With around 40 days left for the Civil Services Mains Examination 2018, aspirants should be on their toes covering all the leftover topics and subjects. When it comes to the current affairs preparation, allocating serious time to reading the important updates is somewhat a task for the aspirants, which must not be avoided. In line to help you prepare latest Current Affairs to study for the Civil Services Mains Exam 2018, we have compiled a few here in this article. For more, keep updated with ‘The Hindu’ and other sources of current affairs.
#A Gentle Reminder - You only have approximately 10-12 days of preparation period, for, last whole month should be completely dedicated to Revision. Strictly avoid reading anything new from the static part of the UPSC Syllabus for Civil Services Examination. The only new information that goes to your mind should be current affairs and daily news updates.
- Telecom Commission of India Approves Net Neutrality
- WPI Inflation At 4.5-Year High, Grows 5.77% in June
- Decisions in 28th Meeting of GST Council: Complete Highlights
- 5% GST for the footwear which is originally priced below Rs. 1,000.
- b) Reduction of GST by 5% for imported urea and ethanol sold to oil companies to be blended with petrol and diesel.
- c) A good 12% reduction in the GST rates has been announced for handbags, jewellery box, wooden box for paintings, art-ware of glass, stone endeavour, ornamental framed mirrors and handmade lamps.
- d) Tax rates for the food grinders, mixers, lithium-ion batteries, vacuum cleaners, storage water heaters, hair dryers, hand dryers, paint, varnishes, water cooler, milk cooler, ice cream coolers, perfumes, toilet sprays, etc. which were at a high of 28%, with a drop of 10%, will now be levied a tax of 18% only.
- e) 46 amendments cleared by the GST council will now be passed in Parliament. For traders residing in the states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim, the threshold exemption limit will be increased to Rs. 20 lakhs.
- Bengaluru to get India's first government-run e-waste recycling plant
- Government proposes to overhaul UGC
- Indians money in Swiss banks jumps 50%
- All You Need to Know About The ‘Parker Solar Probe’ | Humanity’s First Visit to A Star
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Approving the much awaited ‘Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) net neutrality recommendations’, the Telecom Commission has come up with the decision of barring service providers from discriminating against internet content and services. It is to be noted that Service Providers, as per their will and interest block, throttle or grant speed access to the users and Net Neutrality will keep a check on broadband providers from favouring their own content and provide consumers with an equal access to web content.
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Wholesale Inflation for India, in the month of June, saw a growth of 5.77%, which as per the Commerce and Industry Ministry’s data is a 4.5 year high. The inflation growth is said to be driven by certain food items and fuel prices. A growth of 4.43% was witnessed in the previous month of May 2018 which is way higher than 0.90% in June 2017. The Wholesale inflation rate is measured by the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) which is a marker for price trends in bulk trading and for the minor sellers.
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In the 28th meeting of the GST Council, held in New Delhi and chaired by Finance Minister Piyush Goyal, tax rates were slashed for more than 50 items, exempting sanitary napkins, Marble Stones, Wooden Deities, Rakhi’s, Stone, and Saal leaves from the GST charges. Apart from these, other highlights of the meetings are as follows –
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Union Minister of Chemicals and fertilisers, Ananth Kumar has announced for the IT Capital of India, Bengaluru to get country’s first government-run e-waste recycling unit. Third highest producer of e-waste in India, Bengaluru alone produces a whopping 92,000 metric tonnes out of the 18.5 lakh metric tonnes e-waste coming from the entire nation according to 2016 figures. Around 70% of this e-waste is said to be computers and its parts while telecommunication equipment only constitutes around 12%. The city is one of the highest producers of this e-waste, Centre decided on sanctioning India’s first government-run e-waste recycling unit and keep up with the ‘Swachh Bharat Drive’. This project will be taken up by the Chemicals and Fertilisers Ministry and is expected to be up and running within coming three to four months.
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University Grants Commission (UGC) is now going to be restructured to the Higher Education Commission of India (HECI), focus of which shall be on the academic quality. The HRD Ministry had proposed to repeal the University Grants Commission Act of 1956 and strip away its funding role. “Just like how the ministry funds all technical institutes like the IITs, NITs and IISERs and the AICTE focuses on maintaining standards, the government can easily take over funding of central universities. We want to downsize the regulator’s role. There won’t be any interference in the management issues of educational institutions,” said a ministry official.
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Post decline in the past three consecutive years, the Indian money in Swiss banks has now risen up to 50 per cent to the CHF (Swiss Franc) 1.02 billion (Rs 7,000 crore) in 2017. These statistics have come from the official annual data released by Swiss National Bank (SNB), the central banking authority of the Alpine nation. As per the report, the total Indian fund with the Swiss banks has risen to 999 million Swiss francs (Rs 6,891 crore) in 2017, while the same held through fiduciaries or wealth managers increased to CHF 16.2 million (Rs 112 crore). These figures stood at CHF 664.8 million and CHF 11 million, respectively, at the end of 2016. Attributing the factors of this jump in the deposits, bankers give some like, the 39% increase in foreign remittances (total of Rs 77,939 crore in 2017-18) under the RBI’s Liberalised Remittance Scheme (under which a resident Indian can remit $250,000 per year). However, Finance Minister Piyush Goyal questioned how all the money in Swiss banks can be termed as illegal, saying that ‘The data that you alluded to will come to us, so how are you assuming that this is black money, or this is an illegal transaction?’.
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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has launched the first ever mission, named ‘Parker Solar Probe’, to touch the ‘Sun’. A small spacecraft, almost the size of a car, will be travelling to the Sun’s atmosphere which is about 4 million miles from the surface. The spacecraft launched aboard a Delta IV-Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, United States of America. The spacecraft is specially designed to face the extreme conditions through a custom heat shield and an autonomous system that helps protect the spacecraft from Sun’s intense light emission, not allowing the coronal material to touch it.
Having read these current affairs updates, we suggest you learn more about the news updates, in detail and make quick notes to remember the factual data. Also, that these are only a few of the lot that you must read from current affairs, so keep in regular touch with sources like ‘the Hindu’ and take Mock Tests to ensure that you score high ranks in India’s prestigious most Civil Services Examination.
