NuGen Mobility Summit 2019                                                                                                                   

RBI cuts benchmark interest rate again, lowers GDP forecast to 7.2%                                              

In SC, govt. defends electoral bonds                                                                                                       

UAE’s top honour for Modi                                                                                                                       

Time to push for a sustainable food system, say scientists                                                                 

Small tea growers to get app-based training                                                                                          

Study Says Tiny Black Holes May Not Account for Dark Matter                                                         

NuGen Mobility Summit 2019

GS PAPER - 03 SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY - Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, robotics, nano-technology, bio-technology and issues relating to intellectual property rights.

Context :

• The International Centre for Automotive Technology (ICAT) will organize a NuGen Mobility Summit, 2019 at Manesar, NCR from 27th to 29th November 2019.

 NuGen Summit :

• The Summit is being organized in association with SAENIS, SAE INDIA, SAE International, NATRiP, DIMTS, Department of Heavy Industry, Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, SIAM and ACMA.

• Objective :share new ideas,learnings ,global experiences ,innovations and future technology trends for faster adoption, assimilation and development of advanced automotive technologies for a smarter and greener future.

• ICAT Manesar is a division of NATRIP Implementation Society (NATIS) under the Department of Heavy Industries, Government of India.

  • It provides services for testing, validation, design and homologation of all categories of vehicles and has a mission to assist the automotive industry in adopting cutting edge technologies in vehicle evaluation and component development.

Significance of the Summit :

• This event will help in building a platform for bringing together all stakeholders in the automotive industry to understand global advancements in technologies.

                                                                                                                                       Source :- PIB

RBI cuts benchmark interest rate again, lowers GDP forecast to 7.2%

GS PAPER - 02 GOVERNANCE - Statutory, regulatory and various quasi-judicial bodies Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Context :

• The Reserve Bank of India cut the key policy rate by 25 basis points to 6 per cent in order to boost private investments and support domestic growth.

More about the news:

• However, the central bank kept the monetary policy stance unchanged at Neutral due to uncertainty over the monsoon.

• The RBI also revised its Gross Domestic Product(GDP) growth forecast for 2018-19 down to 7.2% from 7.4%.

• The central bank said the output gap remained negative and the domestic economy was facing headwinds, especially on the global front.

• Output gap refers to the difference between the actual output of the economy and its maximum potential.

• The need is to strengthen domestic growth impulses by spurring private investment that has remained sluggish.

                                                                                                                                    Source :- The HIndu

In SC, govt. defends electoral bonds

GS PAPER  - 02 GOVERNANCE - Statutory, regulatory and various quasi-judicial bodies Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation.

Context :

• The Government has opposed in the Supreme Court on the concerns raised by the Election Commission on issuing electoral bonds.

Background :

• The Election Commission of India had filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court. It said that the introduction of electoral bonds and the removal of the cap on corporate funding by the government will have a serious impact on the transparency of political funding.

Government Response :

• Government has defended the electoral bonds scheme in the apex court as

  • Electoral bonds have been introduced to promote transparency in funding and donations received by political parties

  • The scheme envisages building a transparent system of acquiring bonds with validated KYC and an audit trail and

  • The electoral bonds will prompt donors to take the banking route to donate, with their identity captured by the issuing authority. This will ensure transparency and accountability and is a big step towards electoral reform.

• Further, the Government has said that under the old system a massive amount of political donations were made in cash by individuals or corporates using illicit means of funding and unaccounted black money was pumped in for financing elections.

                                                                                                                                     Source :- The Hindu

UAE’s top honour for Modi

GS PAPER - 02 international relations - Bilateral, regional and global groupings and agreements

involving India and/or affecting India's interests

Context :

•  The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has awarded Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the Zayed Medal, the highest civilian award granted by its government.

More about the news:

• The Order of Zayed, awarded to those who contribute to international leadership in strengthening relations with the country.

•  In appreciation of the PM’s efforts in reinforcing the historical and strategic ties with UAE, the UAE President who is also deputy supreme commander of the UAE’s armed forces announced the award.

• The Zayed medal is the highest decoration awarded to kings, presidents and heads of states

• In the past, the honour has been given to leaders of several countries, Previous recipients of the Order of Zayed include Russian President Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, British Queen Elizabeth II, and former Pakistan President Musharraf.

                                                                                                                               Source :- The Hindu

Time to push for a sustainable food system, say scientists

GS PAPER - 02 GOVERNANCE - Issues relating to development and management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education, Human Resources.

Context :

• At a recent event organised in New Delhi, EAT- Lancet Commission has launched Eat-Lancet Report-India.

Eat-Lancet Report-India :

• The Eat-Lancet Report was first launched in Oslo, Norway in January, 2019. Since then the report has been released in over 25 countries.

• The report by EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet and Health advocates the need for sustainable food production to curb the growing adverse impact of food production on environment.

• It proposes scientific targets for what constitutes a healthy diet derived from a sustainable food system.

• While EAT is a science-based global platform for food system transformation, The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is among the world’s oldest, most prestigious, and best known general medical journals.

• The EAT-Lancet Commission’s report, for the first time proposes scientific targets for what constitutes a healthy diet derived from a sustainable food system.

Highlights :

• The Commission delivered the first full scientific review of what constitutes a healthy diet from a sustainable food system, and which actions can support and speed up food system transformation.

• The way food is being produced is causing increased emission of greenhouse gases, depleting fresh water supply, compromising land use, exhausting the nitrogen and phosphorous cycle, and endangering biodiversity.

• The need to find a safe space to provide food security to everyone by 2050 was stressed upon.

• It was highlighted that feeding all the people in India a healthy diet in a sustainable manner without compromising on the ecology and environment is going to be the most important challenge in the coming decades.

• It was opined that if the food system is not fixed, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals cannot be achieved.

• Presenting some key steps required for the ‘great food transformation’, the executive director, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), said: “Taxes on unhealthy foods, subsidies for healthier food options, strong leadership in the public and private sectors and strong civil society movements, is the need of the hour.’’

• As food systems become more formal and organised, food safety threats increase, not decrease. Steps need to be taken to ensure food safety.

                                                                                                                                      Source :- The Hindu

Small tea growers to get app-based training

GS PAPER - 02 GOVERNANCE - Welfare schemes for vulnerable sections of the population by the Centre and States and the performance of these schemes

Context :

• The Indian Tea Association (ITA) is looking at launching a  an app  - TRINITEA initiative that would benefit the small tea growers.

TRINITEA initiative :

• The TRINITEA programme, a collaborative effort of ITA and Solidaridad Asia

• The app will act as a digital training tool for these growers while helping establish traceability for the segment, promoting quality and safe-farm practices.

• Digital traceability has already been established for 2,500 such growers in Assam, West Bengal and the southern States… this will now be gradually extended to 70,000 small tea growers by this year end.

• The app has been launched in association with a global sustainability organisation, Solidaridad.

                                                                                                                                  Source :- Business Line

Study Says Tiny Black Holes May Not Account for Dark Matter

GS PAPER - 03 SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY - Awareness in the field of Space

Context :

• An international research team, including two scientists from the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, has ruled out the possibility of primordial black holes being a major constituent of dark matter.

• The finding also disproves a claim Stephen Hawking had made.

Key Highlights:

• According to the scientists, in our solar system, Mercury takes just 88 days to complete one revolution around the Sun. While, Neptune takes 165 years for the same journey.

• Laws of gravity expect us to see stars closer to the centre of a galaxy go around faster than stars at the edge. However, in most galaxies, both the innermost and outermost stars take almost the same time to complete one revolution.

• It shows that there is something not invisible but enveloping the galaxies and giving bit extra push to the outer stars, and speeding them up.

• This entity has remained as one of the unresolved puzzles in cosmology since the 1930s. It is named as `Dark Matter’.

Hawking's opinion :

• According to Hawking’s hypothesis, black holes could have formed in the early stages of the universe long before the first stars formed. In this era, all matter was free-floating clouds of gas, and some of that gas could have clumped together and collapsed into very small black holes. Because they didn’t form from stars, they might weigh less than a milligram.

• If enough of these tiny black holes formed in the early years of the universe, they could possibly account for most or all of the undetected dark matter.

Primordial Black holes :

• Before this, two Soviet physicists, Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich and Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov, showed that at the initial instant of the big bang, the densities would have been very high at many points, resulting in the formation of small black holes.

• They were named `primordial black holes’.

                                                                                                                           Source :- The Hindu  

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