Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 24 March 2017

:: National ::

TenkuThittu a dancer of Yakshagana school died

Well known artiste of the TenkuThittu school of YakshaganaGerukatteGangaiah Shetty died. He was 63. He is survived by his wife and three sons.
Gangaiah Shetty collapsed on the stage while performing the role of Arunasura in the Yakshaganaprasanga, KateeluKshetraMahatme, at Yekkar near Kateel. He died on the way to hospital in Mangaluru.
Gangaiah Shetty hailed from Gerukatte near Guruvayanakere in Belthangady taluk in Dakshina Kannada. He performed in the DurgaparameshwariPrasaditaDashavataraYakshagana Mandali. He began to perform in 1970 in the Kateel mela and continued to perform in the same mela till he breathed his last.

Traditional Knowledge Database Library will cease to exist

The Traditional Knowledge Database Library (TKDL), a marquee organisation of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research that has fought biopiracy for decades, will cease to exist in its current form.
It has no committed funds, most of its workforce has been removed and these staffers are litigating against CSIR.
It will no longer be an organisation that once pro-actively scouted for intellectual property infringements by Indian and foreign companies on traditional knowledge in areas.
TKDL is an online repository of about 300,000 formulations from Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani systems. Over two decades, the body translated, scanned and digitised texts from their Sanskrit, Arabic and Urdu originals.
This was then made searchable, allowing patent offices in India, Europe, the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Japan to check if patent applicants of herbal concoctions, creams and drugs were basing their claims on available traditional knowledge.
Even before TKDL opened, India overturned patents in the U.S. and Europe on neem and turmeric products.
Between 2009 and 2015, 219 patents were denied to Indian and foreign companies based on TKDL’s challenges, including Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive, Avesthagen, the government’s Central Council For Research in Unani Medicine, and Yale University in the U.S.
Since 2016 there have been no patent challenges by TKDL. The 100-odd employees — on project contracts — including Ayurveda experts, intellectual-property analysts and IT staff are down to about 50.

AI to set up aviation varsity in Hyderabad by 2020

Air India, after having installed a brand new second A320 simulator costing about Rs. 65 crore at the Central Training Establishment (CTE) at Balanagarfor training pilots, is preparing a blueprint to establish an Aviation University.
ATR simulator costs between Rs. 60 crore to Rs. 65 crore and is to be imported. It will be the first modern one in the country and without this, trainee pilots are forced to go to Bangkok or Singapore for advanced training for flying the turbo-prop short haul aircraft.
While there is an ATR simulator at Gurugram in Delhi in the private sector, the upcoming facility here will be the first in public sector.
Air India’s subsidiary Alliance Air flies eight of these planes manufactured by the French-Italian aircraft manufacturer ATR and has plans to acquire 30 more soon.
2016, CTE had trained a total of 200 pilots with the help of its two A320 simulators (AI flies 70 A320s including four brand new) and 50 have already undergone training in 2017.

Rajasthan government’s move to provide vitamin-enriched food to help children

The State government’s move to provide vitamin-enriched and ready-to-use therapeutic food to malnourished children has borne fruit, with a large number of youngsters now leading healthy lives.
The Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM)— a project undertaken by the government in December 2015— has helped in treating 9,117 children below 5 years who were suffering from severe acute malnutrition (SAM).
UNICEF, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, and Action Against Hunger are the project partners.
Karauli in eastern Rajasthan is among the 13 districts where the initiative was launched in its first phase.
Here, doctors at the primary health centres and accredited social health activists (ASHA) have been working to identify and provide the nutrition kit to children.
The kit usually consists of an energy-dense nutrition supplement, locally known as Poshan Amrit , antibiotics and de-worming tablets.

Significant change to electoral funding norms

Corporate donations to political parties will no longer face any ceiling linked to firms’ profitability and companies will no longer be obliged to inform their shareholders which party’s coffers they contribute to.
These changes were introduced by the government in the amendments to the Finance Bill of 2017 cleared by the Lok Sabha.
As of now, companies can only contribute up to 7.5% of their average net profits in the past three financial years to political parties.
Moreover, they are required to disclose the amount of contributions made and the names of the political parties to which they were made, in their profit and loss accounts.
The government has included an amendment to the Companies Act of 2013 to do away with the 7.5% of net profits limit set on donations and the requirement for a company to disclose the name of political parties to which they donate.
A clause has also been inserted in the Companies law to make it mandatory for all corporate donations to political parties to be made by a cheque, electronic means, a bank draft or any other instrument notified by the government.
The Centre has also reduced the maximum limit for cash donations to parties to Rs. 2,000 per person.

:: International ::

Khalifa Masood named as responsible for attack on Westminster

Khalid Masood, a lone, British-born attacker, who was known to police, was named as responsible for the attack on Westminster. The attack left four persons, including the alleged assailant dead, and around 40 others injured.
Details of the 52-year-old attacker, who had been known by a number of aliases, emerged, as reports suggested that the Islamic State (IS) had claimed responsibility, describing the assailant, who was shot dead just within the parliamentary security cordon, as one of its soldiers.
Masood was known for a range of offences dating back as early as 1983, when he was convicted for criminal damage, the Metropolitan Police said.
Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Theresa May described Masood as a “peripheral figure,” who had been investigated several years ago in connection to concerns about violent extremism.
Khalid Masood, considered a peripheral figure by MI5, had been arrested earlier for violent crimes. The attack left four persons, including the alleged assailant dead, and around 40 others injured.

Sri Lanka gets two more years for accountability mechanism for war crimes

Sri Lanka was given two more years to set up its accountability mechanism to probe alleged war crimes committed during the 37-year civil war in the UNHRC resolution adopted in Geneva.
The Foreign Ministry here said that 36 more countries had co-sponsored the resolution which was adopted without a vote.This was in addition to the original sponsors — the U.S., U.K., Montenegro and Macedonia.
The new resolution requests the government to fully implement the measures identified in the resolution of 2015.
This includes engagement with special procedure mandate holders in protecting human rights, asking the UNHRC to provide advice and technical assistance.
The two-year time has been allowed despite strong opposition from the Tamil lobby which cited inaction by the government in showing genuine commitment to the resolution.
UN rights council had called for international judges to help investigate possible war crimes to guarantee impartiality.

:: Science and Technology ::

Rapid pace of melting of earth’s polar ice

Scientists are alarmed at the rapid pace of melting of the earth’s polar caps.

The sea ice cover in the Arctic and the Antarctic hit new record lows for this time of year, marking the smallest polar ice caps in the 38-year satellite record, U.S. government scientists said.
In March, the Arctic ice sheet should be at its biggest, but on March 7 the ice cover reached “a record low wintertime maximum extent,” said a statement by NASA.
Data from the NASA-supported NSIDC in Boulder, Colorado, also showed that on March 3, “sea ice around Antarctica hit its lowest extent ever recorded by satellites at the end of summer in the Southern Hemisphere”.
The disappearing sea ice comes as the planet has marked three years in a row of record-breaking heat, raising new concerns about the accelerating pace of global warming and the need to curb burning of fossil fuels which spew heat-trapping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
The ice floating in the Arctic Ocean grows and shrinks on a seasonal cycle, reaching its largest size in March and its smallest at the end of the summer melt in September.
This year’s Arctic maximum spanned 14.42 million sq.km. That is 95,829 sq.km. below the previous record low in 2015. When scientists take account of the average sea ice extent for 1981-2010, this year’s ice cover is 12,19,884 sq.km. smaller.
The ice in the Antarctic also follows a seasonal cycle but its maximum comes in September and its minimum around February.
For the past two years, however, Antarctica saw record high sea ice extents.

:: Business and Economy ::

India pressed for expediting the negotiation process for a global services pact

India pressed for expediting the negotiation process for a global services pact, that among other things, aims to ease norms for movement of skilled workers across borders.
India had, in February, submitted to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) a legally-vetted proposal for a Trade Facilitation in Services (TFS) Agreement.
The proposal was taken up by an expert committee at the WTO headquarters in Geneva recently, and it will be considered for discussion by all the WTO members.
The proposed TFS, among other things, aims to ensure portability of social security contributions and cross-border insurance coverage to boost medical tourism.
According to India, the proposed pact is similar to the WTO’s Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) in Goods, that recently came into force, and aims to ease customs norms to boost global goods trade.
India had specified that the proposed TFS pact is also about ‘facilitation,’ that is “making market access ‘effective’ and commercially meaningful and not about ‘new’ (or greater) market access.”

NCLT gives nod for Cairn-Vedanta merger

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) approved the metals and mining firm Vedanta’s merger with its cash-rich oil subsidiary Cairn India, paving the way for the formation of the fourth-largest resource company in the world.
The initial deal terms, announced in June 2015, were revised in July 2016 in order to address the concerns of the minority shareholders in Cairn India.
According to the revised deal, minority shareholders in Cairn India will receive, for each equity share held, one equity share, and four redeemable preference shares with a face value of Rs. 10 in Vedanta Limited.
Following the merger, Vedanta Plc.’s ownership in Vedanta Limited is expected to fall to 50.1% from its current 62.9%.
Cairn India minority shareholders will own 20.2% and Vedanta Limited minority shareholders will own a 29.7% stake in the enlarged entity.

Centre is working on a ‘compliance report” of its flagship ‘Make In India’

The Centre is working on a ‘compliance report” of its flagship ‘Make In India’ (MII) initiative that attempts to transform India into a global design and manufacturing hub as well as generate large-scale employment.
The objective of the exercise, among other things, is to find out whether the government departments and agencies implementing the MII programme are meeting the deadlines envisaged in the ‘MII Action Plan’ of December 2014.
The MII initiative covers 25 focus sectors ranging from automobiles to wellness.
The ‘MII Action Plan’ had set short-term (one year) and medium-term (three years) targets “to boost investments in the 25 sectors” and to “raise the contribution of the manufacturing sector to 25% of the GDP by 2020.”
At a national workshop held in December 2014 on these 25 sectors, an Action Plan was finalised with the help of Secretaries to the Indian Government as well as industry leaders.
Data from the Reserve Bank of India and the Central Statistics Office are also being looked into in this regard, they said, adding that inputs are being sought from the State governments as well.
Recently, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce wanted an assessment to be done on how the MII initiative has helped the country’s micro, small and medium enterprises.
It recommended that dedicated steps should be taken to ensure that FDI promotes the MSME sector, and sought to know the factors behind the Foreign Portfolio Investments turning negative and its impact on the Indian industry.
The panel also wanted to learn if the MII initiative has seized the opportunity of demographic dividend in the country.
FDI inflows in India’s manufacturing sector grew by 82% year-on-year to $16.13 billion during April-November 2016,” according to the IBEF, a trust formed by the Commerce Ministry to promote of the ‘Made in India’ label overseas.