July 16th and 17th Current affairs

1. EXERCISE ‘SHIELD.

IN NEWS:

A Tri Nation Table Top Anti-Narcotics & Maritime Search and Rescue exercise (Exercise Shield) between Maldives National Defence Force, Sri Lanka Navy and Indian Navy was conducted in virtual mode for the first time on 14 and15 Jul 21 with Indian Navy as the lead agency.

The exercise was coordinated by Maritime Warfare Centre (MWC), Mumbai.

KEY POINTS:

• The two day exercise commenced with the opening address by Rear Admiral Gurcharan Singh, Chief Staff Officer (Operations), Western Naval  Command, Mumbai.
• Rear Admiral Prasanna Mahawithana, Director General Operations, Sri Lanka Navy and Colonel Ibrahim Hilmy, Area Commander- Maldives National Defence Force too have participated in inaugural session.
• Anti-Narcotic Operations and Maritime Search and Rescue are the important issues that  were deliberated by the  participants  who share a unique geographic location, sitting astride the major shipping routes of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR).
• The exercise was focused at enhancing maritime security cooperation and mutual understanding, exchange of best practices/procedures for countering common trans-national maritime crimes such as narcotics smuggling, evolving modalities for exchanging information/intelligence and to assist each other in Maritime Search and Rescue.
• All agencies enthusiastically participated in the exercise and shared their experiences and best practices. 

SOURCE:PIB

2. World Youth Skill Day Programme

IN NEWS:

Indian Prime Minister recently addressed World Youth Skill Day Programme.

KEY POINTS:

• Skill development of the new generation is a national need and is the foundation of Aatmnirbhar Bharat
• More than 1.25 crore youth have been trained under ‘Pradhanmantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna’
• India providing smart and skilled man-power solutions to the world should be at the core of our strategy of skilling our youth
• Mission of skilling, re-skilling and up-skilling the youth should go on relentlessly
• Skill India Mission is fulfilling visionary dream of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar by skilling weaker sections.

SOURCE:PIB

3. School Innovation Ambassador Training Program.

IN NEWS:

Union Education Minister and Tribal Affairs Minister will jointly launch the ‘School Innovation Ambassador Training Program’ for 50,000 School Teachers.

KEY POINTS:

• It is innovative and one of its kind training program for School Teachers.
• Aim: Training 50,000 school teachers on Innovation, Entrepreneurship, IPR, Design Thinking, Product development, Idea generation etc.
• The training will be delivered in online mode only.
• Designed by: Innovation Cell of the Ministry of Education and AICTE for School Teachers.
• The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) is a statutory body established by AICTE Act, 1987 for proper planning and co-ordinated development of a technical education system throughout the country and regulation & proper maintenance of norms and standards in the technical education system.

SOURCE:PIB

4. Special Livestock Sector Package.

IN NEWS:

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has approved implementation of a special livestock sector package.

KEY POINTS:

About the Package

• Aim: To boost growth in the livestock sector and thereby making animal husbandry more remunerative to 10 crore farmers engaged in Animal Husbandry Sector.
• The Central government will spend Rs. 9,800 crore on livestock development over the next five years
• All the schemes of the Department will be merged into three broad categories as:
• Development Programmes: It includes Rashtriya Gokul Mission, National Programme for Dairy Development (NPDD), National Livestock Mission (NLM) and Livestock Census and Integrated Sample Survey (LC & ISS) as sub-schemes.
• Disease Control Programme: It is renamed as Livestock Health and Disease Control (LH & DC) which includes the present Livestock Health and Disease Control (LH & DC) scheme and National Animal Disease Control Programme (NADCP).
• Infrastructure Development Fund: it includes the Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development fund (AHIDF), the Dairy Infrastructure Development Fund (DIDF), scheme for support to Dairy Cooperatives and Farmer Producer Organizations engaged in Dairy activities.

SOURCE:TH

5. Amazon Forests: No Longer Carbon Sinks.

IN NEWS:

• According to a recent study, Amazon Forests have started emitting Carbon dioxide (CO2) instead of absorbing it.
• Growing trees and plants have taken up about a quarter of all fossil fuel emissions since 1960, with the Amazon playing a major role as the largest tropical forest.

KEY POINTS:

Findings:

• A significant amount of deforestation (over the course of 40 years) in eastern and southeastern Brazil has turned the forest into a source of CO2 that has the ability to warm the planet.
• It might have also affected a long-term decrease in rainfall and increase in temperatures during the dry season.
• Not only the Amazon rainforests, some forests in Southeast Asia have also turned into carbon sources in the last few years as a result of formation of plantations and fires.
• Forest fires have doubled since 2013. One reason that they happen is when farmers burn their land to clear it for the next crop.
• Most of the emissions are caused by fires.
• A part of the Amazon emitting carbon even without fires was particularly worrying. This was most likely the result of each year’s deforestation and fires making adjacent forests more susceptible the next year.

Reasons for Deforestation:

• State policies that encourage economic development, such as railway and road expansion projects have led to “unintentional deforestation” in the Amazon and Central America.
• Deforestation started in the 1970s and 1980s when large-scale forest conversion for cattle ranching and soy cultivation began.

SOURCE:IE

6. AI Powered Grievance Management Application

IN NEWS:

• Recently, the Defence Minister launched an Artificial Intelligence (AI)- powered grievance management application.
• Earlier, the Chief Justice of India (CJI) launched an AI-based portal ‘SUPACE’ in the judicial system aimed at assisting judges with legal research.

KEY POINTS:

• This project is the first of its kind initiative of the Government for using AI, data science and Machine Learning techniques in grievance redressal. It is a citizen centric reform.
• It has been developed by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) with the help of IIT-Kanpur.
• It will automatically handle and analyse the complaints of the people and thus reduce human intervention, save time and bring more transparency in their disposal.

Significance:

• This application will have great use in understanding the nature of complaints, geographies from where they registered and policy changes which can be introduced to create systemic improvements to address these grievances.
• It marks the introduction of AI-based innovations in governance and administration. The success of this project in MoD will pave the way for extension of this application across other Ministries.
• A large number of complaints are received on the CPGRAMS (Centralized Public Grievances Redress and Monitoring System) portal of DARPG (Department of Administrative Reforms & Public Grievances).
• CPGRAMS enables the citizen to track online the grievance being followed up with the Department concerned and also enables DARPG to monitor the grievance.

SOURCE:PIB

7. Jurisdiction of Krishna & Godavari River boards notified

IN NEWS:

Central Government has notified jurisdiction of Krishna River Management Board (KRMB) & Godavari River Management Boards (GRMB), Seven years after their constitution under Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act.

KEY POINTS:

• With the constitution of boards, Centre transferred operation of all projects, including generation of hydel power, in two river basins in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana to them. It will be in effective from October 14, 2021.
• Notification was issued by Ministry of Jal Shakti (MoJS).
• Notification brought 35 projects in Krishna basin and 71 in Godavari basin, under purview of boards.
• It empowered the boards to operate headworks of barrages, dams, reservoirs, part of canal network, regulating structures, transmission lines and power houses at projects.
• P. and Telangana will deposit Rs 200 crore each to bank account of KRMB within sixty days of publication of notification in order to enable boards to discharge its functions effectively.

Signification of notification

This notification by Ministry of Jal Shakti is significant in light of escalation of dispute between Andhra Pradesh and Telangana with respect to project works and hydel generation at three reservoirs namely, Srisailam, Nagarjuna sagar and Pulichintala.

Dispute between Andhra and Telangana

Andhra has been demanding notification for boards’ purview for long while Telangana has been opposing it claiming that handing over operation of projects without providing clarity on states’ share of water will be meaningless.

SOURCE:TH