Current Affairs December 03-04, 2018

In this post, GKToday presents Current Affairs of December 03-04, 2018 in Short Notes form for preparation of IBPS, Banking, CLAT, SSC, Railway, UPSC, IAS/PCS, UPPSC, BPSC, MPPSC, RPSC, TNPSC, MPSC, KPSC and all other competitive examinations of India.

1. The 24th Conference of the Parties (COP 24) to the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) has started in Katowice, Poland from 3-14 December 2018. The conference is expected to finalize the rules for implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate change under the Paris Agreement work programme (PAWP). It will also include a number of high-level events, mandated events, action events and roundtables. About 20 thousand people from 190 countries will take part in the event, including politicians, representatives of non-governmental organizations, scientific community and business sector.

2. Australia has become the first country in the world to recognise so-called orphanage trafficking as a form of modern-day slavery. Hence, it has criminalized the act of falsely inducing children into orphanages as a form of slavery, in what is believed to be the first move of its kind in the world. Under the new law, orphanage trafficking will be treated as a slavery and trafficking offense. The legislation forms part of a wider drive to stop Australians taking part in "voluntourism" schemes which harm rather than help the children. It is estimated 80% of children in orphanages around the world have at least one living parent but are in orphanages in a bid to attract international volunteers. This is what's called "Orphanage trafficking" where children are actively recruited into orphanages for the purpose of exploitation and profit made from orphanage tourism, where people pay or donate to volunteer and visit orphanages.

3. The United States has signed trade pact with Canada and Mexico to replace the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They signed an authorization for the deal on the sidelines of the Group of 20 (G20) summit 2018. The new US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) has 34 chapters & is meant to govern more than $1tn worth of trade between the three countries. The pact has been tweaked to include changes for automakers, labor and environmental standards, intellectual property protections, and some digital trade provisions. It will give the US greater access to Canada's dairy market and allows extra imports of Canadian cars. Now, the deal requires ratification by all three countries' legislatures before taking effect.

4. Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel peace laureate & Myanmar leader, will be stripped of Freedom of Paris award over her failure to speak out against a crackdown on Myanmar's Rohingya minority. The move, which follows similar decisions by Glasgow, Edinburgh and Oxford, would make Myanmar's de facto leader the first person to lose the freedom of the French capital, a purely symbolic award. The move will be finalised by the city council at a meeting in mid-December 2018. Apart from this, Suu Kyi has already been stripped of her honorary Canadian citizenship and her Amnesty International's "Ambassador of Conscience Award". In 2017, nearly 5,00,000 people belonging to Myanmar’s Rohingya minority have been displaced after violence allegedly instigated by the country’s military, causing a major humanitarian crisis.

5. Raninder Singh, son of current Chief Minister of Punjab Amarinder Singh, has become the first Indian to be elected to be elected one of the four vice-presidents of the International Shooting Sports Federation (ISSF) after securing 161 votes for the post in Munich. An international level trap shooter, Singh also heads the president of the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI) since December 2009. Recently, India’s Olympic and world champion shooter Abhinav Bindra has been bestowed with the prestigious ISSF’s highest shooting honour ‘Blue Cross’at the General Assembly in Munich for his outstanding services as the chairman of the International Shooting Sport Federation’s Athletes Committee. The Blue Cross is the highest laurel for shooters given by the ISSF.

6. India will host the G20 summit in 2022, when the country celebrates its 75th year of Independence. The announcement was made at the closing ceremony of the 2018 G-20 held in Argentina’s captial Buenos Aires.The G-20 is a grouping of the world’s 20 major economies. Its comprise Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the UK and the U.S. Collectively, the G-20 economies account for nearly 90% of the gross world product, 80% of world trade, two-thirds of the world population, and approximately half of the world land area. Spain is a permanent guest invitee. Earlier, Italy was to host the international forum in 2022.

7. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will be Chief Guest at the Republic Day of India 2019, which also marks the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. The celebrations are held every year at Rajpath before the President of India. The Republic Day honours the date on which the Constitution of India came into effect on 26th January 1950 with a democratic government system. & replaced the Government of India Act (1935) as the governing document of India. The day was chosen as the Republic day because it was on this day in 1930 when Declaration of Indian Independence (Purna Swaraj) was proclaimed by the Indian National Congress (INC) as opposed to the Dominion status offered by British Regime.

8. In Argentina, the 2nd Russia-India-China (RIC) Trilateral Summit was held in Buenos Aires after a gap of 12 years, on the sidelines of the G-20 summit to discuss cooperation in various areas. The three leaders - Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin - agreed to have regular consultations to jointly promote international and regional peace and stability, to strengthen cooperation through BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) and the East Asia Summit (EAS) mechanisms, to address global challenges such as terrorism and climate change, and to encourage peaceful resolution of all differences.

9. The UK’s Cambridge Dictionary has recently declared "Nomophobia", the word that describes the stress and anxiety caused by being separated from your mobile, as People's Word of the year 2018. The word is defined as the fear or worry at the idea of being without your mobile phone or unable to use it. Based on the results of a popular vote, Nomophobia was chose over the other shortlisted words - 'gender gap', 'ecocide' and 'no-platforming'.

10. In February 2019, India’s first international indigenous film festival will take place in Bhubaneswar, Odisha. The fest is an initiative of activist film collective Video Republic that has been campaigning for indigenous communities in the State. The three-stop event will kick off on February 19 and 20, moving on to Puri from February 21 to 23 to eventually culminate in an interaction with the adivasi communities at Niyamgiri. It will showcase films made by indigenous people or made by non-indigenous filmmakers in collaboration with the indigenous communities. The aim of the fest is to build a platform for indigenous communities from the world over to share, have a dialogue, collaborate and to use cinema as a mode of united assertion, resistance and activism against exploitative forces.


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