5 APRIL 2014

Ø  A sessions court here awarded the death penalty, under a new IPC section, to three repeat offenders — Vijay Jadhav, Qasim Sheikh, alias Bengali, and Salim Ansari — who gang-raped a photojournalist on the Shakti Mills compound in 2013.

Ø  India marched towards establishing its own navigation system when its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C24) put into precise orbit the country’s second navigation satellite, the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS-1B). The 1,432-kg IRNSS-1B will form part of a constellation of the seven navigation satellites.

Ø  It is recently found that weather prediction was done in ancient Egypt some 3,500 years ago! A new translation of a 40-line inscription on a six-foot-tall 3,500-year-old calcite block from Egypt — called the Tempest Stela — describes rain, darkness and “the sky being in storm without cessation, louder than the cries of the masses”.

Ø  A five-member committee set up by the Union Home Ministry to recommend the location of a new Capital for the residuary State of Andhra Pradesh will be headed by former Union Urban Development Secretary K. Sivaramakrishnan. Among the others appointed as members of the committee are former School of Planning and Architecture dean K.T. Ravindran, National Institute of Urban Affairs director Jagan Shah, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy director Rathin Roy and Indian Institute for Human Settlements (Bangalore ) director Aromar Revi.

Ø  A U.S. Navy “black box” detector made its much-anticipated debut in the oceanic hunt for flight MH370 on Friday but Australia’s search chief warned it was crunch time with the box’s signal set to expire soon. The Australian naval vessel Ocean Shield arrived with a “towed pinger locator” capable of homing in on signals from the black box, as 14 planes scoured the remote Indian Ocean search area for signs of a crash site. The plane disappeared March 8, and Australian authorities coordinating the search have rushed the device into place with the black box’s roughly 30-day location signal set to expire.

Ø  NPAs of banks touched an all-time high of over 5 per cent as of the December quarter, while 2013-14 saw banks recasting as many as Rs.1 lakh crore worth of loans, taking the overall corporate debt restructuring loan book to close to Rs.4 lakh crore. NPAs and CDR (corporate debt restructuring) loans put together is over 10 per cent of the system. 

3 APRIL 2014

Ø  The real cause behind the mysterious disappearance of Flight MH370 may never be known, Malaysian police warned as the frustrating search for the crashed airliner continued in the Indian Ocean without any headway. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak is in Australia on a two-day tour to oversee the search for the plane. On the 25th day of the multinational search operations, a British nuclear submarine joined the hunt, about 1,500 km northwest of Perth. Up to 10 planes and nine ships participated in Wednesday’s search.

Ø  The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), on Wednesday, granted ‘in-principle’ approval to two applicants, IDFC Limited and Kolkata-based Bandhan Financial Services Private Limited, to set up banks. The RBI has also accepted the recommendation of the High-Level Advisory Committee (HLAC), set up by the RBI, to consider the application of the Department of Posts, separately in consultation with the Central Government. These licences would be issued under the guidelines on Licensing of New Banks in the Private Sector issued on February 22, 2013 (Guidelines), said RBI in a release.

Ø  Financial Services Secretary Gurdial Singh Sandhu has been nominated as a director on the Reserve Bank’s central board.

2 APRIL 2014

Ø  Communications satellite INSAT-3E has completed its life and gone out of service. Built to last 15 years, it has completed ten-and-a-half years in orbit. The third-generation satellite was launched in September 2003 with 36 transponders — 24 C-band and 12 extended C-band transponders — but only 25 of them have been working since 2009. The ISRO had apparently expected that the satellite, positioned at 55 degrees E longitude, would last a few more months and that it would be smoothly replaced with GSAT-16.

Ø  The largest land crab is called robber crab, but in reality only its life is being robbed by youth, and habitat destruction after the 2004 tsunami. The population of this crab, also called coconut crab, in the wild archipelagos of Andaman and Nicobar, the only place in India where they are found, is severely fragmented. What is remarkable about this crab is that it climbs a coconut tree, cuts a fruit and drops it. On descending, it de-husks the fruit and, using its pincers, eats the kernel or endosperm, piercing through the eyes in the nut. And it uses the fibre as a bed in its burrow. The NCF team conducted the study in South Sentinel and Little Andaman in Andaman Islands; and Car Nicobar, Little Nicobar, Great Nicobar, Camotra, Menchal and Cabra Islands in Nicobar Islands. It held discussions with Nicobari communities to examine how to conserve this species and conducted timed searches in areas where these crabs are likely to be found. The interactions revealed social taboos against hunting the crab in most of the Nicobar Islands. However, in some islands, the community members, particularly the youth, hunted them and consumed them. Although the crab is under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act, none of the villagers are aware that hunting this species is illegal. The Zoological Survey of India has submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Environment and Forests to study the habitat of these crabs, survey their population in the wild and assess threats they face.

Ø  The Geographical Indications (GI) Registry has put on hold the decision to grant registration to products such as Dharmavaram handloom silk sari, Firozabad glass, Kannauj perfume, Moradabad metal craft and Saharanpur woodcraft due to code of conduct in force.

Ø  The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor, Raghuram Rajan, said that the central bank had adopted the new Consumer Price Index (CPI) (combined) as the key measure of inflation. Some recommendations of Urjit R. Patel Committee report have been implemented.  This also includes explicit recognition of the glide path for disinflation, transition to a bi-monthly monetary policy cycle, progressive reduction in access to overnight liquidity at the fixed repo rate, and a corresponding increase in access to liquidity through term repos, and introduction of longer-tenor term repos as well as, going forward, term reverse repos. Following on the recommendations of the high-level advisory committee chaired by Bimal Jalan, and after consulting the Election Commission, the RBI will announce in-principle approval for new bank licences.