Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 25 March 2014

The biggest environmental health risk

Air pollution killed an estimated 7 million people around the world in 2012, making it the biggest environmental health risk, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) .
The situation was worst in developing and emerging countries in Southern Asia, South-East Asia and East Asia, where a total of 3.3 million deaths were linked to indoor air pollution and 2.6 million to outdoor pollution. Use of wood, coal or dung for cooking is the biggest indoor polluter.
In Europe’s industrialised countries, 279,000 deaths could be traced to air pollution.
The WHO said bad air quality outside was a result of unsustainable policies in the transport, energy and waste sectors, as well as in industry.
‘Cleaning up the air would reduce risks, especially for vulnerable children and the elderly’, said the UN health body.

Observing that the right to vote cannot be denied to defence personnel, the Supreme Court has directed the Election Commission to allow those serving in peace areas to exercise their franchise in the Lok Sabha elections.
A Bench of Justices R.M. Lodha and Kurian Joseph questioned the rigid stand of the Commission that service personnel can only cast postal ballots, and said the Commission could not impede their right to vote.
The election process had already begun in 225 constituencies and over 13.60 lakh personnel had already registered to cast their postal ballots.
There are areas in Jammu and Kashmir and in the North-East where defence personnel outnumber the local population. Allowing them to cast votes in the constituency of their posting would change the entire demography of the constituency.

The US and top economic powers have cancelled an upcoming G8 summit to build pressure on Russia against its military action in Ukraine.
After the talks on the Ukraine crisis in The Hague, it was announced that the G8 summit scheduled in Sochi in June would be replaced by a G7 meeting in Brussels, without Russian involvement.
The decision was taken by leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the US, the President of the European Council and the President of the European Commission following their meeting in The Hague on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit.
The G-7 countries would suspend their participation in the G-8 until Russia changes course .

Malaysia announced that MH370 jetliner had crashed into the Indian Ocean and naturally it was greeted with hysteria by relatives of those on board .
Citing groundbreaking satellite-data analysis by the British company Inmarsat, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which vanished more than a fortnight ago while flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur, had crashed thousands of miles away in the southern Indian Ocean.
His statement may go some way toward tamping down some of the more fevered speculation about the plane's fate, including one theory some grief-stricken relatives had seized on: that the plane had been hijacked and forced to land somewhere.
All 239 people on board were presumed dead.
That announcement opened the way for what could be one of the most costly and challenging air crash investigations in history.
The Inmarsat data showed the Boeing 777's last position was in the Indian Ocean west of Perth, Australia.
In a further sign the search was bearing fruit, the US Navy was flying in its high-tech black box detector to the area.
The so-called black boxes — the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder — record what happens on board planes during flight. At crash sites, finding the black boxes soon is crucial because the locator beacons they carry fade out after 30 days.

Dell Services has launched its first cloud-based hospital information system (HIS) solution for the mid-market segment in the Indian healthcare sector.
It is the first offering for the pure-play Indian market from Dell’s Healthcare and Life Sciences division, which is the company’s fastest growing and tallest vertical in services.
Until now, Dell’s healthcare services here have been limited to providing IT outsourcing service delivery and offshore support, and in the case of a few major players, playing a consultant role.
Dell defines the mid-market segment as any hospital that has about 100 beds, and this includes medium-size hospitals that are part of hospital chains.
Dell’s healthcare services,are called ‘hospital IT in a box’, and it offers on a ‘pay per use’ model with nil capital investments as a big incentive for healthcare providers in the mid-market segment.

Bank of India has became the first state-run lender to allow withdrawal of funds to individuals from its ATMs without an account in the bank.
'Instant money transfer (IMT)' is a domestic remittance service that allows cardless cash withdrawal from it select ATMs which are tuned for this facility.
The IMT allows a customer to send money to a receiver only by using the receiver's mobile number through the bank's ATM or using retail Internet banking facility.
IMT transaction on monthly basis while per transaction limit is set up Rs 10,000.
The sender will be charged of IMT fee of Rs 25 for every IMT transaction, he or she issues to a receiver or beneficiary.

India opening batsman Shikhar Dhawan was named captain of Indian Premier League (IPL) side Sunrisers Hyderabad for the seventh edition of the cash-rich Twenty20 event beginning on April 16.
West Indies’ Darren Sammy will be the vice-captain of the side.
Shikhar Dhawan with his significant contribution as a batsman in the previous season has retained his position in the team not just as a crucial opener in the batting order but as the appropriate choice to extend his captaincy role in Champions League to the upcoming IPL as well.