Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 05 January 2016

:: NATIONAL ::

Pathankot operation still continue after three days

Counter-terror operations at the Pathankot air- base stretched into the third evening, the government was weighing its options on whether to go ahead with the Foreign Secretary level talks scheduled for next week.
By dusk on Monday, senior military officials in Pathankot announced that they had killed a total of five terrorists, while sources in Delhi said the sixth one may have been blown to pieces in a controlled explosion carried out by the security forces around noon in the airbase.
By then, it had been more than 60 hours since the terrorists and security forces be- gan exchanging fire.
The long-drawn-out terrorist attack revived memories of the Mumbai attacks of 2008, when 10 terrorists held the city to ransom for three days.
However, given the fact that there was specific intelligence and the attack was in a very limited area, questions continued to linger over the way the entire Pathankot operation was coordinated and conducted.

North east jolted by earthquake in Manipur

Nine persons were killed and over 120 seriously injured as an earthquake measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale hit Manipur early on Monday, damaging several buildings, including government offices, schools and hospitals.
The epicentre of the quake which struck at 4.30 a.m., was at KabuiKjulen, 10 km from Noney sub-division of Manipur’s Tamenglong district.
People were jolted by the quake across the northeastern and eastern States including Assam, Tripura, West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand.
While seven persons, including a teenaged girl, were killed in Manipur, one person each died in Bihar and West Bengal.
Two teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were deployed in Manipur and rapid action squads of the State Health Department were despatched to the affected areas. Another NDRF team was sent to Assam.

Terrorists in Pathankot attack received training in Pakistan

After initially refraining from blaming the country, government said that the terrorists behind the Pathankot airbase attack appeared to have received training from a “professional armed force in Pakistan.”
The fidayeen (suicide) squad was more lethal and better trained than the 26/11 Mumbai attackers.
They had enough arms and ammunition, including under barrel grenade launchers, for a sustained operation of more than 60 hours against a professional army.
Establishing the identity of the terrorists would be a challenge because Pakistan would certainly not own them up. Security forces inside the air base have found bodies of five terrorists.
A sixth one was blown to pieces when the building he had taken refuge in was brought down with explosives on Monday. DNA samples would be preserved.
After the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, Pakistan had refused to accept the bodies of nine Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists killed by the security forces. The tenth terrorist, Ajmal Kasab, the only one to have been captured alive, was hanged in a Pune prison in 2013 and his body was buried on the premises.
The UJC, an alliance of more than a dozen pro-Pakistan militant groups based in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, had claimed responsibility for the air base attack.
The attack is a message by Mujahideen [militants] that no sensitive installation of India is out of our reach,” UJC spokesman Syed Sadaqat Hussain said in a statement.
Security agencies believe there were six terrorists and they were divided into two groups — one of 4 and the otherwith 2 members.
It is suspected that two terrorists might have entered the Pathankot air base before the Superintendent of Punjab Police Salwinder Singh, his jeweller friend Rajesh Verma and cook Madan Gopal were abducted by the other four, and much before an alert was sounded about their presence in the area.

India will come up with its own model for global warming

India will have its own climate change models to project the impact of global warming over the decades and these will form part of the forthcoming Sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Reports that is expected to be available in 2020.
The IPCC reports — there have been five so far since 1988 — are coordinated by the United Nations and bring together the scientific consensus on the causes and impact of climate change.
They also assess the extent to which the globe is expected to warm up over the medium and long term.
The IPCC’s fifth report in 2014, was critical in shaping the resolution at the recently concluded climate talks in Paris that all countries — developed and developing — had to, over time, do their bit to contain their greenhouse gas emissions to keep ensure that mean global temperatures did not rise beyond 1.5 to 2 degree of temperature in the 19th century.
As per the Paris Agreement, which will come into effect in 2020, India and several other countries will have report their emissions as well as detailed plans to curb them.
The climate models, being developed by the Earth Sciences Ministry, will be prepared by the Pune-based Centre for Climate Change Research.
These are so-called dynamic models that rely on super-computers to compute the weather on a given day and simulate how it would evolve over days, months and even years.
These models, developed in the United States, have over few years been customised to Indian conditions.

:: INTERNATIONAL ::

Crisis between Shia and Sunni deepened in west Asia

Iran’s Foreign Ministry accused Saudi Arabia of stoking regional tension after the kingdom broke of diplomatic relations and said Iranian embassy staff must leave.
By severing diplomatic relations, Saudi Arabia is “continuing the policy of increasing tension and clashes in the region.
Saudi Arabia announced its measures after its embassy in Tehran was firebombed and its interior destroyed by a mob who attacked the building in protest at the kingdom’s execution of a Shia cleric.

Difference between Shia and Sunni

A schism emerged after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632. He died without appointing a successor to lead the Muslim community, and disputes arose over who should shepherd the new and rapidly growing faith.
Some believed that a new leader should be chosen by consensus; others thought that only the prophet’s descendants should become caliph.
The title passed to a trusted aide, Abu Bakr, though some thought it should have gone to Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law. Ali eventually did become caliph after Abu Bakr’s two successors were assassinated.
After Ali also was assassinated, with a poison-laced sword at the mosque in Kufa, in what is now Iraq, his sons Hasan and then Hussein claimed the title. But Hussein and many of his relatives were massacred in Karbala, Iraq, in 680.
His martyrdom became a central tenet to those who believed that Ali should have succeeded the Prophet. (It is mourned every year during the month of Muharram). The followers became known as Shias, a contraction of the phrase Shiat Ali, or followers of Ali.
The Sunnis, however, regard the first three caliphs before Ali as rightly guided and themselves as the true adherents to the Sunnah, or the Prophet’s tradition. Sunni rulers embarked on sweeping conquests that extended the caliphate into North Africa and Europe.
The last caliphate ended with the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War-I.
The Sunni and Shia sects encompass a wide spectrum of doctrine, opinion and schools of thought.
The branches are in agreement on many aspects ofIslam, but there are considerable disagreements within each. Both branches include worshippers who run the gamut from secular to fundamentalist.
Shias consider Ali and the leaders who came after him as Imams. Most believe in a line of 12 Imams, the last of whom, a boy, is believed to have vanished in the ninth century in Iraq after his father was murdered.
Shias known as Twelvers anticipate his return as the Mahdi, or Messiah. Sunnis emphasise God’s power in the material world, sometimes including the public and political realm, while Shias value martyrdom and sacrifice.

:: INDIA and WORLD ::

Bus service between India and Nepal

A friendship bus service between India and Nepal via Champawat in Uttarakhand resumed after a gap of 27 years, much to the delight of people on either side of the border who have family and trade ties with each other.
These air-conditioned buses with free Wi-Fi facility, painted with Indian and Nepalese flags, will enter the Nepalese district of Kanchanpur at 6 a.m. everyday and start for Delhi, and return from there at 6 p.m.
No special documents are required to travel in these buses.
The service was suspended 27 years ago in the wake of the Indo-Nepal Trade and Transit Treaty.

:: BUSINESS and ECONOMY ::

Union government will set up rail regulator

The Union government has come out with a concept paper proposing to set up a rail regulator for fixing fares and ensuring level- playing field for private in- vestments in railway infrastructure.
To ensure that the pro- posed regulator, Rail Development Authority of India, doesn’t meet Parliamentary hurdles, the Railways Ministry initially plans to set it up through an executive order and later on widen its powers.
The proposal to set up a rail authority was announced by Rail Minister Suresh Prabhu while tabling the Rail Budget for 2015-16 last year.
The proposed rail authority will be mandated to set passenger and freight tariff, en- sure fair play and level-playing field for private investments in Railways, maintain efficiency and performance standards, disseminate information such as statistics and forecasts related to the sector.
The Rail Development Authority would be an independent body, housed outside the Ministry of Railways but funded through the annual railway budget sanctioned by the Parliament.
The approved Budget would be placed at the disposal of the regulatory authority. It would also be permitted to arrange funds through adjudication fees, penalties levied and any other source as specified in the proposed Act.
The proposal for setting up a regulator comes at a time when the estimated losses in passenger segment has ballooned from Rs 6159 crore in 2004-05 to provisional estimate of over Rs 30,000 crore in 2015-16, primarily due to sharp increases in input costs and no proportionate in- crease in fares over the same period.
Recently, the government had increased tatkal booking charges by up to 33 per cent for travel in sleeper class, AC- III tier, AC-II tier and executive class through an executive order.
Keeping fares within affordable limits has led to cross- subsidisation of passenger services leading to erosion ofrailway’s market share in freight.
The total share of rail- ways in the total transportation of freight traffic has declined from 89 per cent in 1950-51 to 36 per cent in 2007-08.

Health and social security priority areas for government

Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, said the government’s priority was to ensure access to health and social security benefits to three labour groups — organised, unorganised and those not employed or below the poverty line.
To make health and social security benefits accessible to unorganised sector workers like construction workers, migrant labourers, volunteers of different schemes like Anganwadi workers etc is one of the major priorities of the present government.
“Mechanisms can be thought of wherein social security benefit contributions to workers can be made by employers at a single window for all workers,” the Minister said.
Trade unions want that The minimum wage should not be less than Rs.18,000 per month. Need- based minimum wage is to be considered as essential part of social security.
Unions other demands include The income tax ceiling for the salaried persons and pensioners should be raised to Rs. 5-lakh per annum and fringe benefits like housing, medical and educational facilities and running allowances in Railways should be exempted from the income tax net in totality.
The unions also recommended that contract or casual workers should not be deployed in jobs of a perennial nature.
These workers should be paid the same wages and benefits as was being paid to regular workers doing the same work until they are regularised.

:: SPORTS ::

Lodha panel submits its report on cricket reform

Living up to its promise of regaining the “purity of the game” and restoring the dignity of the players, the Lodha Committee has suggested sweeping reforms in the structuring and governance of cricket in the country.
One of the most significant suggestions the panel makes is the formation of separate governing bodies for the Indian Premier League and the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
Also recommended is the setting up of a Players’ Association to safeguard the interests of the cricketers.
Suggesting a uniform constitution for the Board and its affiliates, the panel aims to reduce the number of members in the all-powerful Working Commit- tee to nine from 14, with the president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer and joint-secretary. As a result, there will only be one vice-president instead of five.
The strength of the IPL Governing Council, it is recommended, should be reduced to nine and include two representatives from the franchisees, nominees of the Players’ Association and the Comptroller & Auditor General’s office.
The Players’ Association, to be constituted by the Board, should include former Union Home Secretary G.K. Pillai as the chairman, former India players Mohinder Amarnath, Anil Kumble and Diana Edulji as members of the Steering Committee.
The PA would not act like a union, and all the costs of running the association would be met by the BCCI,” Justice Lodha announced at a press conference after releasing the report.
Former first-class players, five years after retirement, would become part of the association.
In 2005-06, Kumble was the principal negotiator for the players in a fight for an enhanced share in the profitsearned by the Board.
He had then drafted the terms for player contracts, and was instrumental in securing the players a share of the profits in the International Cricket Council conducted events.
During his term as president of the Karnataka State Cricket Association, he took steps to make every decision transparent. These initiatives did not escape the notice of the Lodha Committee.
The panel, in a significant departure from the past, suggests that one individual hold only one post in cricket administration. The office-bearers would have to choose between positions in respective state associations and the parent body.
In a move that was evidently pushed by the players, the senior selection committee, the report recommends, should comprise only three members, instead of five at present.
The Lodha Committee also calls for dividing the governance into two parts: cricketing and non-cricketing.
The non-cricketing management will be handled by six professional managers headed by a CEO, and the cricket matters — like selection, coaching and performance evaluation — should be left to the players.
Another key recommendation tackled the fact that three units from one state now enjoy the power to vote. For example, Maharashtra and Gujarat have three full members each. But Bihar has no representation at all in the Board.
The Committee recommended that one association should represent an entire state.
The Lodha Committee comprising retired judges, Justice R.M. Lodha, Justice Ashok Bhan and Justice R.V. Raveendran — was formed by the Supreme Court in January last year.