CHROME IAS ACADEMY
DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS
4 – 5th Apr’18
NEWS
NASA SPOTS FARTHEST STAR
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the farthest individual star ever seen — an enormous blue stellar body nicknamed Icarus located over halfway across the universe.
The star, harboured in a very distant spiral galaxy, is so far away that its light has taken nine billion years to reach Earth. It appears to us as it did when the universe was about 30% of its current age.
Normally, the star would be too faint to view, even with the world’s largest telescopes. However, through a phenomenon called gravitational lensing that tremendously amplifies the star’s feeble glow, astronomers were able to pinpoint this faraway star and set a new distance record.
Relevance : Prelims
BAR NETAS FROM CONTESTING 2 SEATS
A candidate should not be allowed to contest more than one constituency as vacating one later imposes an unnecessary burden on public funds, the Election Commission has told the Supreme Court. T
he EC has suggested that the law be amended to prevent candidates from contesting on multiple seats, a stratagem commonly used by political leaders for reasons that vary from seeking insurance against any shock defeat to signaling their attention to more than one region in an electoral contest.
The Commission said Section 33(7) of the Representation of People Act be amended to restrict a politician to contest an election from only one seat.
“When a candidate contests from two seats, it is imperative that he has to vacate one of the two seats should he win both. This, apart from the consequent unavoidable financial burden on the public exchequer and the manpower and other resources for holding byelection against the resultant vacancy, would be an injustice to the voters of the constituency which the candidate is quitting from,” the Commission said.
The commission said in case the present provision is retained then there should be an express provision in law requiring a person, contesting and winning from two seats, to bear the cost of the byelection after he quits one constituency.
Relevance : GS 2
PROJECT SWARN IN RAILWAYS
Project Swarn has been started to upgrade the condition of Rajdhani and Shatabdi Express Trains.
This initiative is likely to give improved look to the coaches.The objective of Project Swarn is to significantly improve the passenger experience across 9 dimensions which include coach interiors, toilets, onboard cleanliness, staff behavior, catering, linen, punctuality, security, on-board entertainment.
Real time feedback is also a part of Project Swarn.
There are 29 Rajdhani and Shatabdi Express trains identified under this scheme. Out of these, work has already been completed on 16 trains.
Relevance : Prelims
IMPORTANT FACTS IN NEWS
UTTAM
The Union Minister for Railways launched UTTAM App for Coal Quality Monitoring.
JATAN
Ministry of Culture has taken up a project named as JATAN for creating an online digital repository of museum collections.
Normal rainfall
‘Normal’ rainfall refers to India getting, within a 4% error margin, 887 mm of rainfall during the monsoon season.
Steel
India overtook the U.S. in 2015 to become the third largest producer of crude steel. Now, India has overtaken Japan to become the world’s second largest producer of crude steel in At present, China is the largest producer of crude steel in the world, accounting for more than 50% of the production.
Relevance: Prelims
IMPORTANT TERM IN NEWS EXPLAINED
International Energy Forum (IEF)
The International Energy Forum is the world’s largest recurring gathering of energy ministers.
It is unique in that participants not only include IEA and OPEC countries, but also key international actors such as Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Russia, and South Africa.
The IEF countries account for more than 90 percent of global oil and gas supply and demand.
The IEF is promoted by a permanent Secretariat based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A
The 16th IEF International Energy Forum Ministerial will take place on 10-12 April in new Delhi under the theme “The Future of Global Energy Security”
Relevance : Prelims
