THE HINDU DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS NOTE
22.02.2017
General Studies-01
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Rule and indian society
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Indian society have trend to make every rule as exception and follow only short term utilitarian rule
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Otherwise rule will be followed if there will be positive consequences or punishment on breaking them
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Following the rule has two component first is interpretation of law means logic of law and action difficulty that to be taken for the rule obey
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Corruption tolerance make society more sensitive towards earning more money and social tradition always have greater role on person attitude forming so if you comment on any nation builder there will be no action but you cant comment on persons culture
General Studies-02
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Amnesty international report on india
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Amnesty international report on 2016-17 found many human right breach instance in india
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Major incident of this kind of breach include sedition, ban on NGO, violation in Jammu and Kashmir
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Government have used radical step to control criticism against government and banned NGO with FCRA without any reason that is also breach of the fundamental right of the person to associate
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Caste based discrimination and violence by Una [Gujarat] and Hyderabad central university and sidelining of the dalit and tribes without priorities to them
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Price control on cardiac stent
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Capping the prices of medical stents, which are used to treat coronary artery disease, by the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) is an extreme regulatory measure necessitated by the market failure that afflicts the overall delivery of health care in India. Rising costs have led to impoverishment of families and litigation demanding regulation.
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This move help to person with cardiac problem because according to data at the age of 50 average 60 million people suffering from heart attack
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More and more out of pocket expenditure make health system out of economic reach of the person
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This step toward inclusive health system also provide social security to dependent person due to age factor because this cardiac disease majorly can be seen in aged person
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Price control is major and welcome step but still much to be done for the betterment of the citizen
General Studies -03
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Shoot at sight on poachers in Jim Corbett national park
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To control the hunting of the tiger and to control poaching forest department give order to forest official power to shoot at sight
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Utrakhand have second largest tiger population after Karnataka state mainly confined to jim Corbett national park one of the oldest national park named halley national park
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Major air pollution component
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SO2: Sulphur Dioxide. Short-term exposure can harm the respiratory system, making breathing difficult. It can affect visibility by reacting with other air particles to form haze and stain culturally important objects such as statues and monuments.
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NO2: Nitrogen Dioxide. Aggravates respiratory illness, causes haze to form by reacting with other air particles, causes acid rain, pollutes coastal waters.
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CO: Carbon monoxide. High concentration in air reduces oxygen supply to critical organs like the heart and brain. At very high levels, it can cause dizziness, confusion, unconsciousness and even death.
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PM2.5 & PM10: Particulate matter pollution can cause irritation of the eyes, nose and throat, coughing, chest tightness and shortness of breath, reduced lung function, irregular heartbeat, asthma attacks, heart attacks and premature death in people with heart or lung disease
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Vicious cycle of the NPA
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The origins of the NPA problem lie not in the events of the past few years, but much further back in time, in decisions taken during the mid-2000s. During that period, economies all over the world were booming, almost no country more than India, where GDP growth had surged to 9-10 percent per annum.
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For the first time in the country’s history, everything was going right: corporate profitability was amongst the highest in the world, encouraging firms to hire labour aggressively.
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Firms made plans accordingly. They launched new projects worth lakhs of crores, particularly in infrastructure-related areas such as power generation, steel, and telecoms, setting off the biggest investment boom in the country’s history.
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This investment was financed by an astonishing credit boom, also the largest in the nation’s history, one that was sizeable even compared to other large credit booms internationally.
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There were also large inflows of funding from overseas, with capital inflows in 2007-08 reaching 9 percent of GDP. All of this added up to an extraordinary increase in the debt of non-financial corporations.
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Put another way, as double digit growth beckoned, firms abandoned their conservative debt/equity ratios and leveraged themselves up to take advantage of the perceived opportunities.
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But just as companies were taking on more risk, things started to go wrong. Costs soared far above budgeted levels, as securing land and environmental clearances proved much more difficult and time consuming than expected.
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Forecast revenues collapsed after the GFC; projects that had been built around the assumption that growth would continue at double-digit levels were suddenly confronted with growth rates half that level.
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As if these problems were not enough, financing costs increased sharply. Firms that borrowed domestically suffered when the RBI increased interest rates to quell double digit inflation.
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Firms that had borrowed abroad when the rupee was trading around Rs 40/dollar were hit hard when the rupee depreciated, forcing them to repay their debts at exchange rates closer to Rs 60-70/ dollar.
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Higher costs, lower revenues, greater financing costs — all squeezed corporate cash flow, quickly leading to debt servicing problems.
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One-third of corporate debt was owed by companies with an interest coverage ratio less than 1 (“IC1 companies”), many of them in the infrastructure (especially power generation) and metals sectors.
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Slowing growth in China caused international steel prices to collapse, causing nearly every Indian steel company to record large losses. The government responded promptly by imposing a minimum import price, while international prices themselves recovered somewhat, thereby affording the steel industry some relief.
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Four new frog species from western Ghats
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Scientists exploring the forests of the Western Ghats have come across four new species of tiny frogs no bigger than a human thumbnail, which make a distinctive chirping sound comparable to that of a cricket.
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These species are among the seven new ‘Night Frogs’ discovered by a team of researchers from the University of Delhi and the Kerala Forest Department, who spent five years surveying the global biodiversity hotspot.
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Night Frogs belong to the Nyctibatrachus genus endemic to the Western Ghats and represent an ancient group of frogs that diversified on the Indian landmass approximately 70 to 80 million years ago.
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While turning the spotlight on the amphibian diversity of the Western Ghats, the discovery also highlights the threat posed by human activities to the species. The Athirappilly Night Frog was found close to the Athirappilly waterfalls, the proposed site of a hydroelectric project, while the Sabarimala Night Frog was discovered near the hill shrine which receives lakhs of pilgrims every year. The Radcliffe’s Night frog and the Kadalar Night Frog were reported from plantation areas.
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Pond can speed up global warming
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Tiny natural ponds pose an overlooked danger for speeding up global warming, according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change
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In experiments designed to simulate moderate future warming, scientists in Britain found that such ponds — a metre across — gradually lose the capacity to soak up one kind of greenhouse gas and give off even more of another.
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After seven years at higher-than-ambient temperatures, “the ability of the ponds to absorb carbon dioxide was reduced by almost half, while methane release nearly doubled.
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The new findings matter because small ponds play an outsized role in the planet’s carbon cycles — the balance between input and output of greenhouse gases.
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While covering only a tiny fraction of Earth’s surface area, they are responsible for about 40% of methane emissions from inland waters, earlier research has shown.
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Methane is about 28 times more effective in trapping the sun’s radiation in our atmosphere than carbon dioxide, the dominant greenhouse gas.
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The main source of manmade carbon pollution is the burning of fossil fuels, accounting for more than 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions. The rest comes from deforestation, the livestock industry, and agriculture.