VISION

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

GS SCORE Current Affairs July 2021 Week 4 PDF

Weekly Magazines

aditya 08:15

GS SCORE Current Affairs July 2021 Week 4 PDF

Click Here to download GS SCORE Current Affairs July 2021 Week 4 PDF

Click Here to Like our Facebook page for latest updates and free ebooks

THE HINDU NEWSPAPER IMPORTANT ARTICLES 20.07.2021

the hindu articles

aditya 08:09

Click Here to Like our Facebook page for latest updates and free ebooks

Daily Current Affairs, 19th July 2021

vision ias current affairs

aditya 20:25

1) Nelson Mandela International Day celebrated on 18 July

•The United Nations observes 18 July every year as Nelson Mandela International Day. The day acknowledges Nelson Mandela’s contribution to the struggle for democracy internationally and the promotion of a culture of peace throughout the world. Nelson Mandela Day is an occasion for all to take action and inspire change.

2) US, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan to form new quad grouping

•The US, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan have agreed in principle to establish a new quadrilateral diplomatic platform focused on enhancing regional connectivity. The parties consider long-term peace and stability in Afghanistan critical to regional connectivity and agree that peace and regional connectivity are mutually reinforcing.

•Afghanistan’s strategic location has for a long time been touted as a competitive advantage for the country. Afghanistan is bordered by Pakistan to the east and south, Iran to the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan to the north, and China to the northeast.

3) HC of J&K and Ladakh renamed as ‘High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh

•The ‘Common High Court for the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and Union Territory of Ladakh’ has been officially renamed as the ‘High Court of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.’ The order was notified by the Union Ministry of Law and Justice, Department of Justice.

•President Ram Nath Kovind has signed the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Removal of Difficulties) Order, 2021 to effect the change, in the exercise of the powers conferred Section 103 (1) of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019.

•The Lieutenant Governor of Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, the Lieutenant Governor of Ladakh as well as the then Chief Justice of the Common High Court for Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh have conveyed that they have no objection to the proposed change in the name of the High Court.

4) Haryana to introduce ‘One Block, One Product’ scheme

•The Haryana government will soon introduce the ‘One Block, One Product’ scheme, to encourage and promote small industries in the rural areas. Under the scheme, the state government plans to connect every block of the state with some industrial vision and the government is working expeditiously on this scheme.

•Arrangements for common services, lab testing, packaging, transportation, accountancy will be set up in the cluster itself. Haryana’s ‘One District, One Product’ Scheme which is being implemented under MSME, has come up as a model across the country.

5) India’s first monk fruit cultivation exercise begins in HP’s Kullu

•The ‘monk fruit’ from China, which is known for its properties as a non-caloric natural sweetener, was introduced for field trials in Himachal Pradesh by the Palampur-based Council of Scientific Research and Industrial Technology Institute of Himalayan Bio-resource Technology (CSIR-IHBT) in Kullu. The field trials have begun three years after the CSIR-IHBT imported its seeds from China and grew it in the house.

•Fifty seedlings were planted in the fields of progressive farmer Manav Khullar from Raison village for field trials and CSIR-IHBT signed a ‘Material Transfer Agreement’ with Manav. The economic benefits of the new crop are estimated to be between Rs 3 lakh to Rs 3.5 lakh per hectare. The plant prefers mountainous area with an annual mean temperature of about 16–20 °C and humid conditions.

6) 35% of India’s tiger ranges are outside protected areas

•Thirty-five per cent of India’s tiger ranges are outside protected areas and human-animal conflict affects over 75 per cent of the world’s wild cat species, according to a WWF-UNEP report. The report “A Future for All – A necessity for Human-Wildlife Coexistence”, examined rising human-wildlife battle, and has discovered that marine and terrestrial protected areas solely cowl 9.67 per cent globally.

•With most of these protected areas disconnected from one another, many species rely upon human-dominated areas for his or her survival and shared landscapes. Protected areas play a more and more necessary function for the survival of key species similar to giant predators and herbivores. Apart from India’s tigers, 40 per cent of the African lion vary and 70 per cent of the African and Asian elephant ranges fall outside protected areas, finds the report.

7) Google Cloud launches second ‘Cloud Region’ in India

•Google Cloud has announced the launch of its new Cloud Region in Delhi NCR, for customers and the public sector in India and across the Asia Pacific. With the new region, the customers operating in the country will benefit from lower latency and higher performance of their cloud-based workloads and data.

•This new Google Cloud region is the second such in India after Mumbai and the 10th in Asia-Pacific. As the second cloud region, customers are expected to benefit from improved business continuity planning, while maintaining data sovereignty. Totally, 26 Google Cloud regions are present across the world.

8) 2-Indian organisations win UNDP Equator Prize 2021

•Aadhimalai Pazhangudiyinar Producer Company Limited and Snehakunja Trust are among the 10 awardees of the prestigious Equator Prize 2021 for their work in the field of conservation and biodiversity. The UNDP gives a biennial award to recognize community efforts to reduce poverty through the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

About the Aadhimalai Pazhangudiyinar Producer Company Limited:

•Aadhimalai Pazhangudiyinar Producer Company Limited is a 1,700-member cooperative, managed and run entirely by indigenous people from the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in Tamil Nadu and its work in the past eight years has improved livelihood across 147 villages by processing and marketing a diverse range of forest produce and crops.

9) A new book titled ‘The India Story’ by Bimal Jalan

•Former RBI governor Bimal Jalan writes a new book titled ‘The India Story’. The book focuses on India’s economic history and aims to provide lessons for the future of India’s political economy. He traces India’s economic policies from 1991 to 2019 to offer insights on learning from the past, before moving ‘Beyond the Metrics of Economy’ to talk about the role of governance in implementing these policies. He also authored the books ‘India Then and Now’, ‘India Ahead’.

10) India’s Payal Kapadia wins best documentary award in Cannes 2021

•Director Payal Kapadia’s, “A Night of Knowing Nothing” won the Oeil d’or (Golden Eye) award for best documentary at the 74th Cannes Film Festival. The Mumbai-based filmmaker’s first feature bagged the prestigious prize in a formidable field made up of 28 documentaries presented across various sections of the festival. A Night of Knowing Nothing screened as part of the Directors’ Fortnight, a section that runs parallel to the festival.

11) IOA names B K Sinha as Press Attache of India’s Olympic contingent

•Indian Olympic Association has appointed retired IPS officer B K Sinha will perform the dual role of Security as well as Press Attache of the country’s contingent at the Tokyo Games, which begins on July 23. Sinha is a former Haryana DGP and also a recipient of the President’s Police Medal.

•India will be represented by a 228-strong contingent, including 119 athletes, at the Tokyo Olympics, being held under strict health protocols sans spectators in the wake of the raging COVID-19 pandemic.

12) Lewis Hamilton wins British Grand Prix 2021

•Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes-Great Britain), won the British Grand Prix 2021, for a record-extending eighth time. The event was held on July 18, 2021, at the Silverstone Circuit in the United Kingdom. This is the 99th career win of seven times world champion Hamilton and the fourth win of the current season after 10 races. Monaco based Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) stood second. Hamilton’s teammate Valtteri Bottas from Finland, finished third.

13) Bangladesh Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus to get Olympic Laurel

•Bangladeshi Nobel Peace Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus will receive the Olympic Laurel at the Tokyo Games, the second time the trophy will be awarded. Yunus, whose pioneering micro-lender has been hailed for cutting poverty across the globe, will be honoured for “his extensive work in sport for development. The 81-year-old economist-turned-globe-trotting celebrity speaker won the Nobel in 2006. He will be given the award at the Tokyo 2020 opening ceremony on July 23.

The HINDU Notes – 19th July 2021

the hindu notes

aditya 13:44

📰 Midday meals leave a long-lasting impact: study

Lower stunting among children with mothers who had access to free school lunches, shows data from 1993-2016.

•Girls who had access to the free lunches provided at government schools, had children with a higher height-to-age ratio than those who did not, says a new study on the inter-generational benefits of India’s midday meal scheme published in Nature Communications this week.

•Using nationally representative data on cohorts of mothers and their children spanning 23 years, the paper showed that by 2016, the prevalence of stunting was significantly lower in areas where the mid scheme was implemented in 2005.

Pioneering study

•More than one in three Indian children are stunted, or too short for their age, which reflects chronic undernutrition. The fight against stunting has often focussed on boosting nutrition for young children, but nutritionists have long argued that maternal health and well-being is the key to reduce stunting in their offspring. Noting that “interventions to improve maternal height and education must be implemented years before those girls and young women become mothers”, the study has attempted a first-of-its-kind inter-generational analysis of the impacts of a mass feeding programme.

•The paper was authored by a researcher from the University of Washington and economists and nutrition experts at the International Food Policy Research Institute. It found that the midday meal scheme was associated with 13-32% of India’s improvement in height-for-age z-scores (HAZ) between 2006 and 2016.

•The linkages between midday meals and lower stunting in the next generation were stronger in lower socio-economic strata and likely work through women’s education, fertility, and use of health services, said the paper.

Court mandate

•The midday meal scheme was launched in 1995 to provide children in government schools with a free cooked meal with a minimum energy content of 450 kcal, but only 6% of girls aged 6-10 years had benefited from the scheme in 1999. By 2011, with an expansion in budget, and state implementation following a Supreme Court order, coverage had grown to 46%.

•The study tracked nationally representative cohorts of mothers by birth year and socio-economic status to show how exposure to the scheme reduced stunting in their children.

•IFPRI researcher Purnima Menon, one of the authors of the study, said the key takeaway is to “expand and improve school meals now for inter-generational pay-offs not too far down in time.” Tweeting about the study, she said, “Girls in India finish school, get married and have children all in just a few years — so school-based interventions can really help.”

Pandemic setback

•These findings come at a time when the midday meal scheme has effectively been put on hold for the last one and a half years, as schools have been closed since March 2020. Although dry foodgrains or cash transfers have been provided to families instead, food and education advocates have warned that this would not have the same impact as hot cooked meals on the school premises, especially for girl children who face more discrimination at home and are more likely to drop out of school due to the closures.

•The findings of the study exacerbate concerns that the interruptions to schooling and to the midday meal scheme could have even longer term impacts, hurting the nutritional health of the next generation as well.