Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 25 March 2017

:: National ::

British authorities have started the legal process to extradite Mallya

The British authorities have started the legal process to extradite wanted business tycoon Vijay Mallya to India.
However, it is not certain if the legal process would culminate in his return to India to face charges as India-U.K. Extradition Treaty allows a wanted person to seek several guarantees before being extradited.

Turnaround plan from public sector banks mandatory for capital infusion

The Finance Ministry has written to 10 public sector banks making it clear that the lenders would only get further capital infusion once they submit a time-bound turnaround plan.
The Centre wrote to the state-owned lenders last week stipulating that the banks would each have to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the government, agreeing to stick to the turnaround plan.
The government wants 10 public sector banks to turn around in the next three years.
The government’s move to crack the whip on lenders comes after some banks had reported losses in the financial year 2015-16 as well as for the nine-month period of the current financial year.
Bad loans zoomed following the Reserve Bank of India’s asset quality review, which required banks to classify many accounts identified by the banking regulator as ‘bad’.
The RBI had said at the time that it wanted to clean up banks’ balance sheets by March 2017.
In its financial stability report, RBI had said banks may remain risk averse in the near future as they clean up their balance sheets and their capital position may remain insufficient to support higher credit growth.
According to RBI data, gross non-performing assets of commercial banks increased to 9.1% of their gross advances as of September 2016, from 5.1% a year earlier. Public sector banks share a disproportionate burden of this stress.

ICHR to explore whether the Ram Setu is a natural or man-made

The Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) is set to undertake an archaeological exploration to find out whether the Ram Setu is a natural or man-made phenomenon.
It will undertake the exploration in October and November, before deciding whether a detailed underwater archaeological excavation is required to probe deeper.

Health Ministry’s targets on TB are unrealistic due to current budgets

India has come under criticism from the global public health community for giving inaccurate estimates of the tuberculosis burden between 2000 and 2015.
Tuberculosis is a contagious infection caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and it usually attacks the lungs. It can also spread to other parts of the body like the brain and spine.
Tuberculosis is contagious and spreads through the air, much like cold or flu. Public health experts maintain that the unchecked rise of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) in India will threaten the progress made globally.
According to the Health Ministry, 17.5 lakh TB patients and 33,820 DR TB patients were notified in 2016 from public and private health.
The two new WHO recommended drugs for DR TB, Delaminid & Bedaquiline, are not currently available in Indian national TB programme. While Delaminid is yet to be registered in India, Bedaquiline is available at only 6 States in the country, under compassionate use.
Meanwhile, the Indian government will soon be releasing the National Strategic Plan for TB Control (2017-2025), with an overarching framework to achieving the elimination goal.

:: International ::

Trump administration wants extra security for certain groups

The Trump administration has instructed all its diplomatic missions worldwide to identify certain groups that need extra scrutiny and adopt a rigorous vetting process for issuing visas.
Those applying for an American visa, including tourist and business visas, would be asked to furnish details of their employment and residence for the last 15 years and all the phone numbers they used in the previous five years.
The cable was sent after President Donald Trump signed a revised executive order restricting travel from six Muslim-majority Muslim countries on March 6.
The cable says additional protocols have been put in place to prevent the entry into the US of foreign nationals who may aid, support or commit violent, criminal or terrorist acts and ensure that those allowed to come in are rigorously vetted.
The classified cable asks all its overseas diplomatic posts to immediately draw a set of criteria for a rigorous vetting process for issuing visas to foreign nationals.
It was not clear if the move will have any impact on Indians. The cable instructed visa issuing officers to ask additional questions to the applicants.
It would also require the applicant to share with visa officer all phone numbers, emails and social media accounts used in the last five years.
Meanwhile, the White House signalled that U.S. lawmakers will go ahead with a showdown vote on Friday on the Republican plan to replace Obamacare, despite signs the bill may not have the votes to pass.
The U.S. President had earlier warned Republicans that he is done negotiating the bill and wants a vote, warning that if the effort fails, his predecessor’s health care reforms will stand, lawmakers in an emergency meeting said.

:: Science and Technology ::

Hubble space telescope has detected a supermassive black hole

NASA’s Hubble space telescope has detected a supermassive black hole that has been kicked out of the centre of a distant galaxy by what could be the power of gravitational waves.
Weighing more than one billion suns, the rogue black hole is the most massive black hole ever detected to have been kicked out of its central home.
Researchers estimate that it took the equivalent energy of 100 million supernovas exploding simultaneously to jettison the black hole.
The most plausible explanation for this propulsive energy is that the monster object was given a kick by gravitational waves unleashed by the merger of two hefty black holes at the centre of the host galaxy, according to the scientists.
The images revealed a bright quasar, the energetic signature of a black hole, residing far from the galactic core. Black holes reside in the centre of galaxies, so it’s unusual to see a quasar not in the centre.
The black hole had travelled more than 35,000 light years from the centre, which is more than the distance between the sun and the centre of the Milky Way, according to the study.
First predicted by Albert Einstein, gravitational waves are ripples in space that are created when two massive objects collide. The ripples are similar to the concentric circles produced when a hefty rock is thrown into a pond.

:: Business and Economy ::

Phone service providers to reverify through Aadhaar

The Department of Telecommunications issued a notification, directing all phone service providers to reverify details for all existing subscribers through Aadhaar-based e-KYC (Know Your Customer) process.
This follows a Supreme Court order last month in which it had approved the government’s plan to record the identification details of mobile subscribers through an e-KYC mechanism linked to Aadhaar.
The move will impact more than 100 crore mobile phone subscribers in the country, 90% of whom are prepaid card users.
The process is likely to cost about Rs. 2,500 crore which will be borne by the service providers, according to industry body COAI. Mobile connections used for data services will be verified using the alternate number.
The department’s decision comes two days after Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley moved an amendment to the Finance Bill 2017 to make Aadhaar mandatory for individuals to apply for a PAN and for filing ITR this year.
Centre made it mandatory for beneficiaries to quote their Aadhaar number to avail themselves of benefits under the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana for skill development, and the Self Employment Scheme for Rehabilitation of Manual Scavengers.
The Centre had identified 31 schemes in which the Aadhaar could be made mandatory.
Notifications have been issued in recent months by departments to make Aadhaar compulsory for getting subsidised grains under the NFSA, jobs under the MGNREGA and pension benefits under the Employees’ Pension Scheme.
It added that any subscriber acquired through proof of identity or proof of address documents during the period of reverification will also need to be reverified.
In January this year, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had recommended the use of Aadhaar-based e-KYC for verification of existing mobile subscribers.
It had, however, proposed that this process should be optional to the service providers as well as mobile subscribers.

Competition Commission of India has imposed a penalty of Rs. 591 crore upon CIL

Competition Commission of India (CCI) has imposed a penalty ofRs. 591.01 crore upon Coal India Limited (CIL) on finding that CIL and its subsidiaries violated the Competition Act by imposing unfair and discriminatory conditions in Fuel Supply Agreements (FSAs).
Apart from ordering CIL and its subsidiaries to “cease and desist” from anti-competitive practices, the CCI also directed modification of the FSAs, a government statement said.
It added that CIL had also been directed to ensure uniformity between old and new power producers as well as between private and PSU power producers.
The order follows the Competition Appellate Tribunal remanding the matter back while setting aside the CCI’s original order in which a penalty of Rs. 1,773.05 crore was imposed on the coal major.

Recapitalisation alone is not enough says Y.V. Reddy

Former RBI Governor Y.V. Reddy said that the issue of NPA, most of which are with public sector banks, needed more than just recapitalisation, and that the public sector banks were key to the modernisation of India’s financial sector.
“The common thread between fiscal policy, monetary policy, and financial sector policy is public sector banks,” Mr. Reddy said.
“The future of the financial system and indeed modernisation of the financial sector of India depends on how we overcome the intractable problem of the public sector banks.”
The former RBI Governor and chairman of the 14th Finance Commission said that the effectiveness of monetary policy depended not only on the actions of the monetary authority but also on other related policies and the efficiency of transmitting institutions.
With over 70% of the banks and overwhelming proportion of the financial sector in the public sector, there are issues of incentives and accountability and political interference.
The fact that the overwhelming proportion of the non-performing assets are with the public sector banks shows that the reform will have to go beyond simply recapitalising the banks.
The former RBI governor added that a professional approach and a capacity to evaluate lending proposals could not be expected from public sector institutions that are bailed out from time to time with taxpayers’ money.