Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 23 May 2016
:: National ::
India is looking to expand cooperation with the Iran
Lifting of international sanctions on Iran has opened up immense opportunities said PM Modi.
He also said that India is looking forward to expanding cooperation with the Persian Gulf nation in sectors such as trade, investment, infrastructure and energy.
Mr. Modi, the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Iran in the last 15 years, was received at the Mehrabad International Airport by Iran’s Finance and Economic Affairs Minister Ali Tayyebnia, after which he left for a local gurudwara to meet people of Indian origin.
Stating that both public and private sector firms from India were keen on investing in Iran, he said the signing of the agreement on the development of Chabahar port will provide wider connectivity.
Besides signing a deal on the development of phase-1 of the port, India is looking at doubling oil imports from the Persian Gulf nation, which a few years back was its second-biggest oil supplier, as well as making progress on getting rights to develop the Farzad–B gas field.
Mr. Modi, who will hold formal talks with President Hassan Rouhani on Monday, said he had indicated possibilities of cooperation in ports, fertiliser and petrochemical sectors during their last meeting at Ufa last year.
ONGC is in talks to secure development rights for the gas field it had discovered in 2008. It has already invested about $100 million in the project
Kiran Bedi to become the LG of Puduchery
BJP leader and former IPS officer Kiran Bedi was, on Sunday, appointed Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry, a post that has been vacant for the past two years.
Puducherry was under the additional charge of Lt Governor of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lt. Gen. Ajay Singh, since then.
A Rashtrapati Bhawan communiqué said: “The President has been pleased to appoint Ms Kiran Bedi to be the Lt. Governor of Puducherry with effect from the date she assumes charges of her office.”
The appointment comes three days after the Congress-DMK alliance won 17 seats in the 30-member State Assembly.
The post of Lieutenant Governor in the Union territory had been lying vacant after the Narendra Modi Government sacked UPA nominee Virendra Kataria on July 2014, barely a year after he had been appointed.
Ms Bedi, India’s first woman IPS officer, said she looked “forward to giving every bit of myself to the responsibility. I am there for the benefit of the country…. I am grateful for the government's decision. They trusted me.”
Gaya-model lantern in Colombo (Register and Login to read Full News..)
UP government encouraging farmers to grow oilseeds (Register and Login to read Full News..)
Mann ki baat focuses on forest conservation and saving water (Register and Login to read Full News..)
:: International ::
US President’s Vietnam visit to give push to his Asia orientation
When Bill Clinton landed in this lake-studded capital 16 years ago, the first U.S. President to visit since the end of the Vietnam War, his mission was to put that conflict behind him, and the trip was among the most remarkable of his presidency.
When President Barack Obama arrives, his task may be a bit less dramatic, but is in many ways far more ambitious.
These two countries, bedevilled by decades of misunderstandings, violence and wariness, now have the chance to create a partnership that seemed unlikely even three years ago.
Since then, China’s expansion in the South China Sea has deeply shaken a new Vietnamese government.
While the leadership here has not let up on its repression of its people it now appears more interested in playing one superpower off against the other, perhaps even giving the Pentagon some rotating access to key Vietnamese ports.
It would not be an alliance; neither side seems ready for that. But it could throw Beijing off balance in the daily shadow boxing over who will dominate one of the world’s most strategically vital waterways.
In many parts of Asia, Mr. Obama’s strategy of focusing on the region is still more of a slogan than an operational plan.
However, in this part of Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam, he seems on the verge of the kind of progress Mr. Clinton could only imagine during that first visit, only 10 months before the Sept. 11 attacks changed America’s priorities.
The Chinese, who hindered U.S. efforts during the Vietnam War, are making things easier for the United States.
For years, the Communist Party leadership in Vietnam, headed by Nguyen PhuTrong, ignored Chinese activity off the country’s coast.
But in 2014, China placed a deep-sea drilling rig to explore for oil and gas right off Vietnam, and Mr. Trong, the party’s general secretary, could not even get his phone calls to Beijing returned.
Ahead of Mr. Obama’s visit, a parade of U.S. officials, including Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Daniel Russel, the State Department’s most senior Asia hand, have been showing up in Hanoi.
Their goal has been to get enough human rights guarantees from the Vietnamese to allow for the lifting of sanctions on arms sales to Vietnam and perhaps the return of U.S. military units to its shores for the first time since the chaotic helicopter evacuation from Saigon that is seared in American memory.