Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 28 October 2016

:: National ::

More than a century after becoming the country’s diviner of clouds to forecast the annual monsoon, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) is looking to transfer its massive troves of data into the cloud.
The purpose is to have more centralised control with its regional centres across the country and to be able to make it easier for research arms to access weather-related data.
IMD would require data storage in the order of 5 petabytes, according to a 2015 study in the Public Library of Sciences, roughly the amount of data that Twitter is expected to consume in 2025.
Cloud-based storage usually means that organisations store their data on third-party servers or access applications without physically storing them on their premises.
However, the IMD will locate its cloud on its Delhi campus, a kind of “private” cloud.

Seeking to reassure the services on the issue of parity with their civilian counterparts, the Defence Ministry said there had been no downgrading or any change in the existing equivalence of the service ranks whatsoever.
However, the services seem unconvinced and are likely to seek the Defence Minister’s intervention.
The existing functional equivalence as clarified in 1991 and further reiterated in 1992, 2000, 2004 and 2005 has only been reaffirmed,” the statement said.
In the letter, the Defence Ministry has defined the rank equation between a civilian officer and a serving military officer based on duties and functional responsibilities.
Earlier, a Colonel was considered equivalent to a Director and so on, which had created disappointment among the services.

Asked to bar invocation of religion in political speeches, a seven-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court said it could not be expected to give an “exhaustive list” of dos and don’ts to follow in political speeches.
The Bench, led by Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur, expressed this self-restraint even as three BJP-ruled States — Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan — submitted that “religion can never be separated from society”.
The Bench, which is examining a reference from a five-judge Bench on the 1995 ‘Hindutva’ judgment of the apex court, said its mandate did not include going into the “permissibility of using religion in political speeches”.
As he reserved the reference for judgment, Chief Justice Thakur continued to be firm on the aspect that this Constitution Bench was not concerned with the question of a total bar on religion in political speeches.
The enquiry undertaken by the Bench, he observed, was limited to determining if the bar on invoking religion under Article 123 (3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, in political speeches was limited to the religion of the candidate and his agent or extended to the religion of the voters also.

A top Russian official has said his country will destroy all of its chemical weapons by the end of next year, a year earlier than previously announced.
As a signatory of the international Chemical Weapons Convention, Russia already has destroyed about 93 per cent of its chemical weapons, according to Russian officials.
Russia had to build several plants in the past two decades to dispose of the world’s largest chemical weapons arsenal.

Seeking to bring the old dynamism back to their bilateral relations, India and Russia have agreed on measures to broad-base military cooperation. They have reassured each other on their evolving partnerships with other countries.
India has submitted a non-paper to the Russian side proposing a series of steps such as more military-to-military dialogue, exercises, staff-level talks and joint development.
India raised the issue of timely spares and support for the large number of Russian military platforms in service.
The dialogue focussed on equipment, platforms, spares, upgrades, serviceability and so on, and seven or eight working groups are engaged in them.
To emphasise the military-to-military cooperation, the Ministers agreed to rename the commission Intergovernmental Commission on Military &Military-Technical Cooperation.
Russia had agreed that Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. and others could procure spares directly from Russian equipment manufacturers and not go through Rosoboronexport to ensure quick service availability.

The Cabinet has approved a new agreement on trade, commerce and transit between India and Bhutan.
The pact provides for a free trade regime between two countries, and duty free transit of Bhutanese merchandise for trade with third countries.
As per the pact, bilateral trade between will continue to be transacted in Indian Rupees and Bhutanese Ngultrums.
Both sides had in July held talks to finalise the text of the draft new agreement.
They had then decided that, in the interim, to prevent disruption of trade, the existing agreement should be extended for one year or till the new pact is enforced, whichever is earlier.
Bhutan was among the SAARC nations that had shared the concerns of India in the wake of the Uri attack, and expressed solidarity with New Delhi saying it was not conducive to hold the SAARC Summit in Islamabad.
Bhutan is also part of the BIMSTEC grouping that had recently held talks with BRICS nations including India to boost ties.
The bilateral trade had grown by 55 per cent year-on-year in FY’16 to $750 million, with India’s exports increasing 40.4 per cent to $469 million, while imports from Bhutan rose 87 per cent to $281 million.

GMR Group has been awarded compensation worth $270 million by a three-member international arbitral tribunal in its dispute with the Maldives government.
The award won by GMR Male International Airport Limited (GMIAL) relates to the cancellation of airport development contract by the Maldives government in November 2012.
The compensation covers the debt, equity invested in the project along with a return of 17 per cent and termination payments and legal costs.
GMIAL entered into a concession pact with the Maldives government and Maldives Airport Company Limited to modernise and operate the Ibrahim Nasir Intwernational Airport in 2010 for 25 years.

The Centre made a cautious move towards large scale disinvestment of public sector units with in-principle agreement to a case-by-case examination of the 20-odd firms and units recommended for strategic sale by NITI Aayog.
The recommendations of the NITI Aayog with regard to both disinvestment and strategic sales came up for consideration before the cabinet,” Mr. Jaitley said.
The Centre had set a target to raise Rs.20,500 crore in 2017-18 through strategic sales of public sector firm and another Rs.36,000 crore is to be raised from the sale of minority stakes in PSUs.
Mr. Jaitley acknowledged that some of the units recommended for sale by the Aayog are ‘important’ and each unit will be considered on ‘its own merit’ with the timing of the sale to be decided accordingly.
He also assured that settled valuation procedures will be followed in a transparent process for such transactions.