Current Affairs for IAS Exams

Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 12 August 2016

Home Minister decried attempts to “create an impression” that the NDA government was anti-Dalit
He also assured the Lok Sabha that his Ministry had told the State governments that strict and tough action should be taken against “any anti-social elements, whether in the name of Gau Raksha or any other cause”.
The government had, after two back-to-back speeches on the issue by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, decided to give in to Opposition demands for a debate in the Lok Sabha.
“I do not want to go into State-wise figures on crimes against Dalits, but overall figures show that in 2013 the cases of violence against Dalits were 39,346, which rose to 40,300 in 2014 and came down again in 2015 to 38,564,” Mr. Singh said.

Ukraine’s President put his Army on combat alert along the country’s de facto borders with Crimea as a war of words between Russia and Ukraine threatened to heat up the largely frozen conflict over the Black Sea peninsula.
Ukrainian President PetroPoroshenko issued the order after Moscow accused his country of sending in “saboteurs” to carry out attacks in Crimea.
Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 following a hastily called referendum, a move that sparked fighting between Russia-backed separatists and government forces in eastern Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin upped the ante when he directly accused the Ukrainian government of plotting the attacks and called a meeting of the country’s top brass to discuss boosting security in Crimea.
Peace talks in the Belarusian capital of Minsk in 2015 helped ease the fighting but did not solve the crisis.
While the separatists never allowed Ukrainian forces to regain control of the border, Ukraine has also not adopted legislation to provide broad autonomy to these territories.

The fear now is that this is not a freak incident and that other diseases — some dating back to the Ice Age — could be unleashed as global warming thaws Russia’s icy northern expanses.
Russia is warming about 2.5 times more rapidly than the world’s average, and the Arctic region is warming quicker than the rest of the country.
Temperatures there in July were up to eight degrees higher than normal, reaching 34 degrees Celsius.
Anthrax is an infection spread by spores of the Bacillus anthracis bacteria which occurs naturally and can be ingested by livestock and passed to humans, usually through skin contact, causing black lesions. If left untreated it can be fatal.
Besides anthrax, there are plenty of other dangers lurking in shallow Arctic graves which might be unlocked from the ice after centuries, said Viktor Maleyev, deputy chief of Russia’s Central Research Institute of Epidemiology.
The total affected area in the region, together with an established buffer zone, is some 12,650 square kilometres.
Scientists lamented that instead of spending more money on studying the effects of climate change, science budgets are shrinking, and the government only allocates funds after emergencies and tragedies.