Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 28 October 2017

::NATIONAL::

Why the appointment of judges still pending asks SC

• Over a year and 10 months after a Constitution Bench placed its faith in the government to iron out the dos and don'ts of judicial appointments to the Supreme Court and the high courts, the Centre is yet to deliver. Now, the court wants to know why.
• A Bench of Justices A.K. Goel and U.U. Lalit issued notice to the Attorney-General of India, the Centre's top law officer, to explain why the finalisation of the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) for appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and the high courts continues to “linger”.
• The Supreme Court also wants Attorney General K.K. Venugopal to address it on the delay in appointment of “regular” Chief Justices to various high courts.
• The apex court underlined that the “arrangement” of Acting Chief Justices in high courts should not continue for more than a month.
• Six of the 24 high courts have been without regular Chief Justices for months.
• In the Telangana and Andhra Pradesh High Court, Justice Ramesh Ranganathan has been Acting Chief Justice since July 30, 2016. Earlier this month, Justice H.G. Ramesh was appointed Acting Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court, taking the tally of high courts with Acting Chief Justices to seven.
• The Bench posted the hearing for November 14 while appointing senior advocate K.V. Vishwanathan as amicus curiae. It recorded in a written order that it has been about two years since a five-judge Constitution Bench, in December 2015, tasked the Centre with the drafting and finalisation of the MoP.

Apex court judges to review orders of additional judges

• The Supreme Court Collegium has decided that a committee of two apex court judges will evaluate the judgments of additional judges of high courts to decide their suitability to be made permanent.
• The decision by the Collegium, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, assumes significance as the government had recently urged the Collegium to have a relook at its decision to end the practice of evaluating the judicial performance of additional judges.
• A candidate is first appointed as additional judge of a High Court.
• He or she serves a probationary period before being appointed a permanent judge.
• On March 3, 2017, the Supreme Court Collegium had withdrawn a guideline issued in October 2010 by the then Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia for constitution of Judgment Committees by Chief Justices of High Courts for assessment/evaluation of judgments of Additional Judges of high courts for the purpose of determining their suitability for appointment as permanent judges.
   
• Reviving the practice, Chief Justice Misra's Collegium, which met on October 26, unanimously found that there is indeed a “necessity” to assess the judgment of Additional Judges before they are made permanent.
• The Collegium has, however, tweaked their predecessor’s guideline to ensure that “peers are not judged by peers” and appointed the panel.

Using technology to track elephants

• With 85 elephants criss-crossing villages across Odisha’s Keonjhar district, the forest department has put the Global Positioning System (GPS) to good use to caution people after tracking jumbo movement.
• Large herds of elephants have strayed into human habitations as the paddy crop has started ripening in many areas of Keonjhar, which is contiguous to both Jharkhand and West Bengal. In the Champua forest range, there are 28 elephants that have mostly strayed from Jharkhand.
• A desk had been set up to record the position of jumbos on a daily basis and a dedicated team comprising forest department field staffs and volunteers give exact jumbo locations through GPS.
• A daily report is compiled on information received from the teams following the elephants. Based on the information, local villagers who are prone to elephant attacks are informed. Additional manpower is mobilised in villagers where elephant herds are present.
• Keonjhar, where large-scale mining has disturbed elephant habitations, is one of the critical districts as far as man-elephant conflict is concerned. In the early 2000s, when elephants were beginning to run amok, people had a tough time coping with the animals. In many areas, people even constructed tree houses to protect themselves from elephant attacks.
• In the past one-and-a-half decade, the forest department has organised itself creating a dedicated team of trackers for trailing elephants. With the help of villagers, they are now able to drive elephants away to the forests again. Loss of human lives has also come down with villagers keeping a safe distance from elephants.

SC directed DD to air programme on dangers of Blue Whale game

• Declaring the Blue Whale online game a threat to life, the Supreme Court directed public broadcaster Doordarshan to conceive a cautionary and educational programme about the dangers of the online game which goads players, mostly students, to commit suicide.
• A Bench, led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, gave the public broadcaster a week’s time to prepare the programme and air it on prime time for an appropriate duration, possibly not less than 10 minutes.
• Suffice it to say that the Blue Whale game is dangerous to life. What endangers life has to be condemned and not allowed,” Chief Justice Misra observed.
• DD, the court said, would script the programme in consultation with the Ministry of Home Affairs, Women and Child Welfare Department, HRD Ministry and Ministry of Information, Broadcasting and Technology.
• The court also directed the competent authority in the government to see to it that private channels also telecast the programme.
• The order came on a petition filed by Supreme Court advocate Sneha Kalita, asking the court to frame guidelines for regulating and monitoring the virtual digital online games and to take immediate measures to ban/ block sites linked to the Blue Whale game or any other forms of violent and immoral games.
• The idea behind the programme is to make parents and children aware of the dangers of online games like Blue Whale. The message of the programme should be that children should not be trapped into the game.

Analyzing the root cause of kala-azar

• Researchers have stumbled upon tantalizing evidence of an unknown virus that may be responsible for the persistence of kala-azar or visceral leishmaniasis, a parasite infection that has spawned epidemics and sickened thousands of Indians for over a century.
• It’s still early to pointedly blame the virus but its discovery portends a new kind of treatment regime and may aid attempts to eradicating the disease.
• Historically, the parasite Leishmania donovani is believed to be responsible for the dreaded infection. People get infected when bitten by an insect called the sandfly, which harbours the disease-causing parasite.
• A group of scientists from West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh said that another parasite may be involved. Another parasite called Leptomonasseymouri may also be present, according to Subhajit Biswas, one of the scientists involved in the study.
• The researchers inferred this after they found the L seymouri and a virus called Lepsey NLV1 within it in 20 of 22 biological samples of patients who had a residual L donovaniinfection. They reported their findings in an online version of the peer-reviewedArchives of Virology.
• Kala-azar is endemic to the Indian subcontinent in 119 districts in four countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal). India itself accounts for half the global burden of the disease. If untreated, kala-azar can kill within two years of the onset of the ailment, though the availability of a range of drugs has meant that less than one in 1,000 now succumbs to the disease.\
• However, scientists are still not clear how the parasites cause the infection and how they manage to hide within the body.

::INDIA AND WORLD::

India- France defence ties

• India and France decided to expand military cooperation in the strategically key Indo-Pacific region, besides resolving to ramp up the overall defence and security ties.
• Defence Minister NirmalaSitharaman and her French counterpart, Florence Parly, held extensive talks covering a variety of issues, including the regional security situation, joint development of defence platforms and expansion of military-to-military ties.
• The two sides also agreed to expand counter-terror cooperation, and said a lot more could be done in the maritime sphere, particularly in the Indo-Pacific region, where China was trying to expand its footprint.
• India had signed a Rs. 58,000-crore deal with France for the supply of 36 Rafale jets last year and the IAF was pitching for procuring another fleet of 36.
• In a statement, the Defence Ministry said the Ministers reviewed ongoing initiatives to strengthen bilateral defence cooperation further as a key pillar of the strategic partnership between the two countries.
• “Recognising the growing significance of maritime security in the Indo-Pacific and the need for greater maritime domain awareness, India and France will further expand information sharing arrangements,” it said.

Tokyo would call for a quadrilateral dialogue

• Citing growing international partnerships, India said it was “open” to working with partner countries for regional issues that are “relevant”. The comments from the External Affairs Ministry came after Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono declared in a media interview that Tokyo would call for a quadrilateral dialogue with Australia, India and the U.S.
• The official indicated that India was not alarmed about the regional situation especially in the context of reports about continued Chinese military build-up in the Doklam region.
• Dismissing reports of a build-up on the contested plateau, Mr. Kumar said, “I would like to reiterate that there are no new developments at the face-off site and its vicinity since the August 28 disengagement.”
• The Ministry’s reaction to the quadrilateral came days after the re-election of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, indicating that the new government is expected to push for overhauling of the post-World War strategic doctrine of Japan.
• However, the comment indicated that such regional partnerships will have to suit Indian interests and said, “As far as we are concerned, we have an open mind to cooperate with countries with convergence but obviously on an agenda which is relevant to us.”
• Indications of regional partnership between India and Japan came also during Mr Abe’s visit, with both sides indicating willingness to manage the maritime domain from Indian Ocean and the Asia-Pacific zone.

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::INTERNATIONAL::

Deputy PM of Australia disqualified due to dual citizenship

• Australia’s High Court disqualified deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and four senators from sitting in Parliament in a unanimous ruling that could cost the government its slender majority in Parliament.
• Critics have condemned as outdated the 116-year-old constitutional ban on “a subject or citizen of a foreign power” standing for Parliament in a country where almost half the people are immigrants or have an overseas-born parent. However, the court said the lawmakers’ foreign family ties were knowable.
• The seven judges rejected the government’s argument that five of the lawmakers, including three government lawmakers, should be exempt from the ban because they had not voluntarily acquired or retained citizenship of another country.
• • While the judges said it may be harsh to disqualify Australian-born candidates who had no reasons to believe they were not exclusively Australian, “those facts must always have been knowable.”
• The judges also pointed to the “difficulties of proving or disproving a person’s state of mind” and the “regrettable possibility of a want of candor” if ignorance of dual citizenship was recognised as an excuse.

::ENVIRONMENT::

Arctic sea ice melting faster than expected

• Arctic sea ice, a key indicator of climate change, could be dwindling faster than predicted, according to a study by the University of Calgary, Canada.
• Research undertaken by the Cryosphere Climate Research Group under the Department of Geography at the university has found that satellite measurements over the years have overestimated the thickness of Arctic sea ice by as much as 25% because of the presence of salty snow.
• “The implication is that the prediction of an ice-free Arctic ocean in summertime by 2050 could happen much earlier,” says Vishnu Nandan.
• Dwindling ice cover hastens the warming of oceans, and has an impact on weather phenomena like the El Nino that influences the Asian monsoon.
• “The thinning ice would make it difficult for animals like polar bears and seals and organisms like phytoplankton to survive,” says Mr. Nandan who hails from Thiruvananthapuram.
• The study, based on satellite data and extensive field measurements, found that salty snow — formed when brine is expelled upward from the ice surface — does not allow radar waves from satellites to penetrate, leading to skewed measurements.
• The researchers have proposed a snow salinity correction factor that could bring down the error in estimation of sea ice thickness.

::BUSINESS AND ECONOMY::

Decision on fishing subsidies certain in WTO’s Dec. meet’

• An agreement on elimination of ‘harmful’ fisheries subsidies is likely to be the only major outcome at the forthcoming meeting of the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) highest decision-making body called the ‘Ministerial Conference’, according to the head of the principal United Nations (UN) agency handling issues related to trade, investment and development.
• On what could probably be among the ‘deliverables’ at the WTO’s Ministerial Conference meeting at Buenos Aires (Argentina) in December 2017, MukhisaKituyi, Secretary-General, UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), said: “I cannot quite point at a concrete set of harvests. However, one thing that is increasingly looking certain is the (agreement on) removal of harmful fisheries subsidies.”
• In May, a UN statement cited fisheries experts from UNCTAD and said, “Harmful fishing subsidies (globally) that contribute to overfishing are estimated to be as high as $35 billion.”
• On whether a ‘permanent solution to the issue of public stock-holding for food security purposes’ would be a part of the outcomes as it is an issue of huge importance to developing countries including India.
• Asked about the probability of introduction of “new issues” like ‘e-commerce’, ‘trade facilitation in services’ and ‘investment facilitation’ into the WTO’s ongoing Doha Round negotiations, he said, the “main argument of many developing countries” currently is that “there is a lot of stuff on the deck already, which needs to be sorted out before you go into new issues.”
• The WTO further quoted her as saying that members needed to decide which issues were “ripe” for a decision at the MC and which may not yet be ready, but for which a process could be agreed to put these issues “in motion beyond Buenos Aires,” with an eye toward reaching agreement in the near term. Another WTO statement said, “At a meeting of all WTO members on October 24 to discuss the preparations for the WTO’s MC in Buenos Aires, (WTO) Director-General Roberto Azevêdo called for flexibility and pragmatism in order to advance debates ahead of the MC.”
• The statement quoted Mr. Azevêdo as saying, “I hope that we can leave Buenos Aires with members committed to strengthening the trading system and with a clear path forward for our future work on as many issues as possible.”

L&T eyeing for ‘launchpads’ in Gujarat, T.N., for missile plant

• Larsen & Toubro Ltd., is eyeing Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Gujarat for its Rs. 500 crore missile and missile systems plant, said a senior executive.
• “We are looking at Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and even Gujarat,” said Jayant D. Patil, member of the board and whole time director (Defence Business). The location would be finalised based on the incentives offered by these state governments, he added.
• The missile and missile systems plant is being formed in a joint venture with MBDA, a French company. The new joint venture company, L&T MBDA Missile Systems Ltd., will have an equity stake of 51:49.
• Besides, L&T, in partnership with South Korean firm Hanwha, would be setting up a battle tank plant at Hazira in Gujarat. This will cost more than Rs. 500 crore. The project is going ahead as per schedule, Mr. Patil said
• On construction of a Rs. 250-crore wind tunnel facility for DRDO, he said: “Earlier, we had constructed a wind tunnel for ISRO and this is a repeat order. We have done half of it. The remaining portion will be completed in about 18 months.”
• According to Mr. Patil, L&T has an order book of Rs. 2,300 crore to Rs. 2,400 crore, including an export order of $100 million from Vietnam, for delivery of high speed interceptor boats.

€100 mn to be invested by Dassault in defence JV

• Dassault Aviation said it would invest €100 million in its defence joint venture with the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group.
• Mr. Ambani and Dassault Aviation chairman Eric Trappier on Friday laid the foundation stone for the Dassault Reliance Aerospace Limited (DRAL) manufacturing facility in the Rs. 6,500 crore Dhirubhai Ambani Aerospace Park (DAAP), Mihan, near Nagpur, Maharashtra. The plant is expected to start production in 2018.
• Reliance Aerostructure will hold a majority 51% in DRAL, while 49% would be held by Dassault Aviation. The facility will manufacture several components of the offset obligation connected to the purchase of 36 Rafale fighters from France, signed between the two governments in September 2016.
• DRAL will manufacture components for the Legacy Falcon 2000 Series of civil jets manufactured by Dassault Aviation and will become part of the French major’s global supply chain, said a company statement, adding these first steps were expected to achieve, in the coming years, the possible setting up of the final assembly of Rafale and Falcon Aircraft.
• The production from Mihan will begin in 2018. India will become the global manufacturing hub for Falcon aircraft. Leading French companies will set up base in Mihan. The company has signed performance-based logistics support from the Indian Airforce for the next 35 years.”

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