Thursday, 19 March 2015

17-mar


Validity of Aadhar to avail govt subsidies : SC order

1)      Clearing all doubts about the validity of Aadhaar card to avail of government subsidies, the Supreme Court confirmed that the card is not compulsory.

2)      The SC said that insistence on Aadhaar card is in clear violation of the SC’s interim order of September 23, 2013.

3)      In the 2013 order, the apex court had directed that no person should suffer for not getting the Aadhaar card, in spite of the fact that some authority had issued a circular making it mandatory.

4)      The court was hearing a batch of petitions challenging the Aadhaar scheme as an encroachment into the public’s right to privacy.

5)      The NCT government’s notification on March 9, 2015, insisting that couples require Aadhaar cards to get their marriage registered under the Special Marriage Act.

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India tops Facebook's content bar list

1)      Facebook restricted access to nearly 6,000 pieces of information on its website in India between July and December 2014 following requests from the government and other agencies to act against hate content on the social media platform.

2)      It is the highest for any country in the world.

3)      In its Global Government Requests Report for the second half of 2014, Facebook said 5,832 pieces of content were restricted in the country, higher than the 4,960 in the first half.

4)      Governments contact Facebook to restrict access to content that they believe violates their laws.

5)      The social media platform said the vast majority of these requests related to criminal cases such as robberies or kidnappings.

6)      In many of these cases, the request seeks basic subscriber information such as name and length of service. Other requests have asked for IP address logs or actual account content 

7)      In restricting Facebook content, India is followed by Turkey with 3,624 pieces of such content, Germany (60), Russia (55) and Pakistan (54).

8)      India is second only to the United States, which made 14,274 requests in the corresponding period.

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Inflation at record low

1)      The Wholesale Price Index (WPI) fell for the fourth straight month showing de-growth of 2.06 per cent in February.

2)      It had declined (-)0.39 per cent in January, and was 5.03 per cent in Feb, 2014.

3)      Food prices rose 7.74 per cent.

                                i.            The inflation in prices of onions, pulses and protein rich food items such as egg, meat and fish rose

                              ii.            The prices of vegetables, fruits and milk declined.

4)      The decline in inflation is attributed to fall in fuel and power inflation at (-)14.72 per cent against (-)11 percent in January.

5)      The government also revised the December WPI rate to (-)0.5 per cent from 0.1 per cent reported earlier.

6)      The consumer price inflation (CPI) accelerated to 5.37 per cent in February from 5.19 per cent in January on the back of higher food and fuel prices.

7)      Counter views :

                                i.            The decline in prices of manufacturing goods points to fragile demand conditions and indicates that robust recovery has yet to set in.

                              ii.            Cheaper food, fuel and manufacturing products push inflation in the negative zone for the fourth straight month.

                            iii.            Industry demands further easing of interest rates to boost industrial growth.

                             iv.            Unseasonal rains this month could be a dampener, the decline in food inflation may be short-lived, according to experts.



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