Current Affairs - 15 January 2014

Fresh efforts by Italy to release of its marines

The Italian government has resumed the efforts for the release of their marines, who are accused of killing two Kerala fishermen in Indian waters in 2013. Italy has moved the Supreme Court seeking direction to Centre to expedite the proceedings in the case.
According to the Italian government, no chargesheet has been submitted in the case even one year after the order of the apex court. It has pleaded the Supreme Court to discharge the marines in the case due to delay in the proceedings.
The Supreme Court has accepted the plea and is slated to hear it on Monday.
Meanwhile, National Investigation Agency (NIA) has sought sanction to prosecute the two Italian marines – Massimiliano Latorre and Salvatore Girone – under the ‘Suppression of Unlawful Acts Against Safety of Maritime Navigation and Fixed Platforms on Continental Shelf’ Act (SUA), a provision which has only death penalty as punishment.

With the banking sector continuing to struggle with rising bad loans, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance is set to meet later this week to discuss the situation with the finance ministry.
“The meeting is scheduled for January 16 to discuss the issue of gross non-performing assets of banks,” said a person close to the development.
The committee, which is headed by former finance minister and BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, is expected to review the situation and seek reasons behind the jump in bad loans of public sector banks.
As on September 30, 2013, gross non performing assets of banks stood at Rs 2,29,007 crore.
Gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of state-owned lenders stood at Rs 1.92 lakh crore by June 2013 or 3.99 per cent of gross advances, compared to Rs 1.64 lakh crore in March 2013.
Recently, the Reserve Bank of India too had recently highlighted the rising stress from bad loans in the banking sector and warned that failure of even one corporate group could wipe out 60 per cent of the banking system’s capital.
According to RBI data, net NPA of the 26 public sector banks rose to 2.02 per cent during 2012-13 as compared to 1.53 in the previous fiscal.

India's WPI inflation eased to a five-month low of 6.16 percent in December from a 14-month high, helped by a softening in vegetable prices, government data showed on Wednesday.
The wholesale price index's annual rise compared with a 7.0 per cent jump forecast by economists in a Reuters poll. In November, wholesale prices, India's main inflation measure, rose 7.52 per cent, their fastest pace in 14 months.
The reading for October headline inflation was revised to 7.24 per cent from 7.0 per cent.
Food prices rose 13.68 per cent year-on-year last month, much slower than an annual rise of 19.93 per cent in November.
Cooling in food prices slowed down retail inflation to a three-month low of 9.87 percent in December, data showed earlier this week.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is expected to file its reply before the Supreme Court Wednesday in connection with the money laundering cases it has registered in the coal blocks allocation scam.
The apex court had in November last year asked the agency to file its response in this regard on a plea seeking a direction to ED to probe and take action against the accused under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The court had fixed the next date of hearing as January 15.
The agency, according to sources, is expected to inform the court that it has registered nine cases under the said Act and is in the process of going through all the CBI FIRs filed in the coal blocks allocation case. CBI has filed 16 cases in the coal scam.
The central agency is also understood to be looking at possible instances of forex violation in the case. Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for one of the petitioners on whose plea the apex court is monitoring the probe, had submitted that ED and CBI should act simultaneously like they did in 2G scam and contended that the bench should monitor the ED probe also. ED can attach assets and properties of the accused and their business concerns if its investigation shows that they came from “proceeds of crime.”
Source :upscportal