Sunday, 26 August 2018

Important Current Affairs 18/8/2018 to 20/08/2018

Short News-
1. ‘Panini Language Laboratory’ has been set up at Mahatma Gandhi Institute (MGI) in Mauritius.

2. HELINA is indigenously developed Helicopter launched Anti-Tank Guided Missile. The Missile is guided by an Infrared Imaging Seeker (IIR) operating in the Lock on Before Launch mode. It is one of the most advanced Anti-Tank Weapons in the world.

3. Exercise Pitch Black 2018 was held at RAAF(Royal Australian Air Force) Base Darwin, Australia. The Indian Air Force for the first time participated with fighter aircraft in Exercise.

4. Exercise Maitree 2018 was held in Thailand.

5. Government of Telangana has launched for the first time Disaster Response Force (DRF) vehicles in the Hyderabad city.

6. Microcystallites - These are a new type of gold in the form of very small crystals developed by researchers from Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bengaluru.The microcystallites were synthesised by decomposing an organic complex containing gold and other ions under controlled conditions.

7. Bru tribes are native  of Mizoram.


THE GLOBAL LIVEABILITY INDEX:
Top 5 cities to live in the world are:
1.Vienna
2.Melbourne
3.Osaka
4.Calgary
5.Sydney
It is the first time that a European city has topped the rankings. only New Delhi and Mumbai could make it to the list with:New Delhi at 112th position,Mumbai at 117th position.

Unified Payments Interface (UPI) 2.0

Launched by - National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

New features will allow users to link their overdraft account to UPI, creation of one-time mandates and pre-authorisation of transactions for payment at later date and checking the invoice sent by merchant prior to making payment.

UPI) is a system developed by the NPCI and the RBI to aid instant transfer of money using a cashless system. Using UPI services, one just requires a smartphone and a banking app to send and receive money instantly or to pay a merchant for retail purchase. In the long run, UPI is likely to replace the current NEFT, RTGS, and IMPS systems as they exist today.

11th World Hindi Conference

Held at Mauritius 2018, held once in three years.

Theme: “Vaishvik Hindi Aur Bharatiy Sanskriti“.

10th World Hindi Conference was held in Bhopal, India in September 2015.

The first World Hindi Conference was held in 1975 in Nagpur, India.

The MEA has also set up the World Hindi Secretariat in Mauritius.

Mauritius
Image result for Mauritius
The capital and largest city is Port Louis. It is a member of the Commonwealth, La Francophonie and the African Union.

Formerly a Dutch colony (1638–1710) and a French colony (1715–1810), Mauritius became a British colonial possession in 1810 and remained so until 1968, the year in which it attained independence..

President -Barlen Vyapoory
Prime Minister -Pravind Jugnauth

Prompt Corrective Action

To ensure that banks don't go bust, RBI has put in place some trigger points to assess, monitor, control and take corrective actions on banks which are weak and troubled. The process or mechanism under which such ac tions are taken is known as Prompt Corrective Action, or PCA. 

Currently, 11 out of a total of 21 state-owned banks are under the RBI’s Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) framework.

भारतीय रिज़र्व बैंक के संशोधित पीसीए फ्रेमवर्क के मुताबिक, नियामक को बैंकों पर कुछ विशेष प्रतिबंध लगाने की अनुमति मिल सकती है जैसे शाखा विस्तार को और लाभांश भुगतान रोकना, बैंक की ऋण सीमा को किसी एक इकाई या क्षेत्र में सीमित करना, एकीकरण, पुनर्निर्माण, बैंक को बंद करना या अनिवार्य कार्रवाई जैसे कि प्रबंधन मुआवजा और निदेशकों की फीस पर प्रतिबंध लगाना शामिल है।

Caspian Sea Agreement

The Caspian Sea is a geopolitical strategic body of water, both in terms of its location and its resources. 

Situated in a transcontinental zone between Europe and Asia, it has historically been a key trade and transit corridor between eastern and western powers.

 

The Supreme Court has accepted the Centre’s proposal to use hologram-based coloured stickers on vehicles

Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR)

Colour Codes:

The Hologram-based sticker of light-blue colour will be used for petrol and CNG-run vehicles.

Sticker of orange colour will be used for diesel-driven vehicles.

 Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) 

 It is the regulator for the securities market in India. It was established in the year 1988.
The Securities and Exchange Board of India was established on April 12, 1992 in accordance with the provisions of the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992.

International Conference on Recent Advances in Food Processing Technology (iCRAFPT)

International Conference on Recent Advances in Food Processing Technology (iCRAFPT) 2018 is being held at Indian Institute of Food Processing Technology, Thanjavur in Tamilnadu.
Theme: Doubling farmers’ income through food processing.

International Nitrogen Initiative

The International Nitrogen Initiative (INI) is an international program, set up in 2003 under sponsorship of the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) and from the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP).

The INI holds a conference once in every three years.

Nitrogen was first discovered and isolated by Scottish physician Daniel Rutherford in 1772.

Nitrogen occurs in all organisms, primarily in amino acids (and thus proteins), in the nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) and in the energy transfer molecule adenosine triphosphate.

The human body contains about 3% nitrogen by mass, the fourth most abundant element in the body after oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen.

The extremely strong triple bond in elemental nitrogen (N≡N), the second strongest bond in any diatomic molecule after carbon monoxide (CO),[2] dominates nitrogen chemistry. This causes difficulty for both organisms and industry in converting N2 into useful compounds, but at the same time means that burning, exploding, or decomposing nitrogen compounds to form nitrogen gas releases large amounts of often useful energy. 

Nitrogen is an essential component of nucleic acids, amino acids and thus proteins, and the energy-carrying molecule adenosine triphosphate and is thus vital to all life on Earth.

Liquid nitrogen is often used as a refrigerant. It is used for storing sperm, eggs and other cells for medical research and reproductive technology. 

It is also used to rapidly freeze foods, helping them to maintain moisture, colour, flavour and texture.

Bhitarkanika sanctuary, Gharials and their conservation-

The Odisha government is setting up a world-class interpretation centre at Dangamal near Bhitarkanika National Park to showcase its efforts in protecting crocodiles and preserving its rich mangrove diversity.

The center will be developed both as a tourist attraction and a place for students to learn about the environment.

The project, which has been approved under the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project, will be taken up at an estimated cost of ₹3 crore.

Conservation:

Schedule 1 species under Indian wildlife act, 1972.
Project Crocodile began in 1975 (Government of India+ United Nations Development Fund + Food and Agriculture Organization) — intensive captive breeding and rearing program.

What is Natrional Park ?

National park is an area which is strictly reserved for the betterment of the wildlife & biodiversity, and where activities like developmental, forestry, poaching, hunting and grazing on cultivation are not permitted. In these parks, even private ownership rights are not allowed. Their boundaries are well marked and circumscribed. In national parks, the emphasis is on the preservation of a single floral or faunal species.

Natrional Park in Orrisa- 
1. Kanger Ghati National Park
2. Simlipal National Park
3. Bhitarkanika National Park

Where Gharials are found in India?

Today small populations of Gharials are present in Son River,Girwa River,the Ganges, Mahanadi river and the Chambal river. National Chambal Sanctuary is the only place in India where a large wild population of India's special crocodilian Gharial is found.

Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) project

The LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) is a massive observatory for detecting cosmic gravitational waves and for carrying out experiments. The objective is to use gravitational-wave observations in astronomical studies.

Gravitational waves 

Gravitational waves are the relic gravitational waves from the early evolution of the universe.  

Much like the Cosmic Micro-wave Background (CMB), which is likely to be the leftover light from the Big Bang, these gravitational waves arise from a large number of random, independent events combining to create a cosmic gravitational wave background.  

The Big Bang is expected to be a prime candidate for the production of the many random processes needed to generate stochastic gravitational waves (and the CMB), and therefore may carry information about the origin and history of the universe.  If these gravitational waves truly originated in the Big Bang, these waves will have been stretched as the universe expanded and they can tell us about the very beginning of the universe—they would have been produced between approximately 10-36 to 10-32 seconds after the Big Bang, whereas the CMB was produced approximately 300,000 years after the Big Bang.  

Efforts to detect the gravitational wave background are ongoing. On 11 February 2016, the LIGO and Virgo collaborations announced the first direct detection and observation of gravitational waves, which took place in September 2015. In this case, two black holes had collided to produce detectable gravitational waves. This is the first step to discovery of the GWB.

In 2017, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish for their role in the detection of gravitational waves.

LIGO- India project:
CONEXT- The Environment Ministry has allowed scientists to test the suitability of land in Maharashtra’s Hingoli district to host the India wing of the ambitious Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) project.

Known as the LIGO-India project, it is piloted by Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and Department of Science and Technology (DST).

The LIGO-India project will be jointly coordinated and executed by three Indian research institutions: the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune and Department of Atomic Energy organisations: Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), Gandhinagar and the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT), Indore.
The project will bring unprecedented opportunities for scientists and engineers to dig deeper into the realm of gravitational wave and take global leadership in this new astronomical frontier.

India urges UN to declare 2018 as 'International Year of Milllets-

International Year of Millets

Firstly we will know that What are Millets?

Millet is a common term to categorize small-seeded grasses that are often termed nutri-cereals or dryland-cereals, and includes sorghum, pearl millet, ragi, small millet, foxtail millet, proso millet, barnyard millet, kodo millet and other millets.

Nutritionally superior to wheat & rice owing to their higher levels of protein with more balanced amino acid profile, crude fiber & minerals such as Iron, Zinc, and Phosphorous, millets can provide nutritional security and act as a shield against nutritional deficiency, especially among children and women.

The anaemia (iron deficiency), B-complex vitamin deficiency, pellagra (niacin deficiency) can be effectively tackled with intake of less expensive but nutritionally rich food grains like millets.

Millets can also help tackle health challenges such as obesity, diabetes and lifestyle problems as they are gluten free, have a low glycemic index and are high in dietary fibre and antioxidants.

What is Gluten?

Gluten is a general name for the proteins found in wheat , Gluten provides no essential nutrients. People with celiac disease have an immune reaction that is triggered by eating gluten. They develop inflammation and damage in their intestinal tracts and other parts of the body when they eat foods containing gluten.

Adapted to low or no purchased inputs and to harsh environment of the semi-arid tropics, they are the backbone for dry land agriculture.

Photo-insensitive & resilient to climate change, millets are hardy, resilient crops that have a low carbon and water footprint, can withstand high temperatures and grow on poor soils with little or no external inputs. In times of climate change they are often the last crop standing and, thus, are a good risk management strategy for resource-poor marginal farmers.


Saturday, 25 August 2018

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation

It is a Eurasian political, economic, and military organisation which was founded in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. 
Founded: 26 April 1996
India and Pakistan joined SCO as full members in June 2017 in Astana, Kazakhstan.

What was in News?
Ans-  SCO Peace Mission Exercise

The 2018 SCO Peace Mission Exercise is being held in Russia. Soldiers from China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, India and Pakistan are participating in the drill.


Sweden launches ‘feminist foreign policy’ manual

Saturday, 18 August 2018

Important Current Affairs 16/8/2018


Maharshi Badrayan Vyas Samman Award:

The Maharshi Badrayan Vyas Samman  is conferred to persons once a year on the Independence Day in recognition of their substantial contribution in the field of –
Sanskrit
Persian
Arabic
Pali
Prakrit
Classical Oriya
Classical Kannada
Classical Telugu
Classical Malayalam

The award introduced in the year 2002, is given to selected young scholars in the age group of 30 to 45 years. It carries a certificate of honour and a onetime cash prize of Rs.1 lakh.

RUCO (Repurpose Used Cooking Oil) initiative


The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) launched RUCO – Repurpose Used Cooking Oil. RUCO is an ecosystem that will enable the collection and conversion of used cooking oil to biodiesel. India is one of the largest consumers of vegetable oil and so has the potential to recover almost 220 crore litre of Used Cooking Oil (UCO) for the production of biodiesel by the year 2022.  Coincidently RUCO in Hindi means stop, and so RUCO will serve as a word of caution to businesses and consumers to step back and stop usage of the cooking oil that has been repeated heated for frying foods.

According to FSSAI regulations, the maximum permissible limits for Total Polar Compounds (TPC) have been set at 25%, beyond which the cooking oil is unsafe for consumption.

TPC is used to measure the quality of oil. The level of TPC increases every time oil is re-heated.

Higher level of TPC in cooking oil leads to health issues like-
Hypertension
Atherosclerosis
Alzheimer’s disease
Liver disease.

FSSAI-

(FSSAI) has been established under Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 which consolidates various acts & orders that have hitherto handled food related issues in various Ministries and Departments.
Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India is the Administrative Ministry for the implementation of FSSAI.

Purpose of Creation –
It was created for laying down science based standards for articles of food and to regulate their manufacture, storage, distribution, sale and import to ensure availability of safe and wholesome food for human consumption.

The Chairperson is in the rank of Secretary to Government of India.


Indian human spaceflight programme

India to launch first manned space mission by 2022: PM Modi

This Mission is called Gaganyaan mission.

After Successful launch of the Gaganyaan mission, India will be the the fourth nation to do so after the United States, Russia and China.

Postal Highway

Postal Highway also called Hulaki Rajmarg runs across the Terai region of Nepal, from Bhadrapur in the east to Dodhara in the west, cutting across the entire width of the country.

It is the Oldest highway in Nepal constructed by Juddha Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana & Padma Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana to aid transportation and facilitate postal services throughout the nation


Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana

Odisha government has launched Biju Swasthya Kalyan Yojana, a health for all scheme, on the occasion of the 72nd Independence Day.

The Scheme will provide Rs. 5 lakh per family per annum for all Secondary and Tertiary Cashless Health Care Assistance. Women beneficiaries can get health cover upto Rs. 7 lakh.
This scheme will benefit 3.5 crore people (70 lakh families) at any govt. and private empanelled hospitals.
All beneficiaries currently enrolled under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), as well as other low-income families, are covered under the BSKY.

Kanyashree scheme

Scheme by – West Bengal

Scheme received the United Nations Public Service Award last year.

By this initiative the girls are being motivated in various ways –

1.Increase in female education and female empowerment.
2.Delaying their marriages until the age of 18.

Parker Solar Probe

Launched by - NASA

This is first time that any mission will reach as close as it seems impossible. The previous closest pass to the Sun was by a probe called Helios 2, which in 1976 came within 43 million km.

This was the first time a NASA spacecraft was named after a living person, honoring physicist Eugene Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.

The goals of the mission are-  
·         Trace the flow of energy that heats the corona and accelerates the solar wind.
·         Determine the structure and dynamics of the magnetic fields at the sources of solar wind.
·         Determine what mechanisms accelerate and transport energetic particles

Corona
The corona is hotter than the surface of the sun. The corona gives rise to the solar wind, a continuous flow of charged particles that permeates the solar system. Unpredictable solar winds cause disturbances in our planet’s magnetic field and can play havoc with communications technology on Earth. Nasa hopes the findings will enable scientists to forecast changes in Earth’s space environment.
Visit for More Info - https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/parker-solar-probe

India’s first genetic bank for wildlife conservation

India has got its first scientific and most modern national wildlife genetic resource bank, located in Hyderabad at the Laboratory for the Conservation of Endangered Species (LaCONES), a research wing of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB).

Key Notes-
The state-of-the-art bank is equipped with sophisticated equipment to preserve the genetic resources that could be utilised to virtually resurrect an animal species in case it goes extinct.

The bank that contains genetic resources of about 250 wildlife species.

The Genetic Resource Bank will store genetic material of Indian species. It will also help in protecting India’s biodiversity and environment.

It is India’s only research facility engaged in conservation and preservation of wildlife and its resources. It was established in 1998 with the help of Central Zoo Authority of India, CSIR and the government of Andhra Pradesh.


The Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT)

Astronomers have used an Indian telescope to discover the most distant radio galaxy ever known, located at a distance of 12 billion light-years. The galaxy, from a time when the universe was only 7% of its current age was found using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in Pune.

Radio galaxies are very rare objects in the universe. They are colossal galaxies with a supermassive black hole in their centre that actively accretes gas and dust from its surroundings.


GMRT  is Located near Pune (narayangaon) in India.

It is operated by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, a part of the Tata Institute of Fundamental ResearchMumbai.

 At the time it was built, it was the world's largest interferometric array offering a baseline of up to 25 kilometres 


Delhi Police gets India’s first all-women SWAT team

Delhi will be the first police force in the country to have an all-women SWAT team.

SWAT - Special Weapons And Tactics

The maximum numbers of members (13) are from Assam and five each from Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Manipur.

Uighurs

They are a Muslim ethnic minority mostly based in China’s Xinjiang province. 

Xinjiang shares borders with Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.


World Congress of Philosophy:

Held - Beijing, China.




Thursday, 16 August 2018

Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi Speeches Important points


Aayuhmaan Bharat
Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Abhiyaan or the National Health Protection Mission (AB-NHPM) Modicare  scheme will be rolled out on September 25, on the occasion of Deen Dayal Upadhyay’s anniversary. 

 The government-sponsored health insurance scheme will provide free coverage of upto Rs 5 lakh per family per year at any government or even empanelled private hospitals all over India.

The International Solar Alliance (ISA –
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched this initiative  at the India Africa Summit, and a meeting of member countries ahead of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in November 2015.

The International Solar Alliance (ISA) is an alliance of countries, most of them being sunshine countries, which lie either completely or partly between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. The primary objective of the alliance is to work for efficient exploitation of solar energy to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. 

Headquartered-  Gwal PahariGurugramHaryanaIndia.

In January 2016, PM Narendra Modi, and the then French President François Hollande jointly laid the foundation stone of the ISA Headquarters and inaugurated the interim Secretariat at the National Institute of Solar Energy (NISE) in Gwal PahariGurugramIndia.

IRNSS – (Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System)

It is also called NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation), India became 5th country to have Navigation System.

First Launch- 1 July 2013 (IRNSS-1A)

Last Launch -12 April 2018

Total Launch- 9 (IRNSS-1I)

Total Group of Satellites- 7 (3 Geostationary + 4 Geosynchronous)

Note- 8th Satellite IRNSS-1H was launched to replace IRNSS-A Failed due to technical glitch.

Other Countries that has owned Navigation System-

USA- --------------------GPS

RUSSIA-----------------GLONASS

EUROPEAN UNION—GALILEO

CHINA-------------------BEIDOU (Regional)

Note- EU Consist of 28 Nations.

NavIC will provide all navigation system to Indian region, and  extending 1,500 km due to this connectivity will increase , that will ease business and also it will help our defence to have look on nearby nations and it will make easy passage Indian Navy over Indian Ocean.

It has both Military and Commercial purpose.

Blue revolution
Blue Revolution, has the vision to achieve economic prosperity of the country and the fishers and fish farmers as well as contribute towards food and nutritional security through full potential utilization of water resources for fisheries development in a sustainable manner, keeping in view the bio-security and environmental concerns.

 Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY)
Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana was launched by Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi on May 1st, 2016 in Ballia, Uttar Pradesh. Under this scheme, 5 Cr LPG connections will be provided to BPL families with a support of Rs.1600 per connection in the next 3 years. Ensuring women’s empowerment, especially in rural India, the connections will be issued in the name of women of the households. Rs. 8000 Cr. has been allocated towards the implementation of the scheme. Identification of the BPL families will be done through Socio Economic Caste Census Data. 

Purpose of this Scheme-
In India there are 24 Crore households and 10 crore households are still out of reach of LPG. The women of Rural areas cooked their food through dung-cakes or wood. Due to this lots of smoke emits and caused pollution, according to WHO Reports smoke inhaled by women from unclean fuel is equivalent to burning 400 cigarettes in an hour. In addition, women and children have to go through the drudgery of collecting firewood.

Conclusion-
The Government is willing to provide all necessary help to poor family through its Scheme. The scheme will benefit to all BPL households in Country.

Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana - Saubhagya

Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana - Saubhagya is to provide energy access to all by last mile connectivity and electricity connections to all remaining un-electrified households in rural as well as urban areas to achieve universal household electrification in the country.

The Prime Minister, launched the Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana - Saubhagya, at Deendayal Urja Bhawan, in New Delhi on September 25, 2017

Purpose-

In rural areas ,  still today the electricity is not reached , due to this the Education and health is compromising , kerosene is still burning still in some rural areas, it is causing pollution and not quality of light. So to get rid Off  this problem government is running this programme to electrify all India in  upcoming years with a target by 2019.