Chagos islands
Category: International
- Britain has an obligation to end its administration of the Chagos archipelago and complete the process of decolonisation of Mauritius, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has said.
- Chagos islands are home to the U.S. military base of Diego Garcia, under lease from the United Kingdom since the 1960s.
- Under an agreement struck in 1965, in return for compensation to Mauritius and fishing rights, Britain has maintained control of the islands.
Repo rate
Category : Economy
- Most commercial banks in India are likely to select RBI’s repo rate as the external benchmark to decide their lending rates, from April 1.
- The repo rate is the key policy rate of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
- The banking regulator had asked the banks to move to an external benchmark for loan pricing from April 1, a move expected to improve monetary transmission as lenders had, in the past, been found reluctant to reduce lending rate.
- At present, the repo rate is 6.25%.
- The marginal cost of fund based lending rate (MCLR) is currently the benchmark for all loan rates.
- Banks typically add a spread to the MCLR while pricing loans for homes and automobiles.
- For the new benchmark, the central bank has mandated that the spread over the benchmark rate — to be decided by banks at the inception of the loan — should remain unchanged through the life of the loan, unless the borrower’s credit assessment undergoes a substantial change and as agreed upon in the loan contract.
PPIs
Category: Economy
- The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has extended the deadline to complete know your customer process by the Prepaid Payment Instruments (PPIs) issuers by another six months.
- Earlier, PPI issuers were required to complete the KYC process by February 28, 2019.
Marine clouds
Category: Geography/Environment
- Marine clouds that protect us from hothouse Earth conditions by reflecting sunlight back into space could break up and vanish if CO2 in the atmosphere triples.
- So-called stratocumulus clouds cover about 20% of subtropical oceans, mostly near western seaboards such as the coasts of California, Mexico and Peru.
- When they disappear, Earth warms dramatically, by about eight degrees Celsius — in addition to the global warming that comes from enhanced greenhouse concentrations alone.
- A temperature increase of that magnitude would melt polar ice and lift sea levels tens of metres.
Category: Polity & Governance
- As the country gets ready for the general elections and as the misuse of social media to influence the voting pattern weighs heavy, the government is leaving no stone unturned to ensure fair elections.
- The possibility of Twitter being directed to follow the Election Commission of India (ECI) guidelines for 48 hours — the so-called ‘silent period’ — in areas where polls are to be conducted was raised .
- Under Section 126(1) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, no person shall propagate any election matter to the public by holding, or by arranging the holding of, any musical concert or any theatrical performance or any other entertainment or amusement with a view to attracting the members of the public thereto, in any polling area during the period of 48 hours ending with the hour fixed for the conclusion of the poll for any election in that polling area.
Warming waters
Category: Environment
- Warming waters heat up fishing costs along Malabar Coast . Often, fishermen along Southwestern coastfind nothing.
- Climate change is making an already difficult search for fish harder.
- Fish populations are always shifting, sometimes drastically, and overfishing has emptied waters once teeming with life.
- But as climate change has warmed coastal waters by more than half a degree Celsius over the past three or four decades, fish populations have sought cooler waters — often away from where fishermen are used to finding them.
- Oil sardines used to swim in India almost exclusively around the Malabar Coast — but climate change has pushed them east and north-east, into waters around Mumbai and Kolkata.
- Fish all over are migrating toward the globe’s poles, often seeking the cooler water they are used to as the ocean warms, the scientists say.
- Fishermen are also struggling to catch mackerel, another long-time staple. More mackerel are now found at depths where the water is cooler.
GRACE
Category: Science & technology
- In 14 years (2001-02 to 2014-15), net irrigation in India increased just 20 per cent, with an alarming trend of massive groundwater extraction.
- While 41 per cent of the net irrigated area in India got water from tube wells in 2001-02, tubewell irrigation increased to 46 per cent in 2014-15.
- The withdrawal rate expressed as a percentage of the net ground water available per year exceeds 100 per cent in some states.
- The work based on data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites, reveals significant rates of non-renewable depletion of groundwater levels over large areas.
- Water tables are falling in most parts of India with fluoride, arsenic, mercury, even uranium found in groundwater.
Nipah
Category: Science & technology
- Japanese scientists are to speed up work on a vaccine against a brain-damaging disease caused by the Nipah virus.
- Nipah virus was first identified in 1999 during an outbreak of illness affecting pig farmers and others in close contact with pigs in Malaysia and Singapore.
- Nipah is transmitted to humans via direct contact with infected bats, infected pigs or other infected people.
Gold standard
Category: Environment
- Evidence for man-made global warming has reached a “gold standard” level of certainty, adding pressure for cuts in greenhouse gases to limit rising temperatures.
- Confidence that human activities were raising the heat at the Earth’s surface had reached a “five-sigma” level, a statistical gauge meaning there is only a one-in-a-million chance that the signal would appear if there was no warming.
- Such a “gold standard” was applied in 2012, for instance, to confirm the discovery of the Higgs boson subatomic particle, a basic building block of the universe.
- Separately in 2013, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that it is “extremely likely”, or at least 95 percent probable, that human activities have been the main cause of climate change since the 1950s.
Gandhi Peace prize
Category: Miscellaneous
- President of India will present the Gandhi Peace Prize for the years 2015, 2016, 2017 & 2018.
- Gandhi Peace Prize is meant for Social, Economic and Political transformation through Non-violence.
- It was instituted in the year 1995.
- The Award comprises an amount of Rs. One Crore.
- The Award may be divided between two persons / institutions who are considered by the Jury to be equally deserving of recognition in a given year.
- Work by a person since deceased cannot be the subject of an Award. If, however, his death occurred subsequent to a proposal having been submitted to the Jury, then a Posthumous Award may be made.
