Prashant Mavani, is an expert in current affairs analysis and holds a MSc in Management from University of Surrey (U.K.). Above all he is a passionate teacher.

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• Chennai is a lower elevation coastal city with global aspirations, and very high population density.

• Chennai’s date with a strong northeast monsoon• Water fortunes of 8m residents of the metropolitan region depend on this weather

system.

• Larger issue: of how the city deals with flood & drought cycles remains unaddressed.• Tamil Nadu, one of India’s most urbanised States, has a poor record in this area, resulting

in fragile slums.

• Scientific management should have ensured the preservation of the many traditional lakes and canals that existed in the city’s core a century ago to absorb the intense downpour of about 1,300 mm of rain, most of it in an annual window of a few weeks. • The finding from one study in 2013 shows that 27 tanks have totally disappeared and

another 400 have lost almost their entire capacity.

• Successive governments have allowed the mindless draining of wetlands and their conversion into expensive real estate, with catastrophic consequences.

• Regrettably: the great flood two years ago, which left many dead and families impoverished, has not yielded a policy course correctionwww.studyiq.com

Solution/s

• Return to the traditional wisdom of creating tanks and lakes for water storage• Harvest the floods and replenish depleted groundwater

• Natural sponges

• Inviting the community to monitor the health of the tanks and lakes can keep out encroachers, who are often protected by patron-politicians.

• Yet, such measures can work only when the deficit of good housing and civic infrastructure is actively addressed. • New housing has mushroomed in Chennai’s suburbs, where municipal

bodies are mired in incompetence and corruption.

• The tendency to treat floods and drought as events to dole out patronage is preventing Chennai from forging robust solutions.

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• Federal Reserve Board Governor Jerome Powell will head the central bank.

• Mr. Powell, who was appointed by President Barack Obama as Fed Governor in 2012 and worked alongside the incumbent Chair, Janet Yellen, over the past five years, will represent policy continuity in the monetary management of the world’s largest economy.• Currently: economic engine ticking over nicely and creating jobs, and the markets

buoyant

• Emerging markets, including India, can heave a small sigh of relief with Mr. Trump’s choice, given the influence the Fed’s interest rate decisions have on global capital flows.

• With other top positions at the central bank to be filled by the President soon, Mr. Powell could end up overseeing a Fed that reflects Mr. Trump’s political leanings as well.

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Special lectures by Study IQ

1) English: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEtoFVc26-Q2) Hindi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT2GfNPwjPU

Vicious Cycle

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• “Quadrilateral” grouping to provide alternative debt financing for countries in the Indo-Pacific.• Japan-proposed, U.S.-endorsed

• Explaining the need to invite other countries into what India has always fiercely guarded as its own turf • Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar was remarkably candid. “Our neighbours also feel

more secure if there is another party in the room,” he said recently, giving examples of working with the U.S. on transmission lines in Nepal or with Japan on a liquefied natural gas pipeline in Sri Lanka.

a) India’s own needs often clash with those of its neighbours.

b) More connectivity will eventually mean more competition

c) For e.g. The case of Bhutan, which is working, with India’s assistance, on its own goal of producing 10,000 MW of hydropower by 2020.

• International Monetary Fund’s world economic outlook had already put Bhutan at the top of South Asia in terms of the highest debt per capita, second only to Japan in all of Asia for indebtedness.

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History of forgetting

• Problem: ‘India’s big game hunting attitude’: “India chases its neighbours to cooperate on various projects and courts us assiduously, but once they have ‘bagged the game’, it forgets about us. As a result, crises grow until they can no longer be ignored, and the hunt begins again.”

• New Delhi has changed its position on Hambantota several times.

• In Nepal, India lost out to China when it allowed a five-month-long blockade at the border, calling for a more inclusive constitution to be implemented by Kathmandu.

• In the case of Myanmar, it lost precious ground in Bangladesh when Mr. Modi refused to mention the Rohingya refugee situation during a visit to Nay Pyi Taw.

• It is important to note that while the government’s new plan to involve the U.S. and Japan in development projects in South Asia will yield the necessary finances, it will come at the cost of India’s leverage in its own backyard.

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• River whose waters and fertile silt have supported the densest populations of humans on earth for millennia is now under threat.

• Half of India’s 1.3 billion people have no access to even primitive toilets

• A recently discovered bacterial gene that can make various diseases highly resistant to antibiotic drugs.• New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDM-I)• Found in the Yamuna River and in the main stream of the

Ganges River.

• Dreadful superbugs that spread among hospital patients, including MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), which can cause death from septicaemia or blood poisoning.

• Religious tourism in this area is spreading the disease in every part of India.

• NDM-I Transported onwards in people’s guts to every part of the world.www.studyiq.com

• So who are the Peranakans?

• The term refers primarily to Chinese who began arriving in the British Straits settlements in the 19th century and married the local Malays. • Sub-categories: ‘Peranakan Arabs’ and ‘Peranakan Indians’.

• Singapore’s ethnic composition — about 70% Chinese, 15% Malays and 9% Indians — does not give much information on the Peranakans, though many, including its first Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, are listed as being of Peranakanancestry.

• It is reported that there are eight lakh Peranakans scattered across the Southeast Asian nations of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

• Mr. Yapp tells us that a visit to a Peranakan household is incomplete without the host serving a complicated range of sweets and singing a song. www.studyiq.com

Princes, Ministers arrested in Saudi Arabia purge

• Saudi Arabia has arrested dozens of senior figures including Princes, Ministers and a top business tycoon, with the authorities on Sunday pledging ‘fair’ justice after a sweeping purge seen as consolidating the Crown Prince’s hold on power.

• The dramatic shake-up comes at a time of unprecedented social and economic transformation in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia, as Prince Mohammed steps up his reform drive for a post-oil era.

• The kingdom's top council of clerics also lauded the anti-corruption efforts as ‘important’, essentially giving religious backing to the crackdown.

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U.P. terror suspect held in Mumbai

• Suspected Islamic State operative, Abu Zaid, 26, was on Saturday night arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) from the Chhatrapati ShivajiMaharaj International Airport in Mumbai for allegedly recruiting potential terrorists from western U.P.

• The Azamgarh resident has been accused of plotting terror attacks in the country and being the ‘main ideologue’ of a group of radicalised youth.

• He had allegedly formed a social media group to radicalise disgruntled youngsters and lure them into the ISIS fold.

• His name cropped up, an ATS spokesperson said, during the investigation of four youths who were arrested in an operation from different parts of the country in April.

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Panel likely to lower GST rates

• The Goods and Services Tax Council may consider lowering tax rates on goods such as handmade furniture, plastic products and daily-use items like shampoo and simplify return filing rules at its meeting this week.

• The Council, headed by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, will meet on November 10 to consider lowering the 28% rate on common-use items, officials said.

• In further relief to small and medium enterprises, the panel is likely to rationalisethe tax rate in sectors where the total incidence of taxation has gone up because the goods were earlier either exempt from excise or attracted lower VAT rates in the previous indirect tax regime

• “A rationalisation of items in the 28% tax bracket is expected. Most of the daily use items could be lowered to 18%.

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Idol Wing CID team busts 22-year-old case in T.N.

• An Idol Wing-CID team attached to the Economic Offence Wing (EOW) has cracked a 22-year-old ‘antique’ idols theft case with the arrest of three persons with links to the international idol smuggler Subash Kapoor.

• Had stolen two idols of Dwara Balagarfrom Munreswaramudaiyar temple, believed to be 1600 years old, at Athalanallur village near Veeravanallur in Tirunelveli district in 1994, and allegedly sold them to Kapoor, who, in turn, channelled the antique idols to the art gallery at Canberra in Australia for Rs 4.98 crore.

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India-Ukraine panel meeting falls through

• A scheduled meeting of the India-Ukraine Inter-Governmental Commission on November 1 was cancelled at the last moment despite all preparations for the event, including a draft protocol agreement on expanding bilateral ties being in place.

• “We are trying to hold the meeting during February,” he said explaining that there was no pressure from any other country, including from Russia, against the meeting.

• Over the last year, India has held detailed talks with Ukraine which is fighting a war with Russia for several years. Russia too has reached out to Pakistan holding military exercise with Pakistani anti terror units.

• During Mr. Klimkin’s visit, a possible role for Indian troops in a multinational peace keeping force to contain warfare between Russia and Ukraine was also discussed.

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India takes up Kenya, U.S. attacks

• External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said here on Sunday that the Kenyanpolice had regretted an incident in which a Kenyan national of Indian origin was killed, and said the Indian High Commission would provide all assistance to the family.

• She also assured all help to the family of a Sikh boy who was allegedly beaten in Washington State in the U.S.

• She offered her condolences to the bereaved family.

• Ms. Swaraj’s response came after she was approached by a netizen on Twitterseeking her help.

• On the U.S. incident, Ms. Swaraj said: “I have received the report from our Consulate in San Francisco. Our consulate is in touch with the community leaders and is also contacting the school authorities. We will provide all help and assistance as per wishes of the family.”

• According to news reports, the 14-year-old Sikh boy was punched and knocked down by his classmate and his father alleged that his son was targeted because he was of Indian descent. www.studyiq.com

PSU banks may get ₹70,000 cr. via recap bonds in four months

• The Finance Ministry may infuse about Rs70,000 crore through recapitalisationbonds in the NPA-hit public sector banks (PSBs) in the next four months, sources said.

• Last month, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced a Rs2.11 lakh crore two-year road map for strengthening public sector banks. • The plan included re-capitalisation bonds of Rs1.35 lakh crore.

• Non-performing assets (NPAs) of public sector banks alone have increased from Rs2.75 lakh crore as on March 2015 to Rs7.33 lakh crore as on June 2017.

• Besides the bonds, the Minister announced banks would get about Rs18,000 crore under Indradhanush plan over the next two years.

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Answers

1. Anamudi

2. Brazil, Horn of Africa and Indonesia

3. R.N. Ravi

Questions

1. Name the first and the only Indian to circumnavigate the whole world.

2. Highlight some child friendly trial procedures under POCSO.

3. International Criminal Court is located at which place?

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