CURRENT AFFAIRS 9th JULY, 2014

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1. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) eased the rules of suppliers’ and buyers’ credit for importing rough, cut and polished diamonds to up to 180 days from 90 days with immediate effect. It will provide relief to diamond traders by reducing interest burden and frequent requests of permission for credit payment.

2. Union Rail Budget 2014-15 was presented by the Union Railway Minister Sadanand Gowda on 8 July 2014. It focuses mainly on improving operational efficiency of the existing railway projects and has ambitious modernisation proposals.

Railway Budget Highlights:

• Proposes PPP model for new railway projects and attract FDI source for big projects like Bullet train, Diamond Quadrilateral project of High speed trains. Propsed high speed train at Mumbai-Ahmedabad route.

• Introducing new services and technologies like Wifi in A1 and A category stations and select trains, improved e-ticketing system, digitisation of railway reservation charts, bio toilets, escalators, tourist trains, outsourcing at major stations.

• 4000 women constables and 17000, CCTV monitoring, Ultrasonic Broken Rail Detection System (UBRD) to ensure safety and security of passengers.

• 56 new trains, 10 metro stations with state of art facilities, increasing the speed of existing trains, setting up of railway university and 14% hike in passenger fares are other highlights of railway budget.

3. India successfully test-fired an advanced version of the 290-km range BrahMos supersonic cruise missile from Chandipur-on-Sea off Odisha coast. BrahMos is the first supersonic cruise missile known to be in service with a top speed of Mach 2.8. It can be launched from ships, aircrafts and submarines.

4. TRAI raised the minimum broadband speed to 512 kilo bytes per second (kbps) from the earlier 256 kbps by amending the Telecom Consumers Complaint Redressal Regulations, 2012. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had revised the broadband speed in consonance of the National Telecom Policy 2012 and TRAI recommendations.

5. UN Tribunal, Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) has ruled on the Indo-Bangladesh maritime border dispute of the Bay of Bengal in favour of Bangladesh. The court has awarded a major part of disputed area to Bangladesh thus allowing it to explore for oil and gas in the Bay of Bengal. Both the Countries have accepted the ruling.