Deen Dayal SPARSH Yojana

• Department of Posts, under Ministry of Communications, has presented scholarship to students under Deen Dayal SPARSH (Scholarship for Promotion of Aptitude & Research in Stamps as a Hobby) Yojana.

• Deen Dayal SPARSH yojana was launched to promote philately.

• Under this annual scholarships of Rs. 6000 is awarded to children of Standard VI to IX having good academic record and also pursuing Philately as a hobby through a competitive selection process in all postal circles

All colour revolution for one-liner

 The following link from Sujit Patel will teach you about various revolution in India. It will be helpful for many other examinations also.

Click here for video

The Nobel Peace Prize 2020 - World Food Programme

The Nobel Peace Prize 2020 has been awarded to the United nation’s World Food Programme (WFP). The programme has been awarded the prize for its efforts to fight the hunger specially in the war zones and conflict affected areas.

World Food Programme

The World Food Programme which was started by the United nations in 1963. It is the world’s largest humanitarian organisation. The programme is aimed at addressing the issue of hunger and provide food security. The programme has assisted around 100 million people in 88 countries in 2019. The assistance has been provide to people who are victims of acute food insecurity and hunger.  The world food program is in line with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals to Eradicating hunger. The primary focus areas of world food programme include climate action disaster risk reduction, Nutrition, gender equality, social protection and sustainable livelihoods.

Important Initiatives by WFP

The organisation started providing nutrition enriched and ready to use therapeutic foods to around 75 countries in 2013.  This was done to tackle malnourishment.

Building blocks program, 2017- To provide money for food assistance. It mainly assisted  Syrian refugees in Jordan.

Purchase for progress (P4P) project 2018- The programme aims to assist small land holding farmers by providing them opportunities to access agricultural market.  The programme mainly focus in African countries.

Take home ration programs and school feeding programs have been launched in 71 countries.

In 2020, organisation have been feeding more than 12 million Yemenis. 80% of the beneficiaries are from areas affected by Houthi rebels.

WFP in India

The world food programme is implementing the Country Strategy Plan for India (2019-23) in India. The plan enables the vulnerable section to meet the minimum nutrition and food requirements in the country.  It is aimed at reducing high risk of malnutrition in adolescent girls, women and children and seeks to improve their nutrition status by 2025.

SVAMITVA Scheme

The scheme was launched by the Ministry of Panchayati Raj. It was launched on the occasion of National Panchayati Raj Day on April 24 2020. The scheme is aimed at providing the ‘record of rights’ to the village household owners in rural areas and issue property cards. The scheme is being implemented across the country for a period of four years that is from 2020-2024 in a phased manner. It targets to cover 6.62 lakh villages.

DARPAN

• The Union Ministry of Communications has launched DARPAN (The Digital Advancement of Rural Post Office for A New India) to improve quality of service, add value to services and achieve financial inclusion of un-banked rural population.
• DARPAN is Information Technology (IT) modernisation project aimed at realising financial inclusion of un-banked rural population. It offers core services to the account holders.

How cyclone ‘Ockhi’ got its name

• The name Ockhi was given by Bangladesh which in Bengali means ‘eye’.
• The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) started the tropical cyclone naming system in 2000. Tropical cyclones are named to provide ease of communication between forecasters and the general public regarding forecasts, watches, and warnings.

All mobile numbers are ten digits. What is the technical reason?

In the world due to technical and user base reasons the mobile numbers at present varied from 10 to 11 digits. Due to technical reasons two countries, UK and China moved to 11 digits in mobile phone numbers. In India all mobile numbers have 10 digits under the government’s National Numbering Plan (NNP).

Whales are air-breathing mammals. However, they die when stranded on a beach for some time. Why?

Most species of whales are very large weighing thousands of pounds and have a brittle and porous skeletal structure.

This is so because in the ocean environment, the water’s buoyancy supports the ‘whale’s enormous weight and the whale is able to swim dive and forage for food

RBI prohibits investments in non-cooperative countries and territories

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has prohibited Indian entities from making direct investments in any entity located in Non-Cooperative Countries and Territories (NCCT) as identified by Financial Action Task Force (FATF). 

POEM (Place Of Effective Management)

To determine the residential status of foreign companies, the Finance Act 2015 introduced the concept of place of effective management or POEM. If a company’s place of effective management is India, it will be treated as an Indian resident and its global income will be taxable in India. 

Antarctica's Ross Sea declared as world’s largest Marine Protected Area

• The world’s largest marine protected area (MPA) has been established in Antarctica’s Ross Sea.

• A 1.55 million km area of the Ross Sea will have special protection from human activities such as commercial fishing.

Electroactive Bandage

• The NASA has developed a new high-tech electroactive bandage that uses electricity to significantly promote healing of injured wounds. 
• The high-tech bandage creates an electric charge to promote the healing process of wounds in space especially in conditions of non-Earth gravity. Need In conditions of non-Earth gravity, human blood displays quite different behaviour from that on Earth. 

Nuclear Suppliers Group

• The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) is a group of nuclear supplier countries that seeks to contribute to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons through the implementation of two sets of Guidelines for nuclear exports and nuclear-related exports.

The Wassenaar Arrangement

• The Wassenaar Arrangement has been established in order to contribute to regional and international security and stability, by promoting transparency and greater responsibility in transfers of conventional arms and dual-use goods and technologies, thus preventing destabilising accumulations. The aim is also to prevent the acquisition of these items by terrorists.

• Participating States seek, through their national policies, to ensure that transfers of these items do not contribute to the development or enhancement of military capabilities which undermine these goals, and are not diverted to support such capabilities.

Tropical Cyclone Naming

Historical Background

• The practice of naming storms (tropical cyclones) began years ago in order to help in the quick identification of storms in warning messages because names are presumed to be far easier to remember than numbers and technical terms. Many agree that appending names to storms makes it easier for the media to report on tropical cyclones, heightens interest in warnings and increases community preparedness.

• Experience shows that the use of short, distinctive given names in written as well as spoken communications is quicker and less subject to error than the older more cumbersome latitude-longitude identification methods. These advantages are especially important in exchanging detailed storm information between hundreds of widely scattered stations, coastal bases, and ships at sea.

UDAY

• Min. of Power has launched Ujwal Discom Assurance Scheme (UDAY)
• India generates surplus power but the practical experience of Indians is that scheduled and unscheduled power cuts are the norm in cities, and the situation in most rural areas is worse.India lags far behind other countries in per capita consumption of power

• The explanation for this situation lies in the state of the state-owned power distribution companies, or discoms, which are responsible for buying electricity from the generation companies and selling them to consumers. The discoms suffer massive transmission and distribution (T&D) losses. Almost 25 per cent of the power is lost, and never gets billed for — double the global average of about 12 per cent.

The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2015

Highlights of the Code

• The Code creates time-bound processes for insolvency resolution of companies and individuals. These processes will be completed within 180 days. If insolvency cannot be resolved, the assets of the borrowers may be sold to repay creditors.

• The resolution processes will be conducted by licensed insolvency professionals (IPs). These IPs will be members of insolvency professional agencies (IPAs). IPAs will also furnish performance bonds equal to the assets of a company under insolvency resolution.

• Information utilities (IUs) will be established to collect, collate and disseminate financial information to facilitate insolvency resolution.

World Radio Day: 13th February

World Radio Day (WRD) is observed globally on 13th February to remember the unique power of radio that touches lives and bring people together across every corner of the globe.

Significance of Day: It marks global celebration of radio as a forum for information and entertainment that helps to bridge communication gap for remote communities and empowering people.

Gravitational Waves

Great excitement rippled through the physics world as astronomers announced that their new US observatory has detected a gravitational wave, a phenomenon Albert Einstein predicted a century ago in his theory of general relativity.

 

What are gravitational waves?

• Gravitational waves are extremely faint ripples in the fabric of space and time that come from some of the most violent events in the universe. In this case, it is from the merger of two black holes 1.3 billion light-years away. The way to think of this is to imagine a mesh net and visualize pulling on its ends. Those kinks are sort of like what a gravitational wave does.

International Solar Aliiance

India and France have launched International Solar Alliance (ISA) at the Conference of Parties (CoP21) Climate Conference in Paris, France. It was jointly by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande in presence UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon.

This alliance includes about 121 countries that supported the declaration on Solar Alliance.

It would play important role in achieving the objective of keeping global warming below 2 degree Celsius.