Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 25 June 2017

::National::

Maharashtra govt announced loan waiver 

• Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced a Rs. 34,000-crore loan waiver, with an emphasis on marginal farmers.The measure will wipe out loans of up to Rs. 1.5 lakh outstanding against agriculturists.
• This farm loan waiver approved by the State Cabinet will clear up the 7/12 (property cards mortgaged for loans) of 40 lakh farmers. 
• For the remaining farmers (an estimated 49 lakh whose outstandings are over Rs. 1.5 lakh), the government would pay up Rs. 1.5 lakh of their loan, with the agriculturists being offered a one-time settlement facility for the remaining portion of their loan. The waiver will include both short-term and medium-term loans.”
• Those farmers repaying their loans regularly will get 25 per cent (of their loan component, up to a maximum of Rs. 25,000) directly credited into their bank accounts as an incentive for their prudent fiscal management. 
• Those making their payments in June 2017 would receive their incentive into their accounts.
• Government employees (except class IV staff), members of the Legislative Assembly and Council and traders with an annual turnover of Rs. 10 lakh would not be eligible for the loan waiver scheme. 
• Moreover, all Ministers and MLAs of the BharatiyaJanata Party would donate one month’s emoluments that they receive to finance the loan waiver.

NSG couldn't agree for India’s membership 

• The annual plenary meeting of the Nuclear Suppliers Group in the Swiss capital of Berne on June 22 and 23 ended without agreeing on India’s case for a membership, for a second year.
• Though member states agreed to convene another meeting on the subject of non-signatories to the Non Proliferation Treaty, such as India and Pakistan, in another five months.
• The NSG had discussions on the issue of ‘Technical, Legal and Political Aspects of the Participation of non-NPT States in the NSG’. 
• The Group decided to continue its discussion and noted the intention of the Chair to organise an informal meeting in November.
• The announcement of the November date denoted “progress”, an Indian official said on Saturday, while the NSG also noted India’s special relationship with the group owing to the nuclear waiver India won in 2008 to conduct nuclear business. 
• The NSG said the Berne plenary had “continued to consider all aspects of the implementation of the 2008 Statement on Civil Nuclear Cooperation with India and discussed the NSG relationship with India”.
• The “technical, legal and political aspects” phrase in the NSG statement is part of a process decided on in 2016, when India and Pakistan had both formally applied for membership to build criteria for admitting non-NPT members.

India’s first underwater metro tunnels completed

• On June 20, the Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation (KMRC) completed the construction of India’s first set of underwater transportation tunnels. 
• The two tunnels, 16.1 metres apart, with a diameter of 5.5 metres each, link the two banks of the Hooghly river — Howrah Maidan and Sealdah on one side with Kolkata on the other. 
• The tunnels are at a depth of 13 metres below the riverbed, and 30 metres from the land surface.
• With the completion of the tunnels, India has joined a select group of nations that have underwater transport, he said, adding that the feat comes almost 33 years after the first metro train in the country opened its doors for the public in Kolkata in 1984.
• The tunnels are part of the 16.6 km East West Metro route, a major transport project in the city with an estimated cost of Rs. 8,996 crore, of which about 5.8 km traverses an elevated corridor and 10.8 km will run underground. 
• The 520 metre-long tunnels under the river are part of the 10.8 km underground stretch.
• Interestingly, the two bridges over the Hooghly — connecting Kolkata with Howrah — took a longer time. 
• While it took six years for the iconic Howrah Bridge to be completed since its commissioning in 1943, for Vidyasagar Setu the time taken was much longer — about 13 years. 

Disabled people hired in good numbers by IT companies 

• Information Technology companies, 4% of which had made their office buildings employment friendly, have started hiring disabled people in good numbers. 
• Thanks to a Union government initiative where it contributes to the provident fund of physically challenged employees with salary over Rs. 25,000, Hyderabad’s IT industry has hired close to 132 new staff in various posts.
• The government of India will pay the PF of these employees for a period of three years. National Association of Software and Service Companies’ Foundation has been mooting the disabled friendly move for over a three years now. 
• The foundation had also popularised the scheme by interfacing between national and local government partners.
• NASSCOM has been holding career guidance drives for physically challenged for almost three years. In a recent career motivation workshop held in the city where NASSCOM partnered with Microsoft, a good 3% of young girls who attended were physically challenged. 

::International:: 

Qatar is at centre of storm in the world 

• Sheikh Hamad announced his abdication decision on June 25, 2013. Within a week, Abdul Fattahal-Sisi, the Egyptian General, seized power by toppling the country’s first elected President Mohamed Morsi, who had the backing of Qatar. 
• Saudi Arabia and the UAE offered help to Gen. Sisi because they saw President Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement as a threat to regional stability. For Sheikh Tamim, it was his first major foreign policy crisis.
• His father had heavily invested, both politically and economically, in the Arab Spring protests to expand Qatar’s influence across the region. 
• It was in Qatar’s interests to prevent the coup that took place in the background of largescale anti-Morsi protests in Cairo and other parts of Egypt. 
• After the coup, Sheikh Tamim had two options: either toe the Saudi line by welcoming Egypt’s new ruler or continue to support the Muslim Brotherhood. 
• He chose the latter, paving the way for protracted tensions with his bigger neighbour which eventually led to Riyadh and its allies cutting ties with Qatar earlier this month.
• From the early days of his rule, it was evident that Sheikh Tamim wanted to raise Qatar’s profile in an unstable region. He competed with the Saudis in bankrolling anti-regime militias in Syria. He backed one of the rival governments in Libya. 
• Al Jazeera, the royal family-funded television station, continued its sympathetic coverage of the Muslim Brotherhood. When the political leadership of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that rules Gaza, fled crisis-hit Damascus, Qatar offered them refuge. 

::Business and Economy:: 

Google would stop scanning Gmail

• Alphabet Inc.'s Google said it would stop scanning Gmail content for creating personalised ads from later this year, bringing the widely-used email service in line with its enterprise offering, G Suite. 
• The decision was outlined in a blog post by Google cloud computing chief Diane Greene, who joined the company in 2015.

The government is likely to bring in an ordinance to amend the SEZ Act

• The government is likely to bring in an ordinance by next week to amend the SEZ Act to bring it in line with the Goods and Services Tax (GST), due on July 1. The Commerce Ministry is working on the same.
• Certain provisions in the special economic zone (SEZ) Act, 2005, are not consistent with the GST regime and need to be made compatible before the July 1 rollout date.
• For instance, the duty drawback norms, under which an exporter is compensated for duties during the course of production of goods, are required to be in sync with the new indirect tax structure. Under the current rules, SEZ units get a service tax exemption and the developers are exempted from customs or excise duty for development of zones for authorised operations.

::Science and Tech:: 

Novel cancer drug delivery system using graphene oxide nanoparticles

• Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune have successfully developed a novel cancer drug delivery system using graphene oxide nanoparticles. 
• In a serendipitous discovery, a team led by Dr. Sudipta Basu and Dr. NirmalyaBhallav from the Department of Chemistry found that when a FDA-approved anticancer drug cisplatin was added, the graphene oxide sheets self-assembled into spherical nanoparticles enclosing the drug within.
• Two DNA-damaging anticancer drugs — proflavine and doxorubicin — that bind to graphene oxide through non-covalent bond were also used.
• The nanoparticles of 90-120 nanometre size containing cisplatin and either of the two anticancer drugs were taken up by cervical cancer cells leading to programmed cell death. The results were published in the journal Chemical Communication.
• The cisplatin nanoparticles containing either proflavine or doxorubicin were found to get into the lysosomes of a cell in a time-dependent manner. 
• Once inside the lysosomes, the drugs were released in a slow and sustained manner and killed the cancer cells predominantly through programmed cell death.

NASA is launching a sounding rocket CHESS

• NASA is launching a sounding rocket CHESS on June 27 to study vast interstellar clouds and know about the earliest stages of star formation. 
• The Colorado High-resolution Echelle Stellar Spectrograph will measure light filtering through the interstellar medium, which provides crucial information for understanding the lifecycle of stars.
• In the space between distant stars there drift vast clouds of neutral atoms and molecules, as well as charged plasma particles that may, over millions of years, evolve into new stars and even planets.
• CHESS will train its eye at Beta Scorpii — a hot, brightly shining star in the Scorpius constellation well-positioned for the instrument to probe the material between the star and our own solar system.
• This is the third flight for the CHESS payload in the past three years, and the most detailed survey yet.

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