Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 24 November 2015

::National ::

Terrorism should be countered at all fronts: Modi

Against the growing tide of Islamic State violence and concerns about its possible domestic repercussions, India toughened its posture on terrorism with Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking that countries be held accountable for providing terror sanctuaries.
The contours of India's multi-pronged response to the IS threat emerged even as the post-Paris global response was firming up despite fear writ across the world, from Brussels to the U.S. mainland, of fresh attacks.
New Delhi's multi-layered stand on terrorism comes against the backdrop of re-ports indicating that almost 150 Indian youths may have been enticed by the IS ideology, about two dozen Indians are in the Syrian battlefield, and many others have been intercepted while trying to reach the IS sanctuary.
Meanwhile, Indian intelligence agencies said the IS did not consider South Asian Muslims, including Indians and Pakistanis, good enough to fight in the conflict zone of Iraq and Syria, and they were treated inferior to Arab fighters, often being tricked into suicide attacks.
Sources said that of the 23 Indians who are believed to be fighting along-side the IS, six have died, an unusually high casualty rate.

Indians prefer male child over female

New Census data indicate that two processes around the preference for a male child are going on si-multaneously in India — prenatal sex determination and repeated pregnancies.
Data on family sizes and sex ratios released on Monday showed that at every family size, there were more boys born than girls.
However as family sizes got bigger, the sex ratio within the family got much less skewed, indi-cating that families with fewer or no sons were the ones choosing to have re-peated pregnancies.
Among women who had ever had one child, 22 million said that they had had a girl and 28.5 million had had a boy, clearly indicating a disproportionately large number of boys being born. Among women who had given birth to two children, 26 million had two boys while just half that number -- 13.3 million -- had two girls.
This was similarly the case among families with three children families with all three boys or two boys and a girl were far more common than fam-ilies with all three girls or two girls and a boy.
However at higher family sizes, this dynamic begins to change, as families that cannot or do not practise prenatal sex selection have repeated pregnancies in their quest for a son, a se-nior Census oicial ex-plained.
Families with six children, for instance, are far more likely to have all six girls than all six boys, the data shows; there were 0.9 million such families, as against just 0.3 families with all six boys.
As families get larger, the survival odds of girl chil-dren also begin to falter, the data shows.

Plea challenges SC stay of ban on dance bars

A petition was filed on Monday in the Supreme Court to reverse its order to stay a legal provision in the Maharashtra Police Act and ushering in dance back into beer parlours and restaurants as a mode of entertainment.
A Bench led by Justice Dipak Misra in October 2015 had agreed with the contention that there are alternatives to a ban on dance performances to ensure safety of women.
But the court also gave a free hand to authorities to crack-down on these performances if they are found to be “remotely expressive of any kind of ob-scenity in any manner.”
The order came as a relief to women who lost their jobs and slipped into prostitution and penury due to the clampdown after the Maharashtra State Assembly, in July 2014, circumvented a 2013 Supreme Court decision that upheld that “dancing is a fundamental right.”

Lok Sabha Speaker asked for better behaviour in Parliamnet

Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan has written to all MPs asking for restrained behaviour, ahead of the winter session of Parliament starting on November 26.
The two-page letter is a follow-up to the one she wrote to members on September 23, eliciting creative and constructive suggestions for the smooth functioning of the Lok Sabha.
In democracy, it is not un-usual to have difference in opinion, but there are times, while expressing their opinion, decency is thrown to the winds, leading to deadlock at times.
Like expecting the sea not to unleash its fury, de-spite human beings reclaiming land from the seabed or not to expect tigers to roam human habitats that have encroached into the jungle. So why should we not expect good behaviour from ourselves.

Food security act to be rolled by every state except Tamil Nadu

Barring Tamil Nadu, all States are on board for implementing the National Food Security Act by April next, Union Food Minister Ram Vi-las Paswan said on Monday af-ter a meeting with State food secretaries here.
So far, 22 States and Union Territories have rolled out the Act which covers up to 67 per cent of the population (75 per cent rural and 50 per cent ur-ban) and gives with 5 kilo-gram of subsidised rice or wheat or coarse cereals per identified beneficiary.
It is mandatory for the States and Union Territories to adopt digital identification of the beneficiaries, arrange for doorstep delivery of food-grains and constitute grievance redressal cells before they roll out the scheme.
Representatives of 11 States said they would be ready with the digitisation and identifi-cation of beneficiaries by March next year.
The Tamil Nadu representative, howev-er, said the Public Distribu-tion System was universal in the State and as such it was diicult to identify benefici-aries. To switch to a targeted system would involve a policy decision.
Of the 14 States that have not implemented the Food Security Law, Andhra Pradesh and Sikkim will be ready by December. Uttar Pradesh, Meghalaya, Jammu & Kash-mir and Andaman & Nicobar will roll it out in January 2016. Other States, including Gujarat, Kerala, Arunachal Pra-desh, Manipur, Mizoram, Na-galand, will implement it by March next year.
As against a target of 1.5 lakh, over 51,000 e-PoS ma-chines had been installed at ration shops so far, she said. Deletion of bogus ration cards in the last two years had helped the government save food subsidy to the tune of Rs. 4000 crore.
On the issue of the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme, the Minister said it was not com-pulsory. The government was implementing it on a pilot ba-sis in Puducherry and Chandigarh.

Open appeal by corporate chiefs for climate change

The corporate chiefs representing a cross-sectoral coali-tion facilitated by the World Economic Forum that includes banking, manufac-turing, construction and energy extended “an open ofer” to governments to co-design climate solutions ahead of the UNFCCC's Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris to be at-tended by leaders of 200 countries.
Almost half the 21 signa-tories from the BRICS and emerging economies are from India and include Ajit Gulabchand of Hindustan Construction Co., Vishal Sikka of Infosys, Sajjan Jin-dal of JSW Group, Ravi Up-pal of Jindal Steel & Power Ltd., T K Kurien of Wipro and India-born Indra Nooyi, chairman and CEO, PepsiCo Inc etc.
Welcoming the message, Christiana Figueres, execu-tive secretary, United Na-tions Framework Conven-tion on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said climate ac-tion represents a massive economic opportunity.
“This is the first intentional-ly directed industrial revolution and will be the source of good new jobs and strong growth for the coming dec-ades, something developing countries are increasingly realising and taking the lead on.

:: International ::

Money sources of IS

Even as the United Nations has au-thorised member countries to do more to combat the Islamic State (IS), one of the key challenges the world powers would face in the war would be to choke the funding of the jihadist group.
The group, which has establish-ed a proto-state in the self-pro-claimed ‘Caliphate' that stretches from the suburbs of Damascus to the outskirts of Baghdad compris-ing 8 to 10 million people, is one of the best funded terror outfits in the world.
It has a religious police in the ‘Caliphate' and is also running schools, food points and other ad-ministrative centres. Besides, it is fighting a protracted war on its borders against several enemies — the Iraqi and Syrian national ar-mies, rebel forces and other jiha-dist groups such as Jabbat al-Nusra.
According to The Economist, IS fighters are paid around $400 a month, better than an average Iraqi soldier. Where does the money come from for all these operations?
Donors' money Usually terror organisations are run on money they receive from in-ternational donors.
The IS is also getting money through this chan-nel. According to a Washington Post report, the IS received up to $40 million in 2013-14 from busi-nessmen, wealthy families and oth-er donors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE.
But unlike other terror groups, the IS is not only dependent on in-ternational donors for revenues. Ever since it captured the east-ern Syrian city of Raqqa in 2013, the IS has expanded its financial mus-cles along with its military capabil-ities.
According to the Rand Cor-poration, the IS's total revenue rose from a little less than $1 million a month in 2008-2009 (when it was called the Islamic State in Iraq) to perhaps $1 million to $3 million a day in 2014.One of the means of revenues was tax collection in the ‘Caliphate'.
The group has also made millions from kidnappings. According to some estimates, the jihadist group has made at least 20 million in 2014 through kidnapping for ran-som alone. The IS has also looted banks in Iraqi cities that fell to its hands. Mosul was a case in point.
But the group's single largest source of income is oil trade. The group controls six of Syria's 10 oil-fields, including the big Omar facil-ity, and at least four small fields in Iraq, including those at Ajeel and Hamreen, according to Maplecroft, a risk management firm.

Russian President in Iran

President Vladimir Putin on Monday eased re-strictions on Russian compa-nies working on Iranian enrichment sites as he travelled to Tehran for his first visit since 2007.
A decree Putin signed on Monday enables Russian firms to help modify centri-fuges at the Fordo enrichment site and help Tehran redesign its Arak heavy water reactor.
Russian companies can now also carry out activities linked to Iranian exports of enriched uranium of more than 300 kilograms in ex-change for the supplies of nat-ural uranium to Iran, the Kremlin decree said.
Historic deal Under a historic July deal with world powers, Iran agreed to dramatically scale back its nuclear programme, making it much more diicult for it to develop nuclear weapons.
Tehran agreed to slash by two-thirds the number of centrifuges, machines that can “enrich” or purify uranium to make it suitable for peaceful uses but also for a nuclear weapon.

:: India and World ::

India, Malaysia vow to strengthen defence ties

India and Ma-laysia have agreed to streng-then their defence coopera-tion, including improved maritime security and disas-ter response in the region.
“I am pleased that we have agreed to upgrade our joint exercises and set up the SU-30 Forum. We will do more in terms of level and complexity of exercises, and collaboration in training and defence equipment,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at the end of his three-day visit to Kuala Lumpur.
Besides agreeing to regular summits, ministerial dia-logues and oicial meetings, the two countries have agreed to cooperate in cyber-security.
“ As our lives get more networked, this is emerging as one of the most serious concerns of our age,” Mr. Modi pointed out.
PM also said that the two back-to-back airline tragedies could sap the morale of any nation, he commended the Malaysian Prime Minister for his leadership and the resolve and resilience of the Malaysian people.
Raising the issue of terrorism, the Prime Minister said the recent attacks in diferent countries were a reminder of the global nature of this threat.
In this context, he said Malaysia had provided lead-ership in combating extre-mism and radicalisation, re-jecting any link between terrorism and religion, and in highlighting the real values of Islam.

:: Business and Economy ::

Arun Jaitley says NPA of Banks are at " unacceptable level"

Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley said non-performing assets of Indian banks were at an ‘unacceptable' level but the situation is expected to improve as the government and the central bank were taking steps to relieve stress in various sectors.
“The health of the public sector banks was a key subject, particular-ly in relation to the fact that a car-ried over problem of the past con-tinues to persist. And that problem relates to the unacceptable level of NPAs,” Mr. Jaitely told journalists on Monday after a meeting with bankers to review their July-Sep-tember performance.
The meeting was attended by the Chiefs of the public sector banks as well as Secretaries from various ministries including micro, small and medium enterprises, agricul-ture, textiles, and rural development.
While acknowledging that a part of the stress with the banking sec-tor has to do with certain sectors, the Finance Minister expressed hope that the reforms announced in the power sector will relieve the problems with the distribution companies.
He also added that the highways sector has started mov-ing, and that the bankers at the meeting suggested measures to im-prove the situation in the belea-guered steel sector.
The gross NPAs of public sector banks were at six per cent at the end of June, up from 5.2 per cent in March. According to RBI data, stressed asset, that is gross NPA plus standard restructured advanc-es, as a percentage of gross advanc-es moved up to 11.1 per cent as on March 2015 as compared to 9.2 per cent two years ago.
Public sector banks share a disproportionate burden of these stress. Bankers who attended the meet-ing highlighted six sectors that were facing maximum stress --iron and steel, textile, power, sugar, alu-minium and construction.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), in its financial stability report, also cited five sub-sectors that were un-dergoing maximum stress, which are infrastructure, iron and steel, textiles, mining (including coal) and aviation.
According to the RBI data, these five sub-sectors had 52 per cent of total stressed advances of all com-mercial banks as of June 2014, whereas in the case of PSBs it was at 54 per cent.

Crude oil output fell 2.1 per cent in October

Natural gas produc-tion in the country declined 1.8 per cent in October 2015 compared to the same month last year, while crude oil pro-duction fell 2.1 per cent.
Natural gas production increased for the first time in 5 years in August, and then grew again in September, but has now again reverted to its ‘normal' scenario of contracting year-on-year.
“Natural gas production during October 2015 was 2795.024 MMSCM (million metric standard cubic meters) which is 6.77 per cent lower than the target for the month and 1.82 per cent lower than the production during the corresponding period of last year,” according to a state-ment from the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas on Monday.
While ONGC saw its on-shore fields producing 8.8 per cent more natural gas in October 2015 than in the same month last year, its ofshore production was lower by 4.4 per cent of its levels last year.
Private producers seem to be the main cause for the dip in overall production, with their production levels in Oc-tober coming in at a lower 6.6 per cent of their October 2014 levels.
Here, again, the main culprits were the ofshore fields, which saw a 10.6 per cent dip in their production levels.

:: Sports ::

Djokovic beats Federer in Tour Finals

Novak Djokovic finished the best season of his life in fitting style as the world No. 1 crushed Roger Federer 6-3, 6-4 to win the ATP Tour Finals title for a record fourth successive year.
Djokovic is the first player in the tournament's 46-year history to take home the trophy four years in a row and he joins Pete Sampras and Ivan Lendl on five victories at the season-ending event.
Only Federer, with six Tour Finals crowns, has won the tournament more times.
The 11th title of Djokovic's as-tonishingly dominant campaign served as the perfect finale to ar-guably the best run by any male player in the Open Era.
Playing in a record 15th con-secutive tour-level final, Djokovic delivered another masterclass to record his 82nd victory from 88 matches this year and bank the winners' cheque for $1.05 million.