Current Affairs 3rd August 2017

Current Affairs 3rd August 2017 - Important Points

• ASI protected monuments to be declared Polythene Free Zones by - The Archaeological Survey of India
• Contest for logo design for 'Women of India Festival' launched by - WCD Ministry
•  Prince Philip officially retired on - 2nd August 2017
• Hassan Rouhani sworn in as Iran's President for second term on - 3rd August 2017
• Resolution to prevent terrorists' access to weapons adopted by - UNSC
• Human embryos edited to stop disease by - Scientists
• Third Bi-monthly Monetary Policy Statement 2017-18 released by - RBI
• Opposition’s demand to remove NOTA in Gujarat Rajya Sabha polls rejected by - Election Council

Current Affairs 3rd August 2017 - Details

ASI protected monuments to be declared Polythene Free Zones by - The Archaeological Survey of India

The Archaeological Survey of India has declared all ASI protected Monuments and Archaeological Sites as ‘Polythene Free Zone’ on 2nd Aug 2017. The same was announcement was made by Mahesh Sharma, Minister of State for Culture and Tourism (Independent Charge) in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.

The national body has directed all of its field offices to take all the necessary steps to comply with these orders. In this regard, Secretary (Culture)  has also issued a Demi-official (D.O) letter to all the Chief Secretaries of States to bring forth their active cooperation in making all the centrally
protected monument sites as polythene free zones.
The move has followed a recommendation by the Ministry of Culture suggesting prohibition on the use of polythene.
To ensure adherence of the same in cities across the country, all the states and Union territories have been directed to issue necessary direction to the local municipal bodies and concerned departments to keep the area 300 meters approximately from the boundary of a protected monument completely polythene free.

Contest for logo design for 'Women of India Festival' launched by - WCD Ministry

The Ministry of Women and Child Development launched a contest for designing a logo for the 'Women of India Festival' on 2nd August 2017, which will be held in October 2017 at Dilli Haat in New Delhi. The festival is being organized and fully funded by the Ministry as a part of their major initiative of women economic empowerment.
Important Highlights

• The festival lays a platform for designers aspiring to see their creation displayed on a National platform.
• The event would be seeing on display the biggest selection of organic products prepared or grown by women.
• Participants would be including lakhs of visitors and buyers from both India and outside.
• Contest details have been made available on the official social media accounts (Facebook and Twitter) of Child Development Ministry and the Women.
• The last date to submit these entries is 21st August 2017.

 Prince Philip officially retired on - 2nd August 2017

Britain's Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth II retired from the royal services at the age of 96 on 2nd August 2017 by putting an end to 70 years of his service. However, the Duke will be continuing to be associated with more than 780 organizations of which he is Patron, President or a member. On the final day of his services, Prince Philip attended a parade of Royal Marines at Buckingham Palace and took the salute at the end of a charity challenge by the Royal Marines in which members ran 2678 km in more than 100 days to mark the 1664 Global Challenge.

More about Prince Philip

• Prince Philip is the longest serving consort in British history at the age of 96 as he carried out a total of 22219 solo engagements since 1952.
• He also has been Captain General of the Royal Marines since 1953.
• The Duke was a naval officer during the Second World War in 1939 before serving on battleships in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean.
• Over the past 65 years, he has carried out 637 visits abroad on his own, gave almost 5500 speeches, written 14 books and was a member of more than 780 organizations.

Hassan Rouhani sworn in as Iran's President for second term on - 3rd August 2017

Hassan Rouhani was officially sworn in as the President of Iran for a second term on 3rd August 2017.Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei gave his official approval for Rouhani's appointment by giving him a decree to assign duties.

Rouhani will be administering the oath before the parliament on 5th August 2017 and before that, he has to present his cabinet before the parliament for a vote of confidence. A president-elect is required to get the Leader’s approval before being sworn-in before the Parliament as per Iran's Election Law. Rouhani won the re-election in May 2017, after securing 57 percent of the votes and defeated his main contender Ebrahim Raeisi.

More about Hassan Rouhani

• Born on 12th November 1948, Rouhani is a graduate of University of Tehran and has PhD from Scotland’s Glasgow Caledonian University.
• He started his political career in the 1960s by following the exiled leader of the Islamic movement, Ayatollah Khomeini.
• He spent 16 years as Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, which is top security post of Iran.
• He was Iran's chief nuclear negotiator between 2003 and 2005.
• Rouhani was elected as President of Iran in 2013.
• During his term, Iran reached a landmark deal in 2015. Rouhani was a key architect of the 2015 nuclear deal with the world powers in return to lift the economic sanctions.
• He is also the first Iranian leader to speak with the President of United States when former president Barack Obama called him in September 2013.

Resolution to prevent terrorists' access to weapons adopted by - UNSC

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) unanimously adopted a resolution on 2nd August 2017 to prevent terrorists from acquiring weapons, especially small arms and light weapons.

The resolution came after the UN body witnessed that there is a continuous flow of unmanned aircraft systems, weapons and improvised explosive device (IED) components among the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Al-Qaida, associated groups and their affiliates. The storage and misuse of these weapons poses threats to international peace and security and cause significant loss of life.

Important Highlights on UNSC

• It encouraged the Member States to prevent and disrupt procurement networks for systems, weapons, and components among such groups and entities.
• It also urged the member states to ensure the ability to take appropriate legal actions against those who are knowingly engaged to provide terrorists with weapons.
• It also urged the member states to strengthen their law enforcement, border-control capacities,judicial, and develop their capabilities to investigate arms-trafficking networks.
• It encouraged the implementation of marking and tracing procedures of small arms and light weapons to improve tracing ability of such weapons.
• It called on all states to consider being party to the related instruments in order to help eliminating the supply of weapons to terrorists.
• There are many challenges amid detection , prevention, and prosecution of illegal weapons trafficking. These challenges are mainly like inadequate data collection, lack of specialized skills and equipment and lack of coordination between countries and regions.
• There is a need to strengthen cross-border partnerships and operational responses and step up assistance to address gaps in capacityin order to put with these challenges.

Human embryos edited to stop disease by - Scientists

Scientists have discovered a way to edit embryos of a piece of faulty DNA that causes deadly heart disease in families successfully. The process also called CRISPR, was completed without introducing any harmful mutations, which was a problem in previous other attempts. CRISPR is a gene-editing technique allowing scientists to insert,correct and remove DNA within a cell with pinpoint precision.

The discovery published in the journal Nature potentially opens the door to prevent 10000 disorders that are passed down the generations on 3rd August 2017. Its applications in medicine are vast and include the idea of wiping out genetic faults that cause diseases from cystic fibrosis to breast cancer.

The US and the South Korean team allowed the embryos to develop for five days before finishing the experiment. US teams at Oregon Health and Science University, the Salk Institute and the Institute for Basic Science focused on hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) in South Korea. HCM is a common disorder affects people of any age. Reports have confirmed that it affects one in every 500 people and it is a common cause of sudden cardiac arrest in young people.
More about the process

• To develop this technique, the team used sperm from a donor carrying the mutation and eggs from healthy women to make a gene editing tool.
• Later, they injected the CRISPR-Cas9 editing tool into the eggs and found that about 72 percent of embryos were free from the errant gene.

Third Bi-monthly Monetary Policy Statement 2017-18 released by - RBI

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released the Third Bi-monthly Monetary Policy Statement 2017-18 on 2nd August 2017. After assessing the current and evolving macroeconomic situation in the economy, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has decided to minimize the policy Repo Rate under the Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF) by 25 basis points to 6 percent with immediate effect.

As a result, the Reverse Repo Rate now stands at 5.75 percent. The Marginal Standing Facility (MSF) rate and the Bank Rate were fixed at 6.25 percent each. This is the first cut rate since October 2016. The MPC decision is consistent with the aim to achieve the medium-term target for Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation of 4 percent within a band of 2 percent, while supporting growth.

Key Highlights

• Some of the upside risks such as high core inflation (excluding food and fuel prices), poor rains and adverse impact from the rollout of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) have not shown up yet, opening up space for the monetary policy accommodation.
• Retail prices rose to 1.5 percent in June, which is lower than RBI’s April-September inflation forecast of 2 to 3.5 percent. Inflation slowed mainly because of falling food prices and the base effect.
• The retail inflation, led by softer food prices has fallen to a more than five-year low in June 2017.
• The economic growth forecast was retained at 7.3 per cent amid prospects of a better harvest even though the industrial sector continues to struggle.

Opposition’s demand to remove NOTA in Gujarat Rajya Sabha polls rejected by - Election Council

The Election Commission rejected the demands of the political parties to remove the None of the Above (NOTA) option in the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls in Gujarat on 3rd August 2017. This announcement has been made by the electoral body in the wake  of protests by the opposition against the insertion of the option.
The Congress had approached the EC on 1st August seeking for the removal of the option, claiming it violated the Constitution and the electoral laws. On 2nd August, the BJP also approached the EC with a similar demand.
The party said in a memorandum to the EC that the use of NOTA in the upcoming elections has become an issue of contention and debate among the political parties and therefore, a proper consensus has to be made before its use in the Rajya Sabha election.

 The party argued that since there was no secrecy for the voting in the election, the option of NOTA won't be of much use and hence , the party demands that the direction to use NOTA option in the election for Rajya Sabha in the state of Gujarat should be withdrawn with an immediate effect.