Daily Current Affairs - Civil Services - 10-01-2020

Useful compilation of Civil Services oriented - Daily Current Affairs - Civil Services - 10-01-2020

• [message]
• SECTION 1 - TEN NEWS HEADLINES

1. Foreign envoys in J&K on a fact-finding visit –A 15-member foreign envoys’ delegation arrived in Srinagar on a two-day visit to Jammu and Kashmir and met over 100 people, including senior Valley-based politicians, top newspaper editors and grassroots representatives. They were seeking feedback on the ground situation post the revocation of the State’s special status, Pakistan’s attempts at interference and the immediate demands of the people.Unlike the controversial tour of the European Union (EU) parliamentarians in October 2019, these envoys, including U.S. Ambassador to India Kenneth I. Juster and the Norwegian Ambassador, drove past busy streets from the airport to reach Lalit Grand Palace Hotel.
2. JNU students beaten up during march–Several students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) were beaten up byDelhi police personnel as they tried to march towards RashtrapatiBhavan after ‘unsatisfactory’ talks with officials of the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry. At least four students received injuries when police used ‘mild force’ to disperse the march. Around 11 students were also detained but later released. 
3. SC rebuffs plea to implement CAA–Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sharad A. Bobde said the country was already going through difficult times and an endeavour should be made to maintain peace. The CJI made the oral comments while hearing a petition seeking an ‘aggressive’ implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), which fast-tracks benefits of citizenship to illegal immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan belonging to six minority religions but denies the same treatment to Muslims.
4. Nirbhaya case: two convicts file curative pleas –Curative petitions were filed in the Supreme Court by two convicts in the Nirbhaya case. The petitions come just days after a Delhi sessions court scheduled the execution of the four convicts at Tihar Jail on January 22. Vinay Sharma and Mukesh, in separate curative petitions, said there had been a sea change in the death penalty jurisprudence. They argued that ignoring the subsequent changes in the law against the death penalty would be a “gross miscarriage of justice”.Nirbhaya case: two convicts file curative pleas –Curative petitions were filed in the Supreme Court by two convicts in the Nirbhaya case. The petitions come just days after a Delhi sessions court scheduled the execution of the four convicts at Tihar Jail on January 22. Vinay Sharma and Mukesh, in separate curative petitions, said there had been a sea change in the death penalty jurisprudence. They argued that ignoring the subsequent changes in the law against the death penalty would be a “gross miscarriage of justice”.
5. U.P. tops list in crimes against women –The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) published the annual Crime in India Report 2018. It was published with provisional data, as five States — West Bengal, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Sikkim — did not send clarifications sought by the NCRB despite repeated reminders. The 2017 annual crime report was published on October 21 last year, after a delay of two years.
6. Panel approves scheme to ‘trade’ in forests–The Forest Advisory Committee, an apex body tasked with adjudicating requests by the industry to raze forest land for commercial ends, has approved a scheme that could allow “forests” to be traded as a commodity. If implemented, it allows the Forest Department to outsource one of its responsibilities of reforesting to non-government agencies.In the current system, industry needs to make good the loss of forest by finding appropriate non-forest land — equal to that which would be razed.
7. Iran plane crash: Ukraine to probe possible missile strike–Investigators will look into the possibility that a missile shot down the Ukrainian passenger jet that crashed in Iran, but not rule out a range of other possibilities for the disaster that killed at least 176 people. Investigators were following up on unconfirmed reports that fragments of a Russian-made Tor surface-to-air missile — a system used by Iran — had been found near where the plane came down. Ukraine was negotiating with Iran to allow the investigators to search the crash site near Tehran for possible rocket fragments.
8. British royals feel hurt by the way Harry and Meghan quit–Britain’s royal family is hurt and disappointed by Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle’s surprise announcement that they will step back from their senior roles and spend more time in North America.Prince Harry and Ms.Markle’s decision to step away from royal duties sent shock waves through the royal family as neither Queen Elizabeth nor Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, had been consulted on the announcement, made on Instagram.
9. 60 listed firms disclose Rs. 75,000 cr. Default –A directive by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) for companies to disclose loan defaults at the end of every quarter has led to almost 60 listed entities disclosing a cumulative default amount of almost Rs. 75,000 crore as on December 31, 2019. More importantly, there are nine companies that have defaulted on loans worth more than Rs. 1,000 crore each even as bulk of the overall default amount pertains to companies belonging to the Anil Ambani Group.
10. SBI to extend completion guarantee for home projects –State Bank of India, the country’s largest lender, has announced a new product which provides completion guarantee for particular residential projects. The lender will refund the amount to the home buyer which was paid to the developer if occupancy certificate for the project is not received within a particular time-frame. The scheme — Residential Builder Finance with Buyer Guarantee (RBBG) — is applicable to home loans from SBI for certain projects that will be identified by the bank. The scheme will focus on the affordable housing segment with home price of up to Rs. 2.50 crore in seven Indian cities initially, and will be extended to 10 cities, Rajnish Kumar chairman, SBI, said at a press conference.

• [message]
• SECTION 2 - DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS

• [message]
• 1. CONSTITUTION AND LAW

1.1 Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) approved ‘Green Credit Scheme’ to trade in forests

1. The FAC, an apex body tasked with adjudicating requests by the industry to raze forest land for commercial ends, has approved a scheme that could allow ‘forests’ to be traded as a commodity.
2. If implemented, it allows the Forest Department to outsource one of its responsibilities of reforesting to non-government agencies.

Present System  

1. Industry needs to make good the loss of forest by finding appropriate non-forest land — equal to that which would be razed. 
2. It also must pay the State Forest Department the current economic equivalent — called Net Present Value — of the forest land.
3. It’s then the department’s responsibility to grow appropriate vegetation that, over time, would grow into forests.
4. Industries have often complained that they find it hard to acquire appropriate non-forest land, which has to be contiguous to existing forest.
5. Nearly Rs. 50,000 crore had been collected by the Centre over decades, but the funds were lying unspent because States were not spending the money on regrowing forests.
6. The Supreme Court intervened; a new law came about with rules for how this fund was to be administered. About Rs. 47,000 crore had been disbursed to States until August 2019, but it has barely led to any rejuvenation of forests.
7. Green Credit Scheme - The proposed ‘Green Credit Scheme’ allows agencies — they could be private companies, village forest communities — to identify land and begin growing plantations. After three years, they would be eligible to be considered as compensatory forest land if they met the Department’s criteria. 

1.2  Cabinet approved ordinance to amend mining laws to remove ‘end-use restrictions’, allowing ‘anyone to participate in the auction of coal blocks’

• [message]
• 2. ECONOMY

2.1 Indian economy to grow 5% in 2019-20 and 5.8% in 2020-21 – According to Global Economic Prospects report 2020 of World Bank
 

1. Global economic growth is forecast to edge up to 2.5% in 2020 as investment and trade gradually recover from last year’s significant weakness but downward risks persist.
2.  Growth among advanced economies as a group is anticipated to slip to 1.4% in 2020 in part due to continued softness in manufacturing.
3. Growth in emerging market and developing economies is expected to accelerate this year to 4.1%. This rebound is not broad-based; instead, it assumes improved performance of a small group of large economies, some of which are emerging from a period of substantial weakness. About a third of emerging market and developing economies are projected to decelerate this year due to weaker-than-expected exports and investment.
4. U.S. growth is forecast to slow to 1.8% this year, reflecting the negative impact of earlier tariff increases and elevated uncertainty.
5. Euro Area growth is projected to slip to a downwardly revised 1% in 2020 amid weak industrial activity.
6. Analytical sections in this edition of Global Economic Prospects address key current topics -
7. The Fourth Wave: There have been four waves of debt accumulation in developing and emerging economies in the last 50 years. The latest wave, which started in 2010, has seen the largest, fastest, and most broad-based increase in debt among the four.
8. While current low levels of interest rates mitigate some of the risks associated with high debt, previous waves of broad-based debt accumulation ended with widespread financial crises. Policy options to reduce the likelihood of crises and lessen their impact should they materialize include building resilient monetary and fiscal frameworks, instituting robust supervisory and regulatory regimes, and following transparent debt management practices. 
9. How to Rekindle Productivity Growth: Productivity growth, a primary source of income growth and driver of poverty reduction, has slowed more broadly and steeply since the global financial crisis than at any time in four decades. In emerging market and developing economies, the slowdown has reflected weakness in investment and moderating efficiency gains as well as dwindling resource reallocation between sectors. The pace of improvements in many key drivers of labor productivity—including education and institutions—has slowed or stagnated since the global financial crisis.
10. Price Controls: The use of price controls is widespread in emerging market and developing economies. While sometimes used as a tool for social policy, price controls can dampen investment and growth, worsen poverty outcomes, cause countries to incur heavy fiscal burdens, and complicate the effective conduct of monetary policy. Replacing price controls with expanded and better-targeted social safety nets, reforms to encourage competition and a sound regulatory environment can be pro-poor and pro-growth.
11. Inflation in Low-Income Countries: Inflation in low-income countries has tumbled to a median of 3% in mid-2019 from 25% in 1994. The decline has been supported by more flexible exchange rate regimes, greater central bank independence, lower government debt, and a more benign external environment. However, to maintain low and stable inflation amid mounting fiscal pressures and the risk of exchange rate shocks, policymakers need to strengthen monetary policy frameworks and central bank capacity and replace price controls with more efficient policies.

Regional Outlooks -

1. East Asia and Pacific: Growth in the region is projected to ease to 5.7% in 2020, reflecting a further moderate slowdown in China to 5.9% this year amid continued domestic and external headwinds, including the lingering impact of trade tensions.
2. Europe and Central Asia: Regional growth is expected to firm to 2.6% in 2020, assuming stabilization of key commodity prices and Euro Area growth and recovery in Turkey (to 3%) and Russia (to 1.6%).  
3. Latin America and the Caribbean: Regional growth is expected to rise to 1.8% in 2020, as growth in the largest economies strengthens and domestic demand picks up at the regional level.
4. Middle East and North Africa: Regional growth is projected to accelerate to a modest 2.4% in 2020, largely on higher investment and stronger business climates. Among oil exporters, growth is expected to pick up to 2%. 
5. South Asia: Growth in the region is expected to rise to 5.5% in 2020, assuming a modest rebound in domestic demand and as economic activity benefits from policy accommodation in India and Sri Lanka and improved business confidence and support from infrastructure investments in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. In India, where weakness in credit from non-bank financial companies is expected to linger, growth is projected to slow to 5% in FY 2019/20, which ends March 31 and recover to 5.8% the following fiscal year.
6. Sub-Saharan Africa: Regional growth is expected to pick up to 2.9% in 2020, assuming investor confidence improves in some large economies, energy bottlenecks ease, a pickup in oil production contributes to recovery in oil exporters and robust growth continues among agricultural commodity exporters.                             

         Download the January 2020 Global Economic Prospects report -

https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/global-economic-prospects.

2.2  Corporates – Merger and Acquisition - HDFC completed acquisition of Apollo Group's stake in Apollo Munich Health Insurance.

2.3 Appointment -  RajyaSabha MP Chandra Pal Singh elected as Chairman of KrishakBharati Cooperative Ltd (KRIBHCO).

2.4 Awards and Honours

Agricultural Scientist Dr. M. S. Swaminathan received the first ‘MuppavarapuVenkaiah Naidu National Award for Excellence’ in Hyderabad.

Social worker Dr.GuttaMuniratnam receives the first ‘Muppavarapu National Award for Social Service’ in Hyderabad from Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu.
 

• [message]
• 3. ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY

Raging bushfire crisis of Australia has killed 24 people and burned over six million hectares of land.

• [message]
• 4. FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Europe – 

Former Prime Minister ZoranMilanovic won presidential election in Croatia.

Sebastian Kurz sworn in Chancellor of Austria after his People’s Party (OeVP) formed coalition government with Greens Party.

Asia – Pakistan - Government College University Lahore (GCU) set up a Research Chair honouring its alumni Indian-American biochemist HarGobind Khorana (1922-2011), who won the 1968 Nobel Prize for medicine.

• [message]
• 5. GOVERNMENT SCHEMES

Andhra Pradesh Government launched 'AmmaVodi' scheme to provide an annual assistance of Rs. 15,000 each to poor mothers to educate their children.

• [message]
• 6. MISCELLANEOUS

Book Release - PaxSinica: Implications for the Indian Dawn, a book on China authored by Samir Saran &AkhilDeo, released.

• [message]
• 7. POLITY

Pravasi Bharatiya Divas celebrated on January 9. This day is celebrated on January 9 to commemorate Mahatma Gandhi’s return to India from South Africa in 1915.

New logo of Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly adopted. It consists of the national emblem and foxtail orchid (Rhynchostylis Retusa), the state flower.

Resignation-Retirements - Justice Dilip B. Bhosale, resigned as member of anti-corruption ombudsman Lokpal citing personal reasons at the age of 63.

• [message]
• 8. SOCIAL ISSUES

National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) published ‘Crime in India, 2018’ and ‘Accidental Death and Suicides in India, 2018’ annual reports

• The report was published with provisional data, as five States — West Bengal, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya and Sikkim — did not send clarifications sought by the NCRB despite repeated reminders.
• The 2017 annual crime report was published on October 21 last year, after a delay of two years.
• Crime in India, 2018 report 

1. Crime against women - 3,78,277 cases of crime against women were reported, up from 3,59,849 in 2017. 
2. Uttar Pradesh topped the list with 59,445 cases, followed by Maharashtra (35,497) and West Bengal (30,394).
3. The conviction rate in rape-related cases stood at 27.2% even though the rate of filing charge-sheets was 85.3% in such cases.
4. Cruelty by husband or his relatives (31.9%) followed by assault on women with intent to outrage her modesty (27.6%) constituted the major share of crimes against women.
5. The incidents registered under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes related Acts saw a decline from 6729 incidents reported in 2017 to 4816 in 2018.  
6. A total of 29,017 cases of murder were registered in 2018, showing an increase of 1.3% over 2017 (28,653 cases).

• Accidental Death and Suicides in India 2018 report  

1.  Farmer suicides - 10,349 people working in the farm sector ended their lives in 2018, accounting for 7.7 % of the total number of suicides in the country.
2. The total number of people who committed suicide in 2018 was 1,34,516, an increase of 3.6% from 2017 when 1,29,887 cases were reported.
3. The highest number of suicide victims were daily wagers — 26,589, comprising 22.4% of such deaths.
4. The majority of the suicides were reported in Maharashtra (17,972) followed by Tamil Nadu (13,896), West Bengal (13,255), Madhya Pradesh (11,775) and Karnataka (11,561). 
5. West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Meghalaya, Goa, Chandigarh, Daman & Diu, Delhi, Lakshadweep and Puducherry reported zero suicides by farmers/cultivators as well as agricultural labourers.

 Gangster EjazLakdawala arrested by Anti-Extortion Cell (AEC) of Mumbai Police in Patna after being on the run for two decades.

• [message]
• 9. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

12th Global Intellectual Property Convention - GIPC 2020

1. GIPC 2020 held at VigyanBhawan and Le Meridien, New Delhi New Delhi, India from  8th to 10th January 2020. GIPC is an annual meeting platform for Board-level IP managers, IP regulators, and policymakers, as well as IP experts, litigators, investors and their advisers in a dialogue designed to discuss best practices and solutions to enhance IP management strategies. 
2. GIPC is India's biggest IPR event attended by senior IP business decision-makers. It offers firsthand learning experience from industry experts, who will share practical knowledge about current and substantive IP issues.

Facts, Charts and Rankings

Forbes India released list of 20 PEOPLE TO WATCH in the 2020s 


Persons in the list

• Indians

1.  Poll strategist and JD(U) national vice-president PrashantKishor
2. Former JNU Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar
3. Deputy CM of Haryana, DushyantChautala
4. LokSabha member of TMC, MahuaMoitra
5. The Godrej family of Adi Godrej  
6. Chef and the first Indian woman to receive a Michelin star, GarimaArora

 Persons of Indian origin

1. Comedian, political commentator HasanMinhaj 
2. CEO of ArcelorMittal Europe Aditya Mittal 

 World leader

1. President of Sri Lanka, GotabayaRajapaksa
2.  Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman
3. New Zealand Prime Minister, JacindaArdern
4. Prime Minister of UK, Boris Johnson
5. Youngest Prime Minister of world, Sanna Marin (Finland)
6. Member of US House of Representatives, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
7. Mayor of South Bend of Indiana (USA), Peter Buttigieg
8. Minister of Defence of Germany, AnnegretKramp-Karrenbauer

 Sportspersons

1. Formula One driver, Max Verstappen
2.  Footballer, Barcelona FC, AnssumaneFati Vieira
3. Marathoner, EliudKipchoge

Activists

1. Famous environmental activist from Sweden, Greta Thunberg
   

• [message]
• SECTION 3 - MCQs (Multiple Choice Questions)

Solve the online quiz given, right now. Check scores, and relative performance!

---