current affairs January 2013

1. India raised the import duty on gold and platinum from 4% to 6% to contain the widening current account deficit(CAD)

In 2011-12, gold imports accounted for $56.5 billion in foreign exchange — the second-highest item after crude oil in the import bill

India decided to link Gold ETF with the Gold Deposit Scheme and thereby relying more on domestic supplies of the yellow metal will enable mutual funds to unlock their physical gold assets and invest in gold-linked schemes offered by banks.

Currently, there are two gold related schemes — the Gold ETF and the Gold Deposit Scheme — that are intended to channelise gold holdings into institutional channels. The Gold ETF is provided by mutual funds. Units are sold to subscribers through ‘authorised participants’ and are traded on the exchange. The units are backed by physical gold held by the mutual fund. Money collected under any Gold ETF shall be invested by the mutual fund primarily (a minimum of 90 per cent) in gold or gold-related instruments notified by SEBI.

Banks offering Gold Deposit Scheme accept gold deposited by clients. The gold is on-lent by the banks to the gems and jewellery trade. At the end of the deposit period, the depositor is entitled to a return of physical gold or its equivalent in cash at the current market price of gold.

As an added measure of flexibility, the minimum quantity of gold that can be deposited into the Gold Deposit Scheme will stand reduced and the minimum tenure will also be brought down to six months from the period of three years at present.

2. India has postponed implementation of GAAR provisions by two years. India has decided that provisions of Chapter 10A of the Income Tax Act (dealing with GAAR) will come into force from April 1, 2016

The General Anti-Avoidance Rules (GAAR) provisions, introduced by the then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee in the Budget 2012-13, were aimed at checking tax avoidance by overseas investors.

The decision to postpone the implementation follows the recommendations of the Shome Committee which was set up by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to look into investor concerns.

The GAAR provisions would override the double taxation avoidance agreement (DTAA) benefits if the arrangements were intended solely to evade taxes.

Investments made by Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) will not be covered by the provisions of GAAR.

The minister clarified that there would be a threshold limit of Rs 3 crore of tax benefit for invocation of GAAR, as suggested by the Shome panel.

Investments made before August 30, 2010, would not attract the provisions of GAAR.

3. Indian-origin politician, Halimah Yacob, became the first woman Speaker of Singapore’s Parliament

Millions of people have taken a dip at the confluence of the River Ganges, River Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati River near Allahabad, at the start of Maha Kumbh Mela, a Hindu celebration held every 12 years. During the next 55 days, nearly 100 million people are expected to attend the festival, which has been billed as the biggest gathering in the world.
According to Hindu mythology, when gods and demons fought over a pitcher of nectar that gives immortality, some drops fell on four towns - Allahabad, Nasik, Ujjain and Haridwar. These towns host the festival in rotation. The one at Allahabad is believed to be the holiest and surpasses the others in its sheer scale and size. Nasik will host the next Kumbha Mela in 2015.

4. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa removed Sri Lanka’s chief justice, Shirani Bandaranayake, from office. Dr. Shirani Bandaranayake is Sri Lanka's first woman chief justice. Mr. Rajapaksa’s decision came two days after Sri Lanka's Parliament, packed with Rajapaksa cronies and relatives, voted to impeach the chief justice. Earlier, the Supreme Court had ruled that the impeachment process was illegal. Many believe the dismissal is the repercussion of Ms Bandaranayake's ruling that a bill submitted by the president Rajapaksa's younger brother, Basil Rajapaksa, proposing a $600 million development budget, must be approved by nine provincial councils. Opposition parties and independent analysts call the impeachment motion a politically motivated attempt to stifle judicial independence, and say it is part of a government effort to concentrate power in the hands of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

5. Argo won the best dramatic motion picture prize at the 70th annual Golden Globe Awards. Argo won the best dramatic motion picture prize and Affleck picked up the best director prize for the film about the 1980 joint CIA-Canadian secret operation to extract six fugitive American diplomatic personnel out of revolutionary Iran. Les Miserables - the film adaptation of Victor Hugo's 19th century novel - was the winner of the Globes best comedy or musical category, and its stars Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway won acting honors. Jessica Chastain won the Globe for dramatic actress for her role in Zero Dark Thirty as a CIA agent obsessively pursuing Osama Bin Laden. British actor Daniel Day Lewis won the award for the best dramatic performance for his role in Lincoln, the Spielberg film about the president who steered the U.S. through its civil war. The film focused on the legislative battle to pass the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which abolished slavery just months before Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.LIST OF AWARDS FOR 2013 GOLDEN GLOBES

Motion Picture, Drama: Argo 
Actor, Motion Picture Drama: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln 
Actress, Motion Picture Drama: Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty 
Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy: Les Miserables 
Actor, Motion Picture Musical or Comedy: Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables 
Director, Motion Picture: Ben Affleck, Argo 
Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement: Jodie Foster 
Animated Film: Brave 
Foreign Language Film: Amour (Austria) 
Actress, Motion Picture Musical or Comedy: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook 

6. Justice D.K. Jain has been appointed Chairman of the Law Commission of India, which gives advice to the government on complex legal issues. The Union Cabinet has approved the constitution of the 20th Law Commission with a three-year term (1 September 2012 to August 31, 2015) Besides the Chairman, the commission will have four full-time members. The Law Secretary and the Secretary, Legislative Department, are the ex-officio members.

7. Lionel Messi won the FIFA Ballon d’Or award for his astonishing 91-goal year for Barcelona and Argentina in 2012. Messi has been voted the world’s best player for an unprecedented fourth straight year. Messi’s fourth award lifted him above three—time FIFA winners Zinedine Zidane of France and Brazil’s Ronaldo.

8. As per the new Visa Agreement between India and Pakistan, places of visit allowable for persons on visitors visa was increased from three to five places. Visa can be issued upto two years in the cases of: 1) Persons above 65 years of age 2) National of one country married to national of the other country and their children below 12 years accompanying parents. Group Tourist Visa for 30 days may be issued for travel in groups, with not less than 10 members and not more than 50 members in each group, organized by approved tour operators/travel agents

9. Astronomers from the University of Central Lancashire discovered the largest structure ever seen in the entire universe called Large Quasar Group (LQG) Travelling at the speed of light, it would take 4 billion light years to cross the discovered structure. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is separated from its nearest neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, by two and a half million light years. Quasars are the nuclei of ancient galaxies that undergo periods (10-100 million years) of extremely high brightness that make them visible across huge distances. Quasars tend to group together in structures of surprisingly large sizes, forming LQGs

10. The Union Cabinet approved the Ministry of Rural Development’s proposal to raise the unit cost under Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY) In plain areas, unit assistance under the scheme has been raised from Rs 45,000 to Rs 70,000 and from Rs 48,500 to Rs 75,000 in hilly and difficult areas. The enhancement of unit assistance for homestead site to rural below poverty line (BPL) households who have neither agricultural land nor a house site has been hiked from Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000. The IAY is a flagship scheme of the Ministry of Rural Development and aims at addressing rural housing needs by providing grant for construction/upgradation of dwelling units of BPL families. The priority is especially given to Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes, freed bonded labourers and physically challenged persons with financial assistance.

11. The Reserve Bank of India has set up a working group to evaluate and make improvements in the grievance redressal mechanism for bank customers. The working group constituted in the Reserve Bank of India is going to review, update, and revise the Banking Ombudsman Scheme, 2006. The Reserve Bank is launching the ombudsman scheme in 2006 to redress public grievances in banking transactions. The ombudsmen are receiving the complaints and grievances from the customers. These would be recorded and each complaint would be given a unique identification number after which they would be sent to the banks concerned. On receipt of the banks' response they would be forwarded to the complainants. The ombudsman would have powers of courts. Presently, India has 15 Banking Ombudsmen with unambiguous jurisdiction covering all States and Union Territories in India.

12. A 2-billion-year-old dark lump of rock that landed in Sahara desert is actually a new type of Martian meteorite, containing 10 times more water than usual. This new class of meteorite was found in 2011 in the Sahara Desert. Designated Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, and nicknamed “Black Beauty,” it weighs approximately 320 grams. After more than a year of intensive study, a team of US scientists determined the meteorite formed 2.1 billion years ago during the beginning of the most recent geologic period on Mars, known as the Amazonian. NWA 7034 is made of cemented fragments of basalt, rock that forms from rapidly cooled lava. The fragments are primarily feldspar and pyroxene, most likely from volcanic activity. Researchers theorise the large amount of water contained in NWA 7034 may have originated from interaction of the rocks with water present in Mars’ crust. The meteorite also has a different mixture of oxygen isotopes than has been found in other Martian meteorites, which could have resulted from interaction with the Martian atmosphere. Black Beauty was donated to University of New Mexico by a US citizen who had purchased it from the Moroccan meteorite dealer in 2011

13. India constituted the 14th Finance Commission under the chairmanship of former RBI Governor Y. V. Reddy. The five-member panel is to submit its report by October 31, 2014. Apart from its recommendations on the sharing of tax proceeds between the Centre and the States which will apply for a five-year period beginning April 1, 2015, the Commission has been asked to suggest steps for pricing of public utilities such as electricity and water in an independent manner and also look into issues like disinvestment, GST compensation, sale of non-priority PSUs and subsidies. Among other things, the Commission would look into the “need for insulating the pricing of public utility services like drinking water, irrigation, power and public transport from policy fluctuations through statutory provisions. Apart from Dr. Reddy in the chair, other members of the Commission are former Finance Secretary Sushma Nath, NIPFP Director M. Govinda Rao, Planning Commission Member Abhijit Sen and Former Acting Chairman of National Statistical Commission Sudipto Mundle. The Commission would review the state of finances, deficit and debt levels of the Centre and States, keeping in view, in particular, the fiscal consolidation roadmap recommended by the 13th Finance Commission. Besides, the 14th Finance Commission would suggest measures for maintaining a stable and sustainable fiscal environment consistent with equitable growth.

14. India rolled out its ambitious scheme of transferring cash to beneficiaries of select schemes called Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT). On January 1, the seven schemes in which pay out is due in the 20 selected districts, the money will be transfered through the direct benefit transfer system using the UIDAI platform. Gaps in infrastructure like bank accounts and beneficiary lists forced the government to pare its ambitious direct cash transfer of subsidies from the targeted 51 districts to just 20 with the number of schemes also whittled from 34 to 26. Of the 26 selected schemes, cash transfers will now rollout in seven - mostly related to student scholarships and stipends and Indira Matrutva Yojna and Dhanalakshmi schemes - from January 1, 2013.At the moment there is no intention to transfer subsidies on food, fertilizer, diesel and kerosene and cooking gas through direct benefit transfer. Here, existing system will continue because they are complex issues. By end of 2013 the direct cash benefit transfer will be rolled out in all the districts of the country.

15. French constitutional court, the Conseil Constitutionnel, ruled that President François Hollande’s 75% income tax for high earners is unfair and therefore unconstitutional. The court rejected the tax, which would have affected all with an annual income above €one million, because French income tax is levied on households and not individuals, so it would not apply, for example, to a couple each of whom earns €900,000 but would apply to any individual earning a million euros or more. Only about 1,500 people would have had to pay the new rate, which was due to take effect today and was expected to raise €500 million in a crucial contribution to Mr. Hollande’s plans to reduce the budget deficit to 3 per cent of GDP by 2014.

16. The draft of the 12th Five Year Plan covering the period 2012-13 to 2016-17, approved by the National Development Council. It aims to achieve an annual average growth rate of 8 per cent, scaled down from 8.2%
The U.S. Congress and the White House working hard to come to a deal to avoid the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ of austerity measures that threaten the still-weak US economy. And if the limit isn’t raised on how much the government can borrow, the government’s reaching the $16.4- trillion ceiling in February or March could lead to a first-ever default that would shake worldwide confidence in the United States.