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09:55
Insights IAS Current Affairs April 2021 PDF
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Friday, May 14, 2021
Insights IAS Prelims 2021 International Relations PDF
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09:48
Insights IAS Prelims 2021 International Relations PDF
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GS SCORE PIB 1-15 April 2021 PDF Download
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09:43
GS SCORE PIB 1-15 April 2021 PDF Download
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The HINDU Notes – 13th May 2021
aditya
08:35
📰 Most NGOs don’t have SBI account
From April 1, a Delhi account is a mandatory provision to receive foreign funds
•Only 16% registered NGOs have active bank accounts with the State Bank of India’s main branch in Delhi, a compulsory requirement to receive foreign funds from April 1, according to submission made by a non-governmental organisation in the Delhi High Court on Wednesday.
•An Assam-based NGO has also moved the Gauhati High Court against another amended provision of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) that makes Aadhaar mandatory for opening and operating the account in Delhi.
•The Gauhati High Court on May 5 sent a notice to the SBI asking it to explain why Aadhaar was necessary to open a bank account, when in 2018, the Supreme Court in the K.S. Puttaswamy (Aadhaar) case had ruled that mandatorily linking Aadhaar to a bank account “does not satisfy the test of proportionality”.
•According to the amended provisions of the FCRA enacted in September 2020, the NGOs registered under the Act were asked to open a designated bank account at the SBI, Delhi and compulsorily register the Aadhaar details of the chief functionaries, trustees and office-bearers.
•The amendment stated that all the existing FCRA accounts of the NGOs will be linked to the SBI account in Delhi, and while they may not be able to receive fresh foreign funds from April 1 in the existing accounts, they could utilise the money that already exists in the old account.
Pandemic poses hurdles
•Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many NGOs could not complete the stringent paper work, making it impossible for foreign donors to send help during the second wave that has now spread to rural areas. Many said that they did not fulfil the eligibility criteria as they did not possess an Aadhaar card as a “matter of principle”.
•An Andhra Pradesh NGO that had moved the Delhi High Court last week seeking exemption from the March 31 deadline to open an account in Delhi, informed the court on Wednesday that out of the 22,457 NGOs with active FCRA licences, only 3,616 have active bank accounts with the SBI Main Branch, Delhi (NDMB).
•The NGO said that despite applying before March 31, their papers were not processed.
•“The court on Wednesday directed the Ministry to expedite the necessary approvals for opening the petitioners’ New Delhi FCRA account and has listed the matter for compliance in a week’s time,” said Abishek Jebaraj, the NGO’s counsel.
•Three more Andhra NGOs have approached the court with the same plea.
•The Assam NGO said in its petition that it applied for opening of an FCRA account in SBI, Delhi on March 9, before the March 31 deadline, but the application was not processed.
•The Ministry of Home Affairs did not comment on whether the government was considering to extend the March 31 deadline.
•Registered NGOs can receive foreign contribution under five purposes — social, educational, religious, economic and cultural. An FCRA registration is mandatory for NGOs to receive foreign funds. There are 22,591 FCRA-registered NGOs.
📰 Ivermectin used despite WHO advice
Thursday, May 13, 2021
Daily Current Affairs, 13th May 2021
aditya
17:30
1) Hostilities between Israel and Hamas escalated after the air strikes
•The Israeli military has bombarded rockets in different areas in Gaza. It is the most intense airstrikes in Gaza since 2014. Hamas had red hundreds of rockets towards Israel on Monday. After that, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Gaza.
•The Gaza-based Palestinian group, Hamas, had red rockets towards Israel in protest of the clash between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters in the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Al-Aqsa Mosque is located in Jerusalem. It is the third holiest place for Muslims.
2) Care Ratings Projects India’s GDP Forecast to 9.2% for FY22
•The domestic rating agency, Care Ratings, has revised the GDP growth forecast of India for the current fiscal year 2021-2022 (FY22) to 9.2 per cent. This is lower than 10.2 per cent estimated earlier in April 2021.
3) Martin Griffiths appointed new UN Humanitarian Chief
•Veteran British diplomat Martin Griffiths has been appointed as the new Chief at the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), for a period of five years. Griffiths will replace Mark Lowcock as the new Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator (USG/ERC) of OCHA. He is currently serving as the United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen.
4) PESB appoints Arun Kumar Singh as next CMD of BPCL
•The Public Enterprises Selection Board (PESB), the government’s head-hunter, has picked Arun Kumar Singh as the chairman and managing director of state-run oil refining and marketing firm Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL).
•Arun Kumar Singh is currently director, marketing at BPCL and holding additional charge of Director, Refineries. His selection will have to be ratified by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet led by prime minister Narendra Modi.
5) Delhi Police launched vehicle helpline ‘COVI Van’ for senior citizens
•Delhi Police has launched a helpline number for senior citizens who are struggling with their essential needs amid Covid-19. South District Police of the national capital has launched a COVI Van Helpline (012- 26241077) for senior citizens in the neighbourhood amid the coronavirus situation here.
6) HDFC Bank projects India’s GDP growth for FY22 at 10%
•HDFC Bank has cut India’s growth projection to 10 per cent from 11.5 per cent for the current financial year, citing the adverse effect of the second Covid-19 wave. In a worst-case scenario of COVID-19, the bank has predicted the GDP rate to be at 8%.
Wednesday, May 12, 2021
Daily Current Affairs, 12th May 2021
aditya
17:30
1) International Nurses Day observed globally on 12 May
•International Nurse Day is observed globally on 12 May every year. This day is observed to commemorate the birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale. She was also known as Lady with the Lamp. She was the founder of modern nursing and was a British social reformer and statistician.
•The theme of 2021 International Nurses Day is ‘Nurses: A Voice to Lead – A vision for future healthcare’.
2) Indian and Indonesian navies conduct exercise in Arabian sea
•The Indian and Indonesian Navies conducted Passage Exercise (PASSEX) in the southern Arabian Sea with a focus on further improving their interoperability. The exercise was aimed at improving interoperability and understanding between both the friendly navies.
•From the Indian Navy, INS Sharda, an Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV) with a Chetak helicopter participated in the exercise. From the Indonesian Navy, KRI Sultan Hasanudin, a 90m Corvette took part in the exercise.
3) Padmakumar Nair Appointed As CEO Of National Asset Reconstruction Company
•Padmakumar M Nair has been appointed as the CEO of the proposed National Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd. Presently Padmakumar is the Chief General Manager of Stressed Assets Resolution Group at SBI.
4) Nomura Revises GDP Growth Estimate of India in FY22 to 10.8%
•Nomura has cut the GDP growth estimate of India for the current 2021-22 fiscal (FY22) to 10.8 per cent from the earlier projection of 12.6 per cent. The cut in the GDP rate is due to the impact of the second wave-induced lockdowns. Nomura is a Japanese brokerage having its headquarter in Tokyo.
5) Moody’s Projects India’s GDP Forecast for FY22 to 9.3%
•The rating agency Moody’s has cut the gross domestic product (GDP) forecast of India for FY22 (01 April 2021-31 March 2022) to 9.3 per cent. Earlier this rate was projected at 13.7 per cent. The downward revision in GDP estimates is due to the second wave of Covid infections across the country, which have triggered localised lockdowns and mobility curbs.
6) United Nations: India Projected To Grow At 10.1% In 2022
•The United Nations has projected that the Indian economy would grow at 10.1 per cent in the calendar year 2022, nearly double the 5.9 per cent growth forecast for the country in the January report. But cautioned that the growth outlook of 2021 was “highly fragile” as the country was the “new hotbed of the pandemic.”
•The mid-year update said that India will register a 7.5-per cent growth rate in the calendar year 2021, after an estimated contraction of 6.8 per cent in 2020.
7) IREDA conferred with Green Urja Award
•Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency Ltd (IREDA) has been conferred with the “Green Urja Award” for being the Leading Public Institution in the Financing Institution for Renewable Energy this year by the Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC). IREDA gets the award for the pivotal and developmental role it plays in Green Energy Financing.
•Despite the pandemic time, IREDA has ended the year 2020-21 ended on a strong note and disbursed the second-highest (from the date of inception) amount of loan amounting to Rs. 8827 crore, which indicates that IREDA has the ability to translate this problem into an opportunity.
8) Puducherry becomes ‘Har Ghar Jal’ UT
•Puducherry has achieved the target of 100% piped water connection in rural areas under the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM). Earlier, Goa, Telangana and Andaman & Nicobar Islands have provided tap water supply to every rural home under Jal Jeevan Mission. So, Puducherry is the fourth State/UT to provide assured tap water supply to every rural home under Jal Jeevan Mission.
•Jal Jeevan Mission is being implemented in partnership with States/ UTs to provide safe tap water to every rural home by 2024. The State of Punjab and the UTs of Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu have covered over 75% of rural homes with assured tap water supply.
9) Mayflower 400: World’s First Unmanned Vessel To Navigate Across Atlantic
•World’s First Unmanned Vessel named “Mayflower 400” is set to Navigate Across the Atlantic. It has been built by the marine research organization ProMare in collaboration with IBM. It will begin its transatlantic voyage on May 15, 2021, to track aquatic mammals, analyze plastic in the water, and study marine pollution.
The HINDU Notes – 12th May 2021
aditya
13:04
📰 Questions remain on DRDO’s COVID drug
Experts flag lack of published data on performance in human trials, history of drug’s use in cancer cure
•A drug developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and approved by the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) for “emergency use” in those with moderate to severe COVID may soon make its way to hospitals for treating moderate and severely ill patients, but independent experts say that from the information so far available, the drug's utility in COVID care has not been established.
•The lack of published data on its performance in human trials, opaqueness on whether the phase-3 trial objectively evaluated the benefit from, or lack of it, of the drug and the drug's history — of being an unapproved anti-cancer drug and therefore potentially able to harm healthy cells — some of the concerns contributing to the uncertainty, experts told The Hindu.
•2-Deoxy-D-Glucose drug has historically been extensively tested for treating cancer but is so far an unapproved drug.
•The Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS), a lab of the DRDO, in collaboration with Dr Reddy’s Laboratories (DRL), Hyderabad, too has been studying this drug, in the context of radiation therapy for cancer.
•The drug had been tested in trials and was given to Dr Reddy’s Laboratories in 2014 as part of a collaboration, according to Dr. Sudhir Chandna, Additional Director, INMAS, DRDO. The basic mechanism of the drug involves inhibiting glycolysis, or one of the ways in which cells break down glucose for energy. This approach while used to starve and kill cancer cells, could in theory work in inhibiting virus cells too, that were almost entirely dependent on glycolysis for replication.
•Tests at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, last year indicated that the drug demonstrably killed virus cells after which it progressed to trials in people. Dr Reddy's Labs approached a Subject Expert Committee (SEC) of the DCGI for permission to commercially market and furnishing data from a Phase-2 trial to evaluate the optimum dosage of the drug. The SEC, however, recommended a larger Phase-3 trial “with adequate sample size” and “clearly defined” criteria to evaluate if the drug demonstrably cured COVID.
•Dr Reddy's in its application to the SEC for Phase-2 trials in June 2020, noted that while the drug was yet unapproved, it had been tried in 218 clinical trials so far as an anti-cancer drug.
•“Dr Reddy’s believes that this could potentially result in a preferential and disproportionately high accumulation of 2-DG in inflamed lung tissue of COVID-19 patients thereby leading to starvation in the lung cells, which in turn would lead to inhibition of viral replication,” their statement noted.
•Annoucing the success of the drug, a press statement from from the DRDO said: “Clinical trial results have shown that this molecule helps in faster recovery of hospitalised patients and reduces supplemental oxygen dependence. Higher proportion of patients treated with 2-DG showed RT-PCR negative conversion in COVID patients.”
•A “significantly higher proportion” of patients improved symptomatically, were free from supplemental oxygen dependence (42% vs 31% (in those who didn't get the drug) by Day-3 in comparison to SoC, indicating an early relief from oxygen therapy/dependence, the statement noted.
•“Cancer cells depend heavily on glucose for their survival and hence by tagging them with 2DG we can restrict cancer cell growth. Similarly, it can also affect high glucose utilising normal cells like brain cells (neurons) and could cause brain related side effects,” Dr. Cyriac Abby Philips, who specialised in Hepatology and Liver Transplant Medicine, at Rajagiri Hospital in Kerala said in an email.
•He perused the available literature on the drug and observed that the safety profile of the drug was “still questionable” At a dose of 63 mg/kg/day, a clinical trial had observed cardiac side-effects and cast doubt on the feasibility of this drug for further clinical use in cancer patients. The sample size of 220 as mentioned in the CTRI (an ICMR website where all human trials must be registered) was inadequate for assessing safety profile along with efficacy, he noted.
•Dr. Chandna told The Hindu that a detailed publication was due next month. The phase-3 trial having been conducted in 27 hospitals spanning several States, in the middle of a pandemic, meant that data “hadn't been uploaded” from some sites. He, however, said the necessary data had been submitted to the DCGI, based on which the emergency use authorisation had been given. He added that in the set of patients who got the drug, there was “complete recovery” and there was “statistically significant improvement” in those who got the drug.
•A properly conducted trial must be double blinded and the expected outcomes be clearly defined. This wasn't apparent in the trial details, said Dr Sahaj Rathi, Assistant Professor, Hepatology, Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences, New Delhi, India, in an email. “The CTRI website has very limited information. For example, the primary outcome is listed as “efficacy of 2DG as adjunctive therapy”, which is not an outcome. Outcomes are supposed to be objective, and tangible, eg- survival, duration of hospitalisation, proportion of patients requiring mechanical ventilation.”
•In the 1970's, the drug had previously been tried as an antiviral against influenza, as a stimulator for gastric acid secretion and had been experimented with as a lone therapy or an add-on to cancer chemotherapy drugs, he noted. He said that he wouldn't recommend the drug until peer-reviewed phase 2 and phase 3 data was published.
•Rathi described the claimed result, of 42% of patients on the drug improving symptomatically and being free from supplemental oxygen within three days, against 31% who didn't, as needing more substantiation
•“Was this improvement sustained? Did it actually prevent patients from going onto the ventilator? Did it prevent deaths,” were crucial questions that so far lacked answers.
📰 What is happening in Jerusalem?
Insights IAS Prelims 2021 Government Schemes PDF
aditya
09:33
Insights IAS Prelims 2021 Government Schemes PDF
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