NATIONAL UPDATES:
1. Prime Minister
Modi chaired the 40th PRAGATI Interaction: The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra
Modi has urged infrastructure agencies to map their projects with the water
bodies being constructed under the Amrit Sarovar. Mr Modi stated that this
would be a win-win situation because the material needed for the Amrit Sarovars
could be used by the agencies for public works. The Prime Minister presided
over the 40th edition of PRAGATI, an ICT-based multi-modal platform for
Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation that brings together the Centre
and State governments. Key Points:
a)
Nine agenda items, comprising eight
projects and one programme, were reviewed during the meeting. The total cost of
these eight projects in the 14 states is around 59 thousand 900 million rupees.
b)
Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Karnataka,
Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh,
Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Sikkim are among the states
involved.
c)
Prime Minister Modi also discussed the
‘National Broadband Mission’ programme at the meeting. States and agencies were
asked to use the centralised Gati Shakti Sanchar Portal to ensure that Right of
Way (RoW) applications were processed quickly.
2. Kolkata Becomes First Metro City
to Get Its Biodiversity Register: Kolkata is the first metro city in the
country to prepare a detailed register of biodiversity. Kolkata Municipal
Corporation released the People’s Biodiversity Register (PBR), a document with
details about the floral and faunal varieties in the city as well as its land
use and human activities. The document is prepared by the biodiversity
management committee (BMC) of the civic body under the supervision of the state
biodiversity board and with help from NGOs. Chandigarh and Indore are other
important cities which have prepared the document.
Key points of the report:
a)
The
520-page biodiversity register of Kolkata, a copy of which is with The
Telegraph, has documented 138 species of trees, 26 types of Chinese vegetables,
33 species of medicinal plants and about 100 other plant species.
b)
The
report also documented around 290 animal species, including about 70 species of
butterflies, 47 varieties of fish, 84 varieties of birds and 22 varieties of
mammals, based on the data sourced from 144 wards in the city.
c)
The
report covers hotspots such as the East Kolkata Wetlands and Rabindra Sarobar.
3. Ministry of Education Releases
National Achievement Survey Report (NAS) 2021: The National
Achievement Survey (NAS) report for the 2021 edition has been released.
NAS2021: One of the largest surveys in the world, the National Achievement
Survey (NAS) 2021 was conducted on 12.11.2021 across the country, to identify
the learning gaps & to take remedial measures. The NAS 2021 report cards
for the national, state and district levels have been made available at the official
website “nas.gov.in.” Key points of the report:
a)
NAS
2021 conducted on November 12 last year assessed over 34 lakh students in 1.18
lakh schools at 720 districts across 36 states and Union Territories.
b)
NAS
assesses the health of the school education system in the country by conducting
a comprehensive evaluation survey of children’s learning competencies at
Classes 3, 5, 8 and 10 with a cycle period of three years. It reflects the
overall assessment of the school education system. The last NAS was held in 2017.
c)
NAS
2021 covered both central and state government schools, government-aided
schools and private schools across the country.
d)
The
survey was conducted in 22 languages in Language, Mathematics and EVS for Class
3 and 5; Language, Mathematics, Science and Social Science for Class 8 and
Language, Mathematics, Science, Social Science and English for Class 10.
e)
The
report is based on the performance in all subjects through disaggregation by
gender (female, male), Area (Rural and Urban), Management of schools (Government,
Government aided and Private unaided) and Social Groups (Schedule Caste (SC),
Schedule Tribe (ST), Other Backward Communities (OBC) and General.
4. Param Porul supercomputer
inaugurated at NIT Tiruchirappalli: A supercomputer named Param Porul was
inaugurated at NIT Tiruchirappalli under National Supercomputing Mission (NSM).
The NSM is a joint initiative of the Ministry of Electronics and Information
Technology (MeitY) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST). Param
Porul supercomputing facility is established under phase two of the national
supercomputing mission to facilitate computational research. About the Param
Porul:
a)
The
Param Porul is based on direct contact liquid cooling technology to obtain
high-power usage effectiveness and thereby reducing the operational cost.
Multiple applications from various scientific domains such as Weather and
Climate, Bioinformatics, Computational Chemistry, Molecular Dynamics, Material
Sciences, Computational Fluid Dynamics etc. have been installed on the system
for the benefit of researchers.
b)
The
system is equipped with a mix of CPU nodes, GPU nodes, high memory nodes, high
throughput storage and high-performance Infiniband interconnect to cater for
the computing needs of various scientific and engineering applications.
INTERNATIONAL UPDATES:
1.
Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index 2021: India Ranks 54: The World Economic
Forum’s (WEF) ranked India 54th position (down from 46th in 2019) with a score
of 4.1 in its Travel and Tourism Development Index 2021, but still, India
remains the top performer in South Asia. Japan has topped (1) the global chart
and the bottom position (117) is occupied by the country Chad.
About the WEF’s Travel and Tourism
Development Index 2021:
The WEF’s Travel and Tourism Development Index 2021 is a direct evolution of
the Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index, which has been published
biennially for the past 15 years. The Index assesses 117 economies, based on 5
subindexes, 17 pillars and 112 individual indicators, distributed among the
different pillars.
Countries in the Global Ranking:
|
Rank |
Country |
Score |
|
1 |
Japan |
5.2 |
|
2 |
USA |
5.2 |
|
3 |
Spain |
5.2 |
|
4 |
France |
5.1 |
|
5 |
Germany |
5.1 |
|
54 |
India |
4.1 |
Note: World Economic Forum (WEF) Founder
and Executive Chairman: Klaus Schwab; World Economic Forum (WEF) Headquarters:
Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland; World Economic Forum (WEF) was
established: 1971.
2. Rajesh Bhushan appointed as
chairperson of Committee B at the 75th World Health Assembly: Union Health
Secretary, Rajesh Bhushan has been appointed as the chairperson of the
Committee B at the 75th World Health Assembly (WHA). Committee B primarily
discusses administrative and financial matters of the World Health Organization
(WHO). Each year, the World Health Assembly has a long and complex list of
health challenges and responses to review and the Assembly functions through
two committees — A and B.
About Committee A: Committee A meets
to debate technical and health matters. It has listed critical issues to
discuss during the 75th WHA including pandemic preparedness and response,
amendment in International Health Regulations 2005, WHO work in a health
emergency, Global Strategy for HIV, TB, Viral hepatitis and eradication of
polio, Immunisation agenda 2030, Infection prevention and control and human
resources for health etc.
About Committee B: Committee B will
discuss and prepare a report on many important issues which includes health
conditions in the occupied Palestinian territory including East Jerusalem and
the occupied Syrian Golan, the budget for WHO for the year 2022-23, prevention
of sexual exploitation, WHO reforms Global strategy and plan of action on
public health, innovation and intellectual property, audit report of WHO,
Global strategy and plan of action on public health, innovation and
intellectual property and intergovernmental organizations issues.
OTHER UPDATES:
SPORTS
1. IBA Women’s World
Boxing Championships: Turkey topped medal tally of 2022: The 12th edition of
the 2022 International Boxing Association (IBA) Women’s World Boxing
Championship (WWBC) was held at Başakşehir Youth and Sports Facility, Istanbul,
Turkey. The event saw the participation of 310 Boxers from 73 nations.
Belarusian and Russian boxers were not allowed to compete at the event after a
ban as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Key points:
a)
India for the first time in the past
four years, had won a total medal tally of 3, which includes one Gold and two
Bronze.
b)
The India Boxer Nikhat Zareen( from
Nizamabad, Telangana) won the gold in the flyweight (52kg) division with 5-0
points against Thailand’s Jitpong Jutamas. With this win, she became the fifth
Indian women boxer to win the World Championship.
c)
The other two Indian women boxers
Manisha Moun (from Haryana) and Parveen Hooda(from Haryana) had won the bronze
medals in the 57kg and 63kg categories respectively.
Overall Medal Tally:
|
Rank |
Nation |
Gold |
Silver |
Bronze |
Total |
|
1 |
Turkey |
5 |
0 |
2 |
7 |
|
2 |
Ireland |
2 |
0 |
0 |
2 |
|
3 |
Canada |
1 |
1 |
0 |
2 |
|
4 |
India |
1 |
0 |
2 |
3 |
BANKING AND FINANCE
1. Card-Less Cash Withdrawals stage
across All ATMs set by RBI: All banks have been urged by the Reserve Bank of India
(RBI) to offer consumers the option of Interoperable Card-less Cash Withdrawal
(ICCW) at their ATMs. At their ATMs, all banks, ATM networks, and WLAOs may
offer the option of ICCW. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has
been advised to make Unified Payments Interface (UPI) integration with all
banks and ATM networks as simple as possible. Customer authorization would be
done using UPI, but settlement would be done through the National Financial
Switch (NFS) / ATM networks. The on-us / off-us ICCW transactions shall be
conducted without the imposition of any costs other than those set forth in the
Interchange Fee and Customer Charges Circular in a notification.
Key Points:
a)
Withdrawal
limitations for ICCW transactions will be the same as those for ordinary
on-site and off-site ATM withdrawals. All other instructions regarding the
Harmonisation of Turn Around Time (TAT) and consumer compensation for
unsuccessful transactions will remain in effect, according to the letter.
b)
Currently,
a few banks allow cardless cash withdrawals through ATMs to its customers at
their own ATMs (also known as on-us basis).
c)
In
its monetary policy review meeting in April 2022, the RBI suggested allowing
interoperability in cardless cash withdrawal transactions at all banks’ ATMs
utilising the UPI function.
d)
Cardless
cash withdrawals through ATMs are an allowed mode of transaction offered on a
case-by-case basis by a few institutions in the country for their customers at
their own ATMs.
BUSINESS AND ECONOMY
1. Moody’s cuts
India’s economic growth forecast to 8.8% for 2022: Moody’s Investors Service
slashed India’s economic growth projection to 8.8 per cent for 2022 from 9.1
per cent earlier, citing high inflation. In its update to Global Macro Outlook
2022-23, Moody’s said high-frequency data suggest that the growth momentum from
December quarter 2021 carried through into the first four months this year.
However, the rise in crude oil, food and fertilizer prices will weigh on
household finances and spending in the months ahead. Rate hikes to prevent
energy and food inflation from becoming more generalized will slow the demand
recovery’s momentum.
Strong credit growth,
a large increase in investment intentions announced by the corporate sector,
and a high budget allocation to capital spending by the government indicate
that the investment cycle is strengthening. For 2022 and 2023, it projected
inflation to be around 6.8 per cent and 5.2 per cent, respectively.
DEFENCE
1. GRSE launches
Indian Navy survey vessel ‘INS Nirdeshak’: Nirdeshak, the second of the four
Survey Vessels (Large) (SVL) projects being built by Garden Reach Shipbuilders
and Engineers (GRSE) in collaboration with L&T shipbuilding for the Indian
Navy was launched, at Kattupalli, Chennai. The ship has taken its name from
erstwhile Nirdeshak which was also an Indian Naval Survey ship and was
decommissioned after 32 years of glorious service in December 2014.
Part construction of
three out of four ships of SVL is being undertaken at L&T, Kattupalli as
part of a collaborative approach between GRSE and L&T shipbuilding. This
model of Public-Private Partnership shall be a harbinger of future successful
collaboration for Warship construction in India. The contract for building four
SVL ships was signed between MoD and GRSE, Kolkata on October 30, 2018. The
first of class ship ‘Sandhayak’ was launched in December 2021 at GRSE, Kolkata.
2. 26-year-old
Abhilasha Barak becomes the Indian Army’s first woman combat aviator: Haryana’s
Captain Abhilasha Barak has become the first woman officer to join the Army
Aviation Corps as a combat aviator after successfully completing her training.
She was awarded the coveted wings along with 36 other army pilots by the DG and
Colonel Commandant of Army Aviation in Nashik. She has been assigned to the
second flight of the 2072 Army Aviation Squadron. She was commissioned into the
Indian Army from the Officers Training Academy, Chennai in 2018. Career of
Captain Abhilasha Barak:
1.
Captain Barak is an alumnus of The
Lawrence School, Sanawar. She completed her graduation with B-Tech in
Electronics and Communication Engineering from Delhi Technological University
in 2016 and was placed at Deloitte, USA.
2.
During her attachment with the Corps of
Army Air Defence, she was selected as a Contingent Commander for Presentation
of Colours to Army Air Defence by President Ram Nath Kovind.
3. She attained an ‘A’ grading in the Army Air Defence Young officers course, 75.70 per cent in Air Traffic Management and Air Laws course and passed the promotional exam, Part B, in her first attempt.
No comments:
Post a Comment