Current Affairs for IAS Exams

Current Affairs for IAS Exams – 15 August 2016

India and Pakistan exchanged salvos instead of the usual Independence Day greetings, with Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit calling for Kashmir’s freedom and India terming Islamabad’s policies on Kashmir “illegal” and “absurd”.
The government responded sharply. Minister of State in the PMO Jitendra Singh said Pakistan should end its “illegal occupation” of PoK.
“Our stand is very clear in the context of the J&K issue. If at all there is any outstanding issue with Pakistan, it is how to liberate the part of J&K which remains under the illegal occupation of Islamabad,” he said.
His response came soon after the Ministry of External Affairs termed Pakistan’s offer to send relief material to Kashmir as “absurd”.

At a time when India and Pakistan are engaged in a ‘war of words’, President Pranab Mukherjee asserted that there would no stepping back on New Delhi’s “neighbourhood first policy”.
In his televised address to the nation, on the eve of the sixty-ninth anniversary of Independence, Mr. Mukherjee also spoke about the attacks on “weaker sections which is against Indian ethos’’, and said that they should be dealt with firmly.
While maintaining that during his four years in office he had seen with some disquiet forces of divisiveness and intolerance trying to raise their ugly head.
Mr. Mukherjee said close bonds of history, culture, civilisation and geography provide the people of South Asia with an extraordinary opportunity to carve out a common destiny and to march together towards prosperity.
“This opportunity must be seized without delay. India’s focus in foreign policy will remain on peaceful co-existence and harnessing technology and resources for its economic development.”

China is set to launch the world’s first quantum communication satellite which boasts of hack-proof ultra high security features to prevent wiretapping and intercepts.
If the satellite works well, it will pave the way to a hack-proof communication system, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. It will launch the satellite in a matter of days.
In July 2015, a quantum-computing lab jointly established by Chinese Academy of Science and Chinese Internet giant Alibaba opened in Shanghai.