Daily CURRENT AFFAIRS

Daily Current Affair - UPSC/KAS Exams - 26th Oct 2021

What is in news : The Karnataka Religious Structures (Protection) Act, which was passed in the state assembly in September, has come into effect following the assent of Governor.

About :

• Aim - Protection of religious constructions on a public place constructed before the date of commencement of this Act, in order to protect communal harmony and not hurt the religious sentiments of the public
• Defines an illegal religious structure as a “temple, church, mosque, gurudwara, Bodh vihar, Majar etc, constructed on a public place without authority of law
• No religious structure and construction shall be allowed by the state government or any local authority in future on a public place
• No suit, prosecution or other legal proceedings shall lie against the state government or any officer or other employees of the state government for anything which is done in good faith or intended to be done

SOCIAL ISSUES

What is in news : Govt panel chaired by Union Education Minister is all set  to oversee NIPUN Bharat progress

Details :

• The Centre’s NIPUN Bharat mission, aimed at equipping every child till class 3 with basic comprehension and mathematical skills, received a push with the Ministry of Education setting up a national steering committee to oversee its progress and provide policy-level guidance.
• The members include education secretaries of UP, Gujarat, Karnataka and Sikkim, and the Union school education secretary and NCERT director.

About NIPUN

• Initiative of the Ministry of Education.
• Implemented by the Department of School Education and Literacy.
• Target: Ensuring that every child in the country necessarily attains foundational literacy and numeracy by the end of Grade 3, by 2026-27.
• Cover the learning needs of children in the age group of 3 to 9 years.
• Implementation: A five-tier implementation mechanism will be set up at the National- State- District- Block- School level in all States and UTs, under the aegis of the centrally sponsored scheme of Samagra Shiksha.
• Key components and expected outcomes of NIPUN Bharat Mission:
  • Foundational skills enable to keep children in class thereby reducing the dropouts and improve transition rate from primary to upper primary and secondary stages.
  • Activity based learning and a conducive learning environment will improve the quality of education.
  • Innovative pedagogies such as toy-based and experiential learning will be used in classroom transactions thereby making learning a joyful and engaging activity.
  • Intensive capacity building of teachers will make them empowered and provide greater autonomy for choosing the pedagogy.

What is in news : Prime Minister is set to inaugurate Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission , what is being touted as “India’s largest scheme to scale-up health infrastructure”.

About :

• Aim - Ensuring a robust public health infrastructure in both urban and rural areas, capable of responding to public health emergencies or disease outbreak.
• Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission, an addition to the National Health Mission, will provide support to 17,788 rural Health and Wellness Centres in 10 ‘high focus’ states and establish 11,024 urban Health and Wellness Centres across the country.
• Mission’s objective - fill critical gaps in public health infrastructure, especially in critical care facilities and primary care in both the urban and rural areas.
• It will ensure access to critical care services in all districts of the country with over five lakh population through ‘Exclusive Critical Care Hospital Blocks’. The remaining districts will be covered through referral services, giving people access to “a full range of diagnostic services” through a network of laboratories across the country.
• Also aims to establish an IT-enabled disease surveillance system through a network of surveillance laboratories at block, district, regional and national levels.
• All the public health labs will be connected through the Integrated Health Information Portal, which will be expanded to all states and UTs.
• In light of the coronavirus pandemic, the mission aims at ensuring a robust system for “detecting, investigating, preventing, and combating public health emergencies and disease outbreaks”. For this, 17 new public health units will be set up, while the 33 existing public health units will be strengthened. It will also train frontline and healthcare workers to respond to public health emergencies effectively.
• Apart from this, the mission will set up other infrastructure, including a national institution for one health, four national institutes for virology, a regional research platform for WHO’s South East Asia region, nine biosafety level-III laboratories, and five regional centres for disease control.

What is in news : With an aim to “speed-up” the process of clearing the Ghazipur landfill site, the East Delhi Municipal Corporation on Monday passed a proposal to implement the bio-mining of “50 lakh tonnes” of legacy waste.

MAHITI FOR PRELIMS

BIOMINING

• What -  extraction of minerals from ores by using microorganisms.
• The microorganisms actually facilitate the extraction of metals from sulfide or iron-containing ores.  
• Process is involved in biomining and it is a combination of microbiology and chemistry.
• Common metals: Metals for which this technique is employed included Copper, Nickel, Zinc, Uranium, Gold and Silver
• Bioremediation is the use of microorganisms (bacteria and fungi) to degrade the environmental contaminants into less toxic or nontoxic forms
• Methods of biomining
  • Bioleaching: Low-grade ore is dumped into a heap called leach pile and then soaked with a weak sulfuric acid wash. Then acid reacts with the ores sulfide matrix and encourages the growth of bacterial strain which starts to degrade ore and releases minerals or metals in fluid form.
  • Bio-oxidation: it is widely used for the extraction of gold from ores. This process involves exposing the ore to bacterial oxidation which degrades the insoluble pyrite and arsenic components as it is a precious metal only removal of interfering metal sulfides from ore. Actually, bio-oxidation leaves metal in solid phase and solution is discarded.

What is in news : Drug price regulator National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) said it has fixed the ceiling prices for 12 anti-diabetic generic medicines, including glimepiride tablets, glucose injection and intermediate acting insulin solution.

About : Antidiabetic agents refer to all the different types of medicine involved in the treatment of diabetes. All these agents aim to reduce blood sugar levels to an acceptable range (called achieving normoglycemia) and relieve symptoms of diabetes such as thirst, excessive urination, and ketoacidosis (a serious complication of diabetes that occurs when the body cannot use glucose as a fuel source). Antidiabetic agents also prevent the development of, or slow the progression of, long-term complications of the disease, such as nephropathy (kidney disease), neuropathy (nerve damage), and retinopathy (damage to the retina of the eye).

About National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority

• Organization of the Government of India
• Established, inter alia, to fix/ revise the prices of controlled bulk drugs and formulations and to enforce prices and availability of the medicines in the country, under the Drugs (Prices Control) Order, 1995.
• Entrusted with the task of recovering amounts overcharged by manufacturers for the controlled drugs from the consumers.
• Monitors the prices of decontrolled drugs in order to keep them at reasonable levels.

Functions of National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority

• Implement and enforce the provisions of the Drugs (Prices Control) Order in accordance with the powers delegated to it.
• Deal with all legal matters arising out of the decisions of the Authority;
• Monitor the availability of drugs, identify shortages, if any, and to take remedial steps;
• Collect/ maintain data on production, exports and imports, market share of individual companies, profitability of companies etc, for bulk drugs and formulations;
• Undertake and/ or sponsor relevant studies in respect of pricing of drugs/ pharmaceuticals;
• Recruit/ appoint the officers and other staff members of the Authority, as per rules and procedures laid down by the Government;
• Render advice to the Central Government on changes/ revisions in the drug policy;
• Render assistance to the Central Government in the parliamentary matters relating to the drug pricing.

What is in news : The Supreme Court directed the Supervisory Committee to take an immediate and firm decision on the maximum water level that can be maintained at Mullaperiyar dam

Details :

• Kerala said the water level should not go above 139 feet, the same as what the court had ordered on August 24, 2018, when the State was hit by floods.
• Inflow into the reservoir was 2,220 cusecs, and the outflow was 2,200 cusecs.
• As regards Kerala’s contention not to raise the water level beyond 139 feet, Supreme Court had, in judgments in 2006 and 2014, fixed the maximum water level at 142 feet.
• The court asked officials of Kerala and Tamil Nadu to interact responsibly and avert any danger to lives.

MULLAPERIYAR DAM CRISIS

• The dam is located on the confluence of the Mullayar and Periyar rivers in Kerala’s Idukki district.
• Although the dam is located in Kerala, it is operated by Tamil Nadu following an 1886 lease indenture for 999 years (the Periyar Lake Lease Agreement) that was signed between the Maharaja of Travancore and the Secretary of State for India for the Periyar Irrigation works.
• Constructed between 1887 and 1895, the dam redirected the river to flow towards the Bay of Bengal, instead of the Arabian Sea and provide water to the arid rain region of Madurai in Madras Presidency.
• The lease agreement was renewed in the 1970s by both Tamil Nadu and Kerala giving the former rights to the land and water from the dam, besides the authority to develop hydropower projects at the site. In return, Kerala would receive rent from Tamil Nadu.
• The first cracks in this agreement surfaced in 1979 when a minor earthquake had resulted in cracks in the dam.
• The Central Water Commission, under the Government of India, conducted a study and recommended lowering the water stored in the dam’s reservoir to 136 feet from 142 feet.
• If definitive measures were implemented, only then could the Tamil Nadu administration raise water levels to the dam’s full capacity of 152 feet.

HISTORY – ART - CULTURE

What is in news : On the banks of the Sarayu in Ayodhya, acres of green space, mostly known as Ram Katha Park, have been through a major beautification exercise. Once inaugurated on November 4, the spruced-up space will be known as Queen Heo Hwang-ok Memorial Park, after a Korean queen believed to have had Indian roots

Who was Queen Heo Hwang-ok:

• She was a Korean queen
• Believed to have been born Princess Suriratna of Ayodhya, daughter of King Padmasen and Indumati.
• Padmasen ruled the ancient kingdom of Kausala, a region that extended from present-day UP to Odisha.
• Her story is described in Samguk Yusa (Memorabilia of Three Kingdoms), a 13th-century collection of legends, folktales and history of Korea’s three kingdoms — Goguryeo, Baekje and Silla — and some other regions.
• In 48 BC, the princess, then 16, travelled to Korea from the ancient land of ‘Ayuta’ and married Kim Suro, founder and King of Geumgwan Gaya in south-eastern Korea. She travelled by boat along with an entourage, having been sent by her father, who is said to have had a dream about her marrying Suro. She became the first queen of Geumgwan Gaya, believed to be located around modern-day Gimhae city in Southern Gyeonsang province. The couple are said to have had 12 children.

What led to setting up the memorial park in Ayodhya :

• In 2000, India and South Korea signed an agreement to develop Ayodhya and Gimhae as sister cities.
• The memorial space was unveiled in 2001.
• In 2016, a proposal was sent by a South Korean delegation to refurbish the existing memorial.
• The memorial now comprises Queen and King pavilions with their busts in place, and a pond to represent Princess Suriratna’s journey. According to the legend, the princess had taken a golden egg to Korea, and the park includes an egg made of granite.

What is in news : Prem Bhatia awards for journalism was recently presented

About the awards

• The Prem Bhatia Memorial Trust confers the awards for outstanding journalism.
• The trust had instituted the awards in 1995 in the memory of journalist Prem Bhatia, who died that year.
• The main objective of the Trust is to propagate the values that Prem Bhatia stood for: objective reporting, fearless pursuit of the truth and a commitment to improving the standards of journalism in India

Who won in 2021

• The team of Dainik Bhaskar, which had extensively covered the under-reporting of Covid-19 deaths in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat, has won the Prem Bhatia Award for outstanding political reporting.
• Vaishnavi Rathore of The Bastion digital magazine won the environmental and developmental reporting award for her “wide-ranging coverage of environmental degradation issues and displacement of Adivasis”
• Former winners of the award include The Indian Express Executive Editors P Vaidyanathan Iyer and Ritu Sarin, Dipankar Ghose and Sankarshan Thakur

INTERNATIONAL ISSUES

What is in news : The Center for Strategic and International Studies notes that hunger in Afghanistan has increased substantially since 2014 due to major droughts, floods and economic and security challenges.

About :

• There are various reasons because of which the WFP has sounded an alarm. These factors include the COVID-19 pandemic, drought and conflict, which have severely affected people’s ability to access food in the country.
• In October, Nikkei Asia reported that food prices are spiralling in Afghanistan as the local currency’s value is falling and imports from Pakistan–from which Afghanistan imports the highest share of food products–have fallen. Other countries from which Pakistan imports food products are India, South Korea, UAE, Turkey and Iran.
• The food shipments from Pakistan to Afghanistan have fallen because the Taliban have limited weekly bank withdrawals to about $200 or 20,000 Afghanis (roughly Rs. 17,000).

Is food insecurity in Afghanistan recent :

• Food insecurity in Afghanistan is not a recent reality, the country has been food insecure for a few years now.
• A 2007 USAID report on the food security situation in Afghanistan referred to a 2005 National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (NRVA) which summarised the food situation in the country as follows, “At the household level, food insecurity in Afghanistan is largely caused by inadequate access to food resulting from low household incomes.
• In fact, a 2010 UN report said that “Poverty actually kills more Afghans than those who die as a direct result of the armed conflict either accidental, nor inevitable; it is both a cause and a consequence of a massive human rights deficit.
• According to a joint report published by the World Bank and the Afghanistan Government, as of 2018, agriculture has traditionally dominated Afghanistan’s economy and contributed towards a large share of its growth. Further, about 70 percent of Afghans live and work in rural areas, mostly on farms and about 61 percent of all households derive their income from agriculture. One of the key findings of the report was that the crop agriculture sub sector was not diversified enough and was overly concentrated on wheat. Further, while agriculture represented a high share of workers, their share of income was low because of limited market participation and a high number of unpaid family workers.

On the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, museum scientists have discovered 28 new species of beetles. The species, all of which measure 2-3 mm, are described in the journal Zookeys. One of them has been named Trigonopterus corona. This reflects the large impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on this project

Dyscalculia : It is a math learning disorder that makes mathematical reasoning and computation difficult, in spite of adequate education, average or greater intelligence, and proper motivation.