Current Affairs for IAS Exams

Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 27 March 2017

The government is set to change a four-decade-old definition of blindness to bring it in line with the WHO criteria and ensure that the Indian data on blindness meets the global estimates.
As defined under the National Programme for Control of Blindness (NPCB), a person unable to count fingers from a distance of six metres is categorised as “blind” in India, against the WHO’s stipulation of three metres.
“We will bring the definition of blindness at par with the WHO’s criteria. Because of the current definition, we project a higher figure of blind people from India at any international forum. Thus India gets presented in a poor light compared to other countries.
Also, she said, the data “we generate under the programme cannot be compared with the global estimates as other countries are following the WHO criteria.”

Soon, your property will have a 10-digit unique ID.
The number,which will be geo-referenced with the latitude and longitude of the property, will replace your existing PID number.

The British government said that its security services must have access to encrypted messaging applications such as WhatsApp, revealing it was used by the killer behind the Parliament attack.
Khalid Masood, the 52-year-old Briton who killed four people before being shot dead in a rampage in Westminster, reportedly used the Facebook-owned service moments before the assault.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd told Sky News it was “completely unacceptable” that police and security services had not been able to crack the heavily encrypted service.
Police said that they still do not know why Masood, a Muslim convert with a violent criminal past, carried out the attack and said it was likely that he acted alone, despite a claim by the Islamic State (IS).
End-to-end encryption was vital to cybersecurity, to ensure that business, banking and other transactions were safe — but it must also be accessible.

The Navy’s iconic Tupolev-142M anti-submarine warfare aircraft will be decommissioned.
The planes have been the mainstay in guarding the Indian Ocean region for almost three decades.
The Soviet-era aircraft, one of the most formidable airborne reconnaissance platforms around the world, has been part of major operations since its induction in 1988.