Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 23 July 2017

::National::

FM blamed EC for failing to check the use of ‘invisible money’ in elections

• Union Minister for Finance, Defence and Corporate Affairs Arun Jaitley blamed the Election Commission for failing to check the use of ‘invisible money’ in elections.

• He also took on political parties for preferring the status quo instead of suggesting improvements to the electoral bonds scheme proposed in the Budget.

• Mr. Jaitley said the government was already seeing the first signs of improvement in direct and indirect tax compliance due to reforms such as demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax.

• The Minister also hit out at Indian businesses for functioning under the belief that banks don’t have to be repaid, revealing that one firm had even claimed in court that the right to not repay banks is part of the Right to Equality.

• Despite having personally asked political parties — both orally in Parliament and in writing — to offer a better solution than the electoral bonds, Mr. Jaitley said: “Not one has come forward, because people are satisfied with the present system.”

Former Chairman of UIDAI has mooted a new data protection

• Nandan Nilekani has mooted a new data protection and empowerment law to ensure that individuals have control over their data and can ask service providers to return the data stored with them.

• Acknowledging that privacy issues currently being considered by a nine-judge Supreme Court Bench are important, he said the larger issue is to get citizens to use their own data more effectively.

• Mr Nilekani also backed China’s approach of compelling companies to host Chinese users’ data within the country, instead of overseas.

• Mr. Nilekani said India must have a strategic policy position on data-related issues, specifically on national security and data colonisation, privacy and a new anti-competitive paradigm where the winner takes it all.

GST system has a dedicated round-the-clock security operations command centre

• The Goods and Services Tax (GST) system is not exposed directly to the Internet and has a dedicated round-the-clock security operations command centre in its network against cyberthreats, the government has told the Rajya Sabha.

• To a question, the government said that any interaction with the system was only through APIs. It had a multi-layered security architecture and had operational segregation through use of a virtual local area network.

• There was segregation of duties, least privilege access principles, Internet Protocol (IP) filtering and blocking of rogue IPs, resiliency at each layer, secure coding practices ensuring security of GST software development throughout Software Development Lifecycle, and at-rest and in-transit data encryption.

• The data sharing mechanism ensures that any data transfer from the GST system is in encrypted format.

• The system banks on thorough security testing and full-system vulnerability assessment and penetration testing of IT infrastructure, besides the apps used licensed tools and customised scripts, said the government.

• According to the CERT-In, a total of 44,679, 49,455, 50,362 and 27,482 cybersecurity incidents were observed during 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 (till June), respectively.

• The types of cybersecurity incidents include phishing, scanning/probing, website intrusions and defacements, virus/malicious code, targeted attacks, ATM malware, ransomware and denial of service attacks among other threats.

• The government had taken a series of measures to strengthen the cybersecurity infrastructure.

Govt yet to give sanction to a dedicated organisation dealing with naval accidents

• The Union government is yet to give formal sanction to a dedicated organisation for dealing with naval accidents despite a series of accidents involving submarines and ships and loss of several lives.

• An audit by the Comptroller and Auditor-General also says a series of missteps led to the deadly 2013 accident in a submarine off Mumbai in which 18 people were killed.

• The explosion aboard INS Sindhurakshak and its sinking off Mumbai coast in August 2013 resulted from a series of missteps, the audit report says.

• The audit found that many recommendations of the inquiries into naval accidents had not been implemented.

• This included installation of smoke and fire detectors in all compartments of submarines and procurement of extended line breathing apparatus (ELBA) sets, carbon composite submarine breathing apparatus (SBA), light weight breathing sets for submarines etc.

• The idea of creating an Indian Navy Safety Organisation was mooted first in 2006 and ultimately promulgated in October 2012, the audit says. “It was set up in February 2014, though it is yet to be sanctioned by Government,” the audit said.

• From 2007-08 to 2015-16, a total number of 38 accidents occurred, which led to a loss of 33 lives of service officers and sailors. The Navy lost two ships ( INS Vindhyagiri and TRV A-72 ) and one submarine ( INS Sindhurakshak ) in these accidents.

• Of these accidents, the highest of 12 occurred during 2013-14, followed by six in 2007-08, five in 2014-15 and four each in 2008-09 and 2009-10.

NSA's visit to China shows promise of resolving Doklam area

• In a shift from the harsh rhetoric of the past weeks, Chinese state media hoped that next week’s visit to China by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval will help end the Doklam crisis and advance China-India ties.

• Mr. Ma is a veteran academic, who has been engaged in Track-2 diplomacy with India following former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Beijing in 1988. Mr. Doval will participate in a two-day BRICS event starting on July 27.

• The NSA’s visit will be key to solving the current dispute and if the two sides failed to reach some agreement on the issue, the China-India ties would be severely damaged.

• The daily prefaced the anticipation of Mr. Doval’s visit by slamming remarks by BJP leader R.K. Singh, who had reportedly opposed changing the status quo in Doklam, on grounds that it would endanger India's vital interests.

• The focus on enhancing communication echoes recent observations by former National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon. In a recent interview with The Hindu , Mr. Menon stressed that India and China “since the ’80s been rubbing up against each other in the periphery we share”.

• “Most economies, including those in the West, will find themselves negatively affected by an India-China war in a globalised and intertwined world today,” it observed.

• “The only beneficiaries (of a conflict), sadly, will be opportunists, short-sighted nationalist politicians who don't really have the people's interests in heart. And the dream of an Asian century would become a puff of wind.”

::International::

Sri Lanka’s new Constitution to be ready by January 2018

• Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the draft of Sri Lanka’s new Constitution would be ready by January 2018, yet again shifting the deadline for the challenging task his government took up after coming to power in 2015.

• As per earlier assurances, the government should have already debated the draft Constitution in Parliament by now, and prepared for a referendum after a likely two-thirds majority.

• But even as the government tried fast-tracking the process, a section of the country’s influential Buddhist clergy said there was no need for a new Constitution.

• Senior Minister and Cabinet spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said they would go ahead with drafting the new Constitution as per the mandate they got in the 2015 elections.

• The pressure is partly to do with the complex arrangement of a “national unity” government, with the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the rival United National Party (UNP) cohabiting it.

• There seems to be a widely-shared understanding that this government should look ahead faster than it needs to look behind.

• That is what the March UN resolution in Geneva, co-sponsored by the U.S., Sri Lanka and other countries, seemed to indicate when it gave the country a two-year extension to fulfil its commitments on accountability.

• At the same time, the Tamil leaders’ patience is evidently waning. Amid severe criticism from sections of its support base in the north, the TNA has begun articulating its frustration with the government loud and clear.

::Business and Economy::

Optimism is souring around small-cap stocks for some investors

• Optimism is souring around small-cap stocks for some investors, with a host of factors conspiring to up-end gains that have taken them to record highs.

• Small-caps, which led the market’s rally just after the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, are facing weak earnings forecasts, little progress on tax reform and recent outflows.

• Investors had expected the administration of Republican Trump, with his promises of aggressive tax cuts and a healthier U.S. economy, would be a boon for small-caps, which tend to be more domestically focused.

• Republicans so far have been unable to push through bills to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

• That has raised doubts about the likelihood of any tax reform this year. Small-caps have higher effective tax rates — about 32% versus 26% for large-caps, a note from Nuveen Asset Management showed.

• All three indexes hit record highs in recent sessions, just as the earnings reporting period was getting under way.

• Analysts estimate earnings for S&P 600 companies fell 8.3% in the second quarter, dragged down by projected drops in consumer discretionary, energy and health care results, according to Thomson Reuters data.

• The small-cap outlook is in contrast to expectations for another quarter of strong profit growth for the S&P 500 and a sharp year-over-year jump in large-cap energy.

Paper mills sought uniform rate of duty for the paper sector under GST

• Paper mills that use recycled paper as raw material have sought uniform rate of duty for the paper sector under Goods and Services Tax.

• Except for a few, most of the 800 paper mills in the country use recycled paper, according to P.G. Mukundan, secretary general, Indian Agro and Recycled Paper Mills’ Association.

• With availability issues in the international market and prices fluctuating, the paper industry wants to increase domestic sourcing of raw material and improve recovery rate.

• The GST on wood chips and other raw materials attract only 5% GST. Value-added paper products such as facial tissue attract 18% duty. There should be a uniform rate for paper and paper products and it should be at a minimum.

• The association has sought clarification on other issues too. For instance, books distributed under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan scheme with World Bank funding was exempted from Excise Duty. There is no mention about it in the GST.

::Science and Tech::

Scientists have used a novel approach to drug discovery

• Scientists have used a novel approach to drug discovery by attaching or linking a DNA sequence of interest to gold-coated magnetic nanoparticles and picking those molecules that target and bind to the DNA sequence for further study.

• This approach helps in rapid identification of potential DNA binding molecules for cancer therapy. G-quadruplexes are four-stranded DNA structures found in human genome, for example, the presence of G-quadruplexes in cancer-causing gene c-MYC.

• Since G-quadruplexes are involved in regulation of the gene expression, there is increased interest in finding molecules that target them.

• The traditional approach is to synthesise compounds and study their interactions with drug targets before choosing the best drug molecules. This is both time consuming and laborious.

• The azide and alkyne fragments that are capable of binding to the adjacent sites of the G-quadruplex react with each other to produce triazole products. Theoretically, the combination of azide and alkyne fragments can generate 66 triazole products.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has beamed back images Phobos

• NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has beamed back images of the tiny Martian moon Phobos in its orbital trek around the red planet.

• Over the course of 22 minutes, Hubble took 13 separate images, allowing astronomers to create a time-lapse video showing the diminutive moon’s orbital path.

• The Hubble observations were intended to photograph Mars, and the moon’s cameo appearance was a bonus. A football-shaped object of size just 26x21x17 kilometres, Phobos is one of the smallest moons in the solar system.

• The moon completes an orbit in just seven hours and 39 minutes, which is faster than Mars rotates. Rising in the Martian west, it runs three laps around the Red Planet in the course of one Martian day, which is about 24 hours and 40 minutes.

• It is the only natural satellite in the solar system that circles its planet in a time shorter than the parent planet’s day.

• About two weeks after the Apollo 11 manned lunar landing on July 20, 1969, NASA’s Mariner 7 flew by the Red Planet and took the first crude close-up snapshot of Phobos.

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