Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 29 August 2017

::National::

J&K govt wants inland waterways in Jhelum

• Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti called for introduction of inland water transport in the State’s water bodies, including Jhelum river, to boost tourism and provide an alternate connectivity module to the people.
• “Jhelum being the nerve centre of the valley’s sociocultural ethos, movement of people and freight through the river would re-create the good old days for which the place is known for.
• This will give a boost to tourism too,” she said, while interacting with a visiting team of the Inland Waterways Authority of India led by its chairperson Nutan Guha Biswas.
• Ms. Mehbooba also asked for covering Salal Dam, Sindh and Chenab rivers under the inland water transport scheme and further requested for the revival of the old navigational channels in Wullar Lake to make it an attraction for water transport.
• He added that Ms. Biswas informed the CM that all steps would be taken to make Jhelum, Ravi, Tawi, Sindh and other rivers navigable.

Good monsoon raises dam water

• Heavy rains in catchment areas in the past week have added 68 TMC of water in over 3,200 dams across Maharashtra.
• The State Water Resources Department said 3,247 dams in the State had 1,048.76 TMC of water as on August 21, and it rose to 1,116.87 TMC by August 28.
• Marathwada region, which largely grows food grains, was the biggest beneficiary of last week’s showers.
• The region boasts 955 reservoirs and dams and the collective water stock was 137.39 TMC on August 21. It rose to 154.62 TMC by August 28, recording an increase of 17.23 TMC.
• The average water stock on August 21 was 54.52% of the total storage capacity of 1,709.21 TMC of all the dams in Maharashtra. The report said, “On the same date last year, the total water storage was 61.97%.
• The picture changed in the last seven days and the water stock as of Monday was 59.21% as against 62.88% the previous year.”

Indian ocean sees changes in stresses

• Geological stresses building along the Indo-Australian tectonic plate boundary in the Southern Indian Ocean have the potential to cause a powerful earthquake, triggering a tsunami across much of South India.
• Tsunami waves triggered by the undersea quake would propagate northward towards the Indian peninsula. Pointing out that the southern parts of the Indian landmass would be in the direct line of the tsunami.
• The possibility of a tsunami from the south of India had been ignored, he said. The largest strike-slip earthquake on record had happened along the Indo- Australian plate boundary in 2012.
• The phenomenon occurred when tectonic plates slipped horizontally along a fault line, unlike most large earthquakes which were caused when two plates collided at their boundaries and one plate slid beneath the other.
• A section of geo-scientists had, however, refuted the idea, he pointed out.
• The Andaman subduction zone in the Bay of Bengal and the Makaran subduction zone in the Arabian Sea were the other tsunamigeic zones in the Indian plate region that had been subjected to studies.
• More than 300 delegates from various research institutions are attending the three-day conference.

Centre set to roll out new treatment for encephalitis

• Weeks after several children died of encephalitis-related complications at the Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical College, Gorakhpur, the Centre is looking to introduce a new drug, traditionally used for acne, to deal with the seasonal outbreaks of acute encephalitis.
• Last year the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said the drug did not appear potent enough to merit being immediately rolled out as a standard treatment for treating patients afflicted with the Japanese encephalitis ( JE) virus.
• In 2008, researchers at the National Brain Research Centre (NBRC), Manesar found that minocycline — an antibiotic typically used to treat severe acne — surprisingly seemed to cure rats infected with the JE virus.
• Independent teams of doctors and researchers between 2008 and 2013 have conducted trials on patients and have concluded, that minocycline worked well on patients with AES symptoms, who survived the first day of hospitalisation.
• The studies included a trial on 50 patients, time at the BRD Medical College, Gorakhpur itself on the use of minocycline, in specific cases of JE. The researchers found that using the medicine reduced hospital stay but didn’t significantly improve overall mortality.
• The ICMR said last year that the trials showed that the number of patients who seemed to benefit wasn’t “statistically significant” and a larger, more systematic trial at multiple locations was needed to establish the efficacy of the drug.

::India and World::

India and China end the crisis of Doklam

• According to other sources, the two sides would also see a meeting between National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and state councillor Yang Jiechi.
• While neither side spoke about the future of the PLA’s road construction towards Jompelri, which had sparked off the standoff on June 16 after Indian troops moved to assist Bhutanese troops in the area.
• Chinese officials said “border troops continue to patrol the ‘Donglang’ [Doklam] area” and that China exercised “sovereignty” there, implying that Beijing, so far, did not consider the area as a disputed tri-junction.
• At least two Indian government sources confirmed that India had agreed to withdraw troops first as a “goodwill gesture”, giving the Chinese side a facesaver. “One side had to move first,” an official said.
• While officials denied that “any country” other than India and China had been involved, and only Bhutan was informed of the progress of talks, Russian diplomatic sources told.
• Officials said while the crisis ahead of the BRICS summit had been averted, there was a need for bilateral engagement to clarify China and India’s position on boundary talks, the Sikkim boundary, and the location of the tri-junction.

::International::

Myanmar military intensifies operations

• Myanmar security forces intensified operations against Rohingya insurgents on Monday, police and other sources said, following three days of clashes with militants in the worst violence involving Myanmar’s Muslim minority in five years.
• The fighting — triggered by coordinated attacks on Friday by insurgents wielding sticks, knives and crude bombs on 30 police posts and an Army base — has killed 104 people and led to the flight of large numbers of
• Muslim Rohingya and Buddhist civilians from the northern part of Rakhine State.
• A Buthidaung-based reporter, citing police sources directly involved in events, said three police posts in northern Buthidaung had been surrounded by Rohingya insurgents.
• Joint military operations In neighbouring Bangladesh, border guards tried to push back refugees stranded in no man’s land near the village of Gumdhum.
• Islamist group An Islamist group called the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which Myanmar has declared a terrorist organisation, has claimed responsibility. It was also behind the violence in October.

::Business and Economy::

NITI Aayog wants labour laws to be made flexible

• The government should reform labour laws and make them more flexible to make it easier to do business in the country, the NITI Aayog said in an Ease of Doing Business report.
• The report, based on an enterprise survey of 3,276 manufacturing firms, was prepared jointly by NITI Aayog and IDFC Institute.
• “According to our survey’s finding, firms in labour- intensive sectors find compliance with labour-related regulations particularly onerous. This fact translates into enterprises avoiding the labour-intensive sectors,” according to the report.
• The survey found that more enterprises in labourintensive sectors reported that finding skilled workers, hiring contract labour and terminating employees was a major or a severe obstacle.
• Such sectors also reported a significantly higher average time taken for environmental approval and more days lost due to strikes and lockouts, it said.

Govt to give some more time to handset makers

• The Centre is likely to extend the last date for handset companies to submit details on their security practices to safeguard users’ personal data after a majority failed to meet the August 28 deadline.
• Following reports of data leakage and theft, the government had asked about 30 smartphone vendors to provide details of practices and procedures they follow to ensure that user data remains safe.
• Chinese brands These companies — including Chinese firms such as Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi, OnePlus and Gionee — besides others inclusive of Apple, Samsung and Micromax, were given eight days to respond.
• Four companies — Sony, Apple, Samsung and Oppo, had requested more time to respond
• There is an urgent need to ensure safety and security of mobile phones, especially in the light of the government’s digitisation push.

TRAI starts process for next round of spectrum auction

• The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India on Monday kick-started the process for the next round of spectrum auctions by issuing a consultation paper on key issues for sale of airwaves, including for offering 5G services.
• The issues on which the regulator has sought comments include the quantum of spectrum to be auctioned, optimal block size, spectrum cap, roll-out conditions and methods to be used for valuation and estimation of reserve price of spectrum.
• The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had earlier said it planned to auction spectrum in the 700 MHz, 800 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, 2300 MHz, 2500 MHz, 3300- 3400 MHz and 3400-3600 MHz bands in 2017.
• DoT had proposed the auction of 60% of the total spectrum that remained unsold after the last auctions held in October 2016, in addition to two more bands — 3300-3400 MHz and 3400-3600 MHz, used to offer 5G services.
• In the last auction, 2,355 megahertz (MHz) of spectrum worth 5.6 lakh crore across seven bands was put up for bids and fetched the government revenues of 65,789 crore.
• The last date for sending comments is September 25, and counter comments are to be sent by October 3, 2017.

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