in an advanced stage of negotiations for the purchase of two more long-range Phalcon AWACS. The CCS had approved the deal for additional AWACS last year expected at a cost of Rs. 7,500 crore.
India currently operates three Phalcon AWACS Israeli radars mounted on Russian IL-76 transport aircraft, under a $1-billion tripartite deal with Russia, signed in 2003.

CBSE asked school buses should have a limit of 40 km/hour

All school buses should be fitted with speed governors that limit their maximum speed to 40 km per hour, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has written to affiliated schools.
The letter says global positioning system (GPS) and CCTV must compulsorily be installed on all buses.
Apart from the driver — with at least five years of driving experience — and the conductor, all school buses must have a lady guard for the security of the children, it adds.
These buses must have first aid kits and provision for drinking water, and must not have curtains or films on their windows.
The letter says that violation of the guidelines could lead to appropriate action, including disaffiliation of the school. It underlines that the management and the head of the school will be held responsible for any lapse.

:: International ::

UN Secretary-General raised the alarm about famine in Africa

In a world filled with excess food, 20 million people are on the brink of famine, including 1.4 million children at imminent risk of death.
In the face of such grim numbers, a stark question confronts the world’s most powerful: Why in 2017 can’t they avert such a catastrophe?
UN Secretary-General António Guterres raised the alarm about the risk of famine in northern Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen. And this week, the United Nations declared famine in a patch of South Sudan.
Famine is declared after three criteria are met: when one in five households in a certain area face extreme food shortages; more than 30% of the population is acutely malnourished; and at least two people for every 10,000 die each day.
Famine was last declared in Somalia in July 2011, after an estimated 260,000 people had died, mostly in a two-month period.
Mr. Guterres cited two reasons for the crisis. First, he said, there is not enough money; the UN needs $5.6 billion to address the needs. Barely 2% of that money is in hand.
Second, all four countries facing the threat of famine are reeling from conflict, and in many instances, the leaders of warring parties are blocking aid workers from delivering relief where it is most needed.
The situation in Somalia today is different from what it was in 2011. The government is functioning, although there are vast pockets where al-Shababthrives.
But Somalia has already had two consecutive years of drought. In South Sudan, 100,000 people are affected by famine in a part of the country that is most troubled by the civil war.
In northern Nigeria, where the military is battling Boko Haram, there was probably a famine in two towns, called Bama and Banki, according to an early warning system funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The biggest crisis is in Yemen, where a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the U.S. is battling Houthi rebels.
More than seven million people need urgent food aid, according to the UN . Among them, 462,000 children face “severe acute malnutrition,” which means that even if they survive, they will probably have developmental disabilities.

Syrian peace talks under the auspices of the United Nations resumed

Syrian peace talks under the auspices of the United Nations resumed in Geneva, 10 months after falling apart over escalating bloodshed in the war-torn country.
The talks come as Turkish troops and Syrian opposition forces seized the centre of the Islamic State-held town of al-Bab, breaking a weeks-long deadlock between the two sides at the periphery of the town.
Pro-government forces are just three km south of al-Bab, though clashes with the opposition forces in the area have so far been limited.
The Geneva talks are the latest bid to end Syria’s catastrophic six-year war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced some 11 million more.
UN’s Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura convened separate meetings with representatives of the government and opposition delegations on Thursday morning.
The Geneva talks come after ceasefire discussions in Astana, Kazakhstan, that were coordinated largely by Turkey, the opposition’s closest state backer in the civil war, and Russia, whose air power has supported Mr. Assad’s forces.
In those meetings, the rebels sat face-to-face with a government delegation a first and the exiled political opposition was present only on the sidelines. They have not yet sat face-to-face under UN auspices.
This is the fourth round of U.N.-mediated talks since early last year. Despite the ceasefire, violations nevertheless occur on a daily basis, in part because of the ambiguous wording of the original agreement, signed in Ankara.

:: Business and Economy ::

Applications for the fourth tranche of the Sovereign Gold Bond scheme

The Centre announced that it would issue applications for the fourth tranche of the Sovereign Gold Bond scheme from February 27 to March 3. The bonds will be issued on March 17.
The bonds will be sold through banks, Stock Holding Corporation of India, designated post offices, and the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange.
The first three tranches of the scheme saw the sale of 5,114.95 kg worth of bonds amounting to Rs. 1,373 crore.
The first tranche, in November 2015, saw bonds worth 915.95 kg and amounting to Rs. 246 crore sold, while the second tranche in January 2016 witnessed 3,071 kg of gold bonds worth Rs. 798 crore being sold, and the third tranche in April collected 1,128 kg of gold worth Rs. 329 crore.
The aim of the scheme, as stated by the government at the time of its introduction in September 2015, was to help in reducing the demand for physical gold by shifting a portion of the estimated 300 tonnes of physical bars and coins purchased every year to gold bonds.
The minimum amount that can be bought are eight-year bonds worth 1 gram.

Industries will have to maintain only five registers for compliance

Industries will have to maintain only five registers for compliance with nine Central labour laws as against the 56 registers required earlier, according to a notification issued by the Labour Ministry.
The move will give relief to about 4.54 crore establishments as “it will save efforts, cost and lessen the compliance burden”, the Labour Ministry said in an official statement.
“Such an exercise has reduced number of data fields in 5 registers to only 144 from the then existing 933 fields in 56 registers.”
The Ministry will develop a software for these common registers so that they can be maintained in digitised form, and write to States asking them to follow a similar practice for State labour laws.