Current Affairs - 24th October 2013

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International Affairs

• The Pakistan government has decided to include polio vaccination on the agenda of dialogue with the Taliban as 90% of the cases this year have been reported from FATA where the militants have banned vaccinations.
• Ousted politician Bo Xilai lost his appeal against a life sentence for corruption in his final public appearance Friday before prison — an inglorious end for the once-rising star whose vaulting ambition unnerved China's leadership.
• Hamid Ansari left for Lima on the first-ever visit at the vice-presidential level to mineral-rich Peru and Communist Cuba as part of India's thrust towards Latin America.
• Two pre-Columbian mummies more than a thousand years old were found in a pre-Incan cemetery in a suburb of Lima, archeologists said on Thursday.
• A top nuclear negotiator from Tehran will meet with the head of the U.N.’s nuclear agency next week just hours before agency experts sit down with Iranian counterparts to renew their push for access to sites, people and documents believed linked to possible work on atomic arms.

National Affairs

• Voicing concern over Tamil Nadu fishermen being caught by Sri Lankan Navy, the Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the Centre and state government on petitions filed by DMK and AIADMK MPs for release of those languishing in jails there.
• The Election Commission on Thursday changed the voting timing in five Assembly constituencies of Chhattisgarh's Rajnandgaon district going to the polls in the first phase on November 11.
• Himachal Pradesh has become the second state after Haryana to introduce Centre's National Vocational Qualitative Framework ( NVQF) Scheme.
• Union Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad Thursday said many countries are faced with vast, ageing populations, and are unable to meet the social security and employment needs of this segment of society.
• National Agriculture Bank And Rural Development has launched a Warehousing Scheme ( NWS) to advance loans to Public and Private sector for creation of storage infrastructure with a corpus of Rs 5,000 crore during 2013-14.
• Ending an eight-year-old ban on military supplies, India has handed over some of the equipment, including vehicles and arms, it had pledged to provide to Nepal ahead of crucial polls to be held next month.

Deaths

• Former Arunachal Pradesh Minister Indrajit Namchoom died at a private hospital in Kolkata this morning following cardiac arrest. 71 year old Namchoom, who belonged to the Khampti tribe, passed away at 2am at a private hospital.

Economy

• A Group of Ministers (GoM) headed by Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar rejected a Textile Ministry proposal to impose a 10 per cent duty on overseas sales of cotton beyond a declared exportable surplus.
• Reserve Bank on Thursday constituted an advisory group to implement a national bill payment system that will enable households to pay utility bills, school fees, remittances and other bills using their bank accounts.
• Government has sanctioned Rs 1,260 crore to fortify and upgrade jawans' facilities in far-flung ITBP posts located along the Sino-Indian border.
• Indicating a poor state of affairs on gender parity front, India was ranked at a low 101st position on a global Gender Gap Index despite an improvement by four places since last year.
• Identifying India as one of the five fragile economies of the world, a top US economist has predicted an uncertain outlook for its future in view of the next year's general elections.

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