WBCS Current Affairs 12/04/2014 to 18/04/2014

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1.“Crusader or Conspirator? Coalgate and other Truths” authored by former coal secretary P C Parakh released.

2.“The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh” – a memoir by Indian policy analyst Sanjaya Baru released. Mr. Baru was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Media Advisor from May 2004 until August 2008.

3.The Supreme Court bench of Justice K S Radhakrishnan and Justice Vikramjit Sen ruled that the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in his capacity can inspect the accounts of private telecom companies. The court held that such an inspection was essential in order to make certain that the government, which has granted the private companies licenses of the precious natural resources, was getting in return its genuine share as per the revenue sharing agreement between the private company and Government.
The Supreme Court while upholding the preceding decision by the High Court, that granted a right of statutory audit to the CAG however, made certain changes to it.
The Supreme Court bench made clear in its decision that this capacity to do a revenue audit by CAG will not be a statutory audit or a special audit but will be restricted to investigating the statements of account in order to make certain that there was no loss to public exchequer in the process. Thus, an audit by CAG should only relate to revenues and not into aspects such as “wisdom and economy in expenditures”.

4.Almost two months after Admiral D.K. Joshi resigned in February owning moral responsibility for a series of accidents, Robin K. Dhowan (59) took over as the new Chief of the Indian Navy. Admiral Dhowan who has been the acting Navy chief since Joshi’s departure, has now been appointed the Chief of Navy Staff. Admiral Dhawan’s tenure will last 25 months and he will retire in May 2016.

5.For the convenience of its customers, SBI has launched 3 digital banking facilities. These are:
1) TAB Banking for Savings a/c– Opening Savings a/c at Customer’s door step using tablet PC provided to the Bank’s Sales Staff (who visit the Customer’s home). These a/c opening details and docs collected by the bank’s sales staff will be loaded on the CBS (Core Banking Solution) and the a/c number will be sent to the customer via SMS/e-mail.
2) TAB Banking for Home Loan – In-principle approval for the home loan at customer’s door step using tablet PC provided to the Bank’s Home Loan Sales Team which will capture on the tablet KYC details and details. The sales team officer will advise the customer about the approximate housing loan amount eligible and the EMI amount.
The applicant gets in-principle sanction for the wished-for Housing Loan via email while the actual loan will be processed afterwards subject to usual formalities.
3) e-KYC – Generates e-KYC (Know Your Customer) identity document. Fingerprints of the customer will be captured and sent to UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) for authentication of identity and address proof. On successful authentication from UIDAI, the e-KYC service will act in response to display demographic details like [Name, year/date of birth, Gender, Address, Phone, email (if available)] and photograph.
These facilities will offer ease and time saving to the customer for opening accounts with SBI bank.

6.The World Bank has projected an economic growth rate of 5.7% in 2014-15 for India. World Bank projected an acceleration of growth (factor costs) in FY 2014 to 4.8%, further increase to 5.7% in FY 2015
Rationale: This growth rate was projected by the World Bank owing to enduringly more competitive exchange rate and advancement towards sanction of crucial investment projects.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) had earlier forecast that Indian economy would recover from 4.4% growth in 2013 to 5.4% in 2014. IMF had also quoted export competitiveness as grounds for potential growth revival.

7.After a span of 6 years, in 2013-14, India became net steel exporter. India is probable to preserve the momentum in 2014-15 as producers are expecting to dock more overseas shipment to bridge reduced domestic consumption. During 2013-14, total Indian steel exports stood at 5.59 Million Tonnes (MT), as against imports of 5.44 MT.
India is now the world’s 4th largest steel maker. India had been a net steel importer since from 2007-08 till 2012-13. Before 2007-08, India’s exports were more than its imports.

8.Remittances have turned into a key component of the Balance of Payments (BoP) of nations. As per the World Bank Report “Migration and Development Brief”, in the year 2013, India lead global remittances as it received $70 billion during 2013. Out of this $65 billion were earned from the India’s flagship software services exports. India is followed by China ($60 bn) and Philippines ($25 bn).
Out of $70 bn total global remittances India received during 2013, $65 bn were from India’s Software Export Services.

9.Multinational Spanish banking outfit Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, as part of its research project on Emerging and Growth-Leading Economies issued the ’World Market Power’ Index. As per this Index, India is the second most powerful nation, when it comes to competing on the world market. The Index tracks nations’ abilities on the economic front.
China topped the ‘World Market Power’ Index list followed by India, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia, Turkey and Mexico.

10.Ratan Tata (76), the Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons and former chairman of the Tata Group, honoured by Queen Elizabeth with a GBE (Knight Grand Cross), one of the UK’s highest civilian awards. He is the only Indian among 5 foreigners to be awarded as part of the ‘Honorary British Awards to Foreign Nationals’ for 2014.
In 2009, Mr. Tata was conferred a KBE (Knight Commander) by the Queen.

11.Ratan Tata appointed board member of China-backed Boao Forum. For the first time a senior Indian business leader inducted as a member of the Board of Boao Forum for Asia (BFA), an uncommon distinction for an Indian in the Chinese government-backed influential body.

12.For the first time in the Indian history Shompens cast their votes to elect for the Lok Sabha constituency of Bay Islands for Lok Sabaha election 2014. About 60 Shompens cast their votes at polling station put up in the inner jungle in Great Nicobar Biosphere reserve.27 polling teams were positioned to man 21 polling stations in Great Nicobar. Conducting polls in the island is a gainsaying job as many of the polling stations can be only reached via boats and dinghies under fierce sea conditions, whilst few are within the thick forest where even vehicles cannot go.
Shompen Tribe
Believed to be one of the last surviving stone-age tribes and living in Great Nicobar.
One of the 6 tribes that inhabit the forest in the southern-most tip of the India.
Classified as primitive tribal group along with the four other tribes – Jarawa, Andamanese, Onge and the Sentinelese.
Population: Only 229 (2011 census)
Have very limited contact with outsiders and live in about 12 habitations made of bamboo and leaf thatch.
Not as well-known like the Jarawas of the Andaman islands.
While the Jarwas are a negrito tribe, the Shompens are of Mongoloid stock.
Like the Jarawa they are skilled hunter-gatherers but unlike them raise plantations of various crops and subsist primarily on them, besides honey and fish.
Main weapons are the bow and arrow.

13.UK-born physicist Stuart Parkin won the Millennium technology prize 2014. Parkin won this prize for his breakthrough in magnetic disk drive storage capacity.
Parkin’s ground-breaking contribution to the science and application of spintronic materials has led to an abnormal expansion in the capacity to store digital information. Parkin employed the process of Giant Magneto-Resistance (GMR) to produce enormously sensitive devices that can detect tiny magnetic fields, harbingering the epoch of cloud computing. In magnetic disk drives information is stored as “bits” (0s and 1s) mapped by regions of the disk magnetized differently. Thus, if the detector is more sensitive, then the magnetic regions and fields need to be more smaller to store the information, which implies more data can be put on to a hard disk drive – all in digital form. This discovery led to 1,000-fold betterment in the storage capacity of magnetic disk drives with cost remaining almost same.
The foundation behind this award has made services like Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. possible.
Giant Magneto-Resistance (GMR) and Parkin’s accomplishment:
Giant Magneto-Resistance (GMR) was separately discovered by physicists Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg in the late 1980s and in 2007 they shared the Nobel Prize for physics for their work on GMR. The phenomenon develops when atomically thin layers of magnetic and non-magnetic materials are piled on top of each other. In a plain organization, a non-magnetic layer (typically copper) is sandwiched amid two magnetic layers which act like bar magnets pointing either north or south. On inducing a current in this sandwich, electrons pass through the layers. The degree of interference they go through is dissimilar and depends upon an intrinsic quantum mechanical property of them called “Spin“, which can be adjusted to the direction of the bar magnet or against it. Electrons which have a spin in one direction will travel in a freer manner. Thus, the flow of the current can be checked by the proportional placement of the bar magnets of the top and bottom layers. This phenomenon is called Giant Magneto-Resistance (GMR), as its value is much larger than the MR value received from anisotropic MR that come out from normal ferromagnetic materials.
Parkin’s accomplishment was to prepare a device based on such “Spintronic” effects in which tiny magnetic fields from magnetized regions (that store data within the disk drive) can rotate the direction of magnetization in one of the layers of the sandwich. This outcome is a sensor that quickly goes through large alterations in resistance as it reads the disk drive.

14.Justice Rajendra Mal Lodha (64) as the next Chief Justice of India. President Pranab Mukherjee with exercise of his powers conferred by clause (2) of Article 124 of the Constitution of India, appointed Justice Rajendra Mal Lodha, Judge of the Supreme Court, to be the next Chief Justice of India with effect from April 27, 2014.
Justice R.M. Lodha will have a short tenure of 5 months as the Chief Justice as he is scheduled to retire on September 27, 2014.

15.The Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting announced that the Veteran poet and film lyricist Gulzar (real name: Sampooran Singh Kalra) has been chosen for the Dadasaheb Phalke Award for the year 2013. Sampooran Singh Kalra’s pen name is Gulzar. Dadasaheb Phalke Award is India’s highest award in cinema, conferred annually by the government for outstanding contribution to the growth and development of Indian cinema.

16.The Election Commission (EC) held that any political message in the form of comments, pics, videos or messages on blogs, social media would not be treated as a political advertisement. Thus, these don’t need any pre-certification and are not subject to any rules or guidelines released by the Election Commission. Even any such message in accounts of political parties or candidates also would not be treated as a political advertisement.