Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 25 April 2017

:: National ::

India may be finding it tough to secure extraditions due to torture cases

India may be finding it tough to secure extraditions because there is a fear within the international community that the accused persons would be subject to torture here, the Supreme Court said.
A Bench said it was a matter of both Article 21 and of international reputation that the government must consider promulgating a standalone, comprehensive law to define and punish torture as an instrument of “human degradation” by state authorities.
“Such a law is in the national interest. The difficulty that India faces in matters of extradition may be because there is torture,” Justice Chandrachud observed.
The court referred to the setback suffered by the CBI in its efforts to get Kim Davy — a Danish citizen and prime accused in the Purulia arms drop case of 1995 — extradited from Denmark.
A Danish court had rejected the plea on the ground that he would risk “torture or other inhuman treatment” in India.
The court agreed with former Union Law Minister Ashwini Kumar, who filed the PIL plea in his personal capacity, that India, which had signed the UN Convention against torture way back in 1997, had still not ratified it.
No steps had been taken to implement the Prevention of Torture Bill 2010 even six years after it was passed by the Lok Sabha on May 6, 2010 and recommended by a Select Committee of the Rajya Sabha of which he had been Chairman.
Centre had avoided an independent legislation on torture, saying that some States were not in favour of such a law and the Indian Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code were more than sufficient.
Indian Penal Code did not specifically and comprehensively address the various aspects of custodial torture and was “grossly inadequate in addressing the spiralling situation of custodial violence across the country.”

Centre is set to launch a scheme for students from higher educational institutions

The Centre is set to launch a scheme for students from higher educational institutions to volunteer to offer innovative, original and practical solutions to problems facing the country and get rewarded for their efforts.
The Human Resource Development Ministry has identified a handful of areas pertaining to which the problem-solving skills of students will be tested.
These are affordable healthcare, computer science and ICT, energy, affordable housing, healthcare, agriculture, education, water resources and river systems, affordable infrastructure, defence, cybersecurity and information security, and environment and climate change.
The scheme that will invite students to find solutions to problems in these fields — and offer a prize of Rs. 1 crore to the best solution in each field — is to be called IDEAS, or Innovations for Development of Efficient and Affordable Systems.
Under each of the above areas or themes, 10 problem statements will be prepared and widely publicised.
All higher educational institutions will be eligible and encouraged to participate, but participation of IITs, NITs and CFTIs will be mandatory.

PM asked for cultural exchange to unite India

PM has asked the Chief Ministers to “pair up” their States with others for cultural exchanges, to allay any differences diversity may foster.
“Let each State of the country pair up with another, for at least a year. The State that does so with Tamil Nadu could teach their children at least five songs in Tamil, learn to recognise the alphabet in the Tamil script,” said Mr. Modi.
“We must constantly endeavour to find those elements in our cultures that emphasises its unity,” he said.
“The States can choose among themselves who they want to pair up with. This can be done under the Ek Bharat Shreshta Bharat programme that we launched on Sardar Patelji’s birth anniversary last year,” he added.
Mr. Modi’s words also come at a time when DMK working president M.K. Stalin said the NDA government was trying to turn the country into “Hindia” or an exclusive enclave of Hindi speakers.

Maoists killed 25 Central Reserve Police Force personnel

In one of the deadliest attacks on security forces, Maoists killed 25 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel and injured seven in Sukma district of south Chhattisgarh. In retaliatory fire, 10 to 12 Maoists were shot dead.
The attack took place when a team of around 100 men, based at the Burkapal camp on the Dornapal-Jagargunda road in south Sukma, was out to provide protection for road construction work in the area.
According to the Anti-Naxal Operations unit of the Chhattisgarh police, the Maoists ambushed the CRPF team at about 12.55 p.m. near Burkapal.
Jawan Sheikh Mohammad, injured in the attack, told reporters in Raipur that over 300 Maoists, including some dressed in “black uniform” were involved in the attack.
According to him, the Maoists first sent some local villagers to check the location of the CRPF team.
“Our unit was on road construction duty. Many villagers were also carrying weapons and women Maoists were also present,” Mr. Sheikh said.
“They were carrying automatic weapons such as AK-47, SLR, and INSAS but we returned fire,”he said.

:: International ::

IMF and WB made an elaborate effort to impress the US administration

The annual Spring Meetings of the World Bank and the IMF that concluded made an elaborate effort to impress the Donald Trump administration that they were of value to his plans for America but there is no evidence that it worked.
There was a pointed attempt to reassure the largest owner of the institution— the U.S. has a 16% stake — that it is not merely relevant, but even essential to tackle the many issues that the Trump administration finds critical for the country.
President Donald Trump’s budget draft proposes to cut U.S. support for multilateral development banks over the next three years by $650 million.
U.S. development assistance through the bank has already shrunk to its lowest, before Mr. Trump took over.
In September 2016, of the $75 billion that the Bank raised for development assistance for the next three years, the U.S. has committed only $7.5 billion, a mere 10% of the total.
The U.K. is the top donor and after Brexit, it has increased its global commitments through the Bank.
The U.K has committed £60 million for the Global Concessional Financing Facility of the total of over $370 million in donor pledges to Jordan and Lebanon for hosting refugees in West Asia.
The target is to raise over five years $1 billion for these two countries and an additional $500 million for potential future refugee crises in middle income countries across the globe.
Mr. Kim and the UN Secretary General met over the weekend to buttress the agenda. The second focus point is getting private funds into development financing.
The institutions were careful to avoid a confrontation with the Trump administration. In a communiqué in October — when the U.S. was in the midst of the election campaign — the IMF had called all nations to “resist all forms of protectionism”.

:: Business and Economy ::

The government will put under the hammer coal blocks

The government will put under the hammer coal blocks for private coal-to-gas, liquid and polychemical projects this financial year, Coal Secretary said.
The development takes on significance as domestic coal gas can help lower the country’s import bill by $10 billion in five years and cut carbon emission.
Coal India will attempt all this from whatever coal mines they have. Second, fresh coal blocks would be auctioned to the private sector through competitive bidding for exploring coal-to-gas, liquid and polychemicals.
The mines will not be out of the 204 cancelled blocks but will be fresh ones under the MMDR Act.

Small and mid-sized cars may see a small increase in prices after GST

Small and mid-sized cars may see a small increase in prices after the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is rolled out from July 1 as different goods are fitted into the four-slab rate structure.
The GST will unify at least 10 central and state taxes into one. Goods and services will have to fall into one of the approved four rate categories, of 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%, which is closest to the present incidence of taxation.
Small cars currently attract a 12.5% central excise duty. States levy 14.5-15% VAT, with total tax incidence at 27-27.5%. Mid-sized cars of up to 1500 cc are levied 24% excise and 14.5% VAT taking the tax incidence to 38.5%.
This category will attract the highest tax rate of 28% and a state compensation cess to take the total incidence closer to current levels.

Nasscom said that only 6 of the top 20 H-1B recipients were Indian

Refuting the U.S. government’s comment on H-1B visa lottery misuse by Indian companies, IT industry body Nasscom said that only 6 of the top 20 H-1B recipients were Indian.
The apex body also said two Indian firms, TCS and Infosys, together received only 7,504 approved H-1B visas in FY 2015; that is about 8.8% of the total approved H-1B visas.
U.S. administration official had said that Indian companies like TCS, Infosys and Cognizant were getting the lion’s share of H-1B visas.
In its statement, Nasscom also said all the Indian IT companies cumulatively accounted for less than 20% of the total approved H-1B visas.
The annual number of Indian IT specialists working on temporary visas for Indian IT service companies is about 0.009% of the 158-million-member U.S. workforce,” the Nasscom statement said. Indian nationals get about 71% of H-1B visas.