VISION

Monday, January 18, 2021

Daily Current Affairs, 18th January 2021

1) NDRF Celebrates its 16th Raising Day

•The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) celebrated its 16th Raising Day on 18th January. National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), a specialized multi-skilled, humanitarian force of the country, came into existence on January 19th, 2006 has been playing a vital role in Disaster Management and Community awareness for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in the country.

•The NDRF has earned good name and fame nationally and internationally with its selfless service and unmatched professionalism in disaster management. NDRF has saved more than One lakh lives in its 3100 operations and rescued/evacuated over 6.7 lakh people during disasters.

2) PM Modi flags off 8 trains connecting Statue of Unity

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has flagged off eight trains connecting the Statue of Unity in Kevadiya, Gujarat with different regions of the country through video conferencing. PM Modi informed that it was the first time in history that so many trains from different locations were flagged off for a common destination.

The eight trains flagged off will connect Kevadiya with

•Varanasi,

•Dadar,

•Ahmedabad,

•Hazrat

•Nizamuddin,

•Rewa,

•Chennai, and

•Pratapnagar.

PM also inaugurated other railway projects in Kevadiya, including Dabhoi-Chandid gauge converted broad gauge rail line, Chandod-Kevadiya new broad gauge rail line, Pratapnagar-Kevadiya newly electrified section, and new station buildings of Dabhoi Junction, Chandod and Kevadiya.

3) PM Modi launches Rs 1,000-crore ‘Startup India Seed Fund’

•Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched Rs 1,000-crore ‘Startup India Seed Fund’ on 16 January 2021, while addressing the ‘Prarambh: Startup India International Summit’ 2021. This initiative will help in setting up new startups and promote their growth.

4) Petroleum Ministry launches ‘SAKSHAM’ campaign

•The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has launched a month-long mass awareness campaign titled ‘SAKSHAM’ to spread awareness about green and clean energy. The campaign has been organised by the Petroleum Conservation Research Association (PCRA), to motivate consumers to switch to cleaner fuels and bring in behavioural change to use fossil fuel intelligently. The campaign will spread awareness about seven key drivers that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had recently mentioned.

5) Kerala Governor launches ‘One School One IAS’ scheme

•Kerala Governor Arif Mohammad Khan has inaugurated the ‘OneSchool One IAS’ scheme which has been rolled out under the Vedhik Erudite Foundations Scholarship Programme. According to a notification released an institution considered by top academics and retired IAS and IPS officers in the state is conducting the programme which seeks to refute the general notion that the civil service is for the elite class only.

6) NASA targets final test of ‘world’s most powerful rocket’

•The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is looking to carry out the eighth and final test in its “Green Run” test series. This eighth stage termed “hot fire,” will bring to an end a series of tests which, NASA says, will gradually bring together the core stage of the Space Launch System (SLS) to life for the very first time. The core stage of the SLS will form the backbone of what NASA says will be the “most powerful rocket in the world” and will power its next-generation human Moon Missions.

•The stage will then be assembled with the other parts of the rocket and NASA’s Orion spacecraft for Artemis I, which will be the first integrated flight of Orion-SLS and the first under the Artemis programme, under which NASA will take the first woman and the next man to Moon, by 2024.

7) US designates UAE, Bahrain as ‘Major Strategic Partners’

•The United States has recently designated the Kingdom of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as the “major strategic partners” of the country. This has been announced before the formal transition of the president’s office from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. This announcement of “major strategic partners” was done by Kayleigh McEnany, the White House Press Secretary.

8) Pakistan Permits Dubai Royals to Hunt ‘Houbara bustard’

•Pakistan has issued special permission to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, the Dubai Ruler; the crown prince, and 5 members of the royal family for hunting houbara bustard during the 2020-21 hunting season. After the permission, 11 members of the United Arab Emirates’ royal family reached the Panjgur district in Balochistan, Pakistan for hunting the highly vulnerable and internationally protected houbara bustard under Pakistan’s foreign ministry license.

•This is not the 1st time that Pakistan has allowed royals from the Gulf for hunting houbara bustard. Such hunting expeditions have been for four decades and have continued even the Supreme Court of Pakistan imposed a blanket ban on the killing of the houbara bustard in the year 2015.

9) Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw selected as one of USIBC vice-chair

The US-India Business Council (USIBC) has selected three top corporate leaders as the Vice-Chairs of 2021 Global Board of Directors of USIBC with immediate effect. The three new appointees will now work with USIBC President Nisha Biswal and the Council’s policy directors, for strengthening US-India commercial relationship for the future.

The three newly appointed VCs are

•Biocon Executive Chairperson: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw.

•Amway CEO: Milind Pant.

•Vice-chair at Nasdaq: Edward Knight.

USIBC has strengthened its leadership team as it plans to work with the new Joe Biden-led US administration. The Council advocates for strengthening US-India commercial relationship for the future. The vice-chairs will work to amplify the voice of the industry on international trade and investment issues and emphasise the key role that businesses can play in strengthening democratic institutions and combatting the global pandemic.

10) Biswajit Chatterjee conferred ‘Indian Personality of the Year’ award at IFFI

•Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Prakash Javadekar announced veteran actor, director and singer Biswajit Chatterjee as the recipient of the ‘Indian Personality of the Year’ award. The 84-year-old actor is known for featuring in films like “Bees Saal Baad”, “Night In London” and “April Fool”.

•Chatterjee started his career in the late 1950s and went on to work in films like “Biwi Aur Makan”, “Sagaai”, “Kohra” among others. In 1975, he directed and produced “Kahte Hain Mujhko Raja”, featuring himself along with Dharmendra, Hema Malini and Rekha.

•The honour aims to celebrate film personalities for their exemplary contribution to cinema. During Javadekar’s address, he also made a strong pitch for the film industry as well as other private companies to start participating in the annual festival from its next edition.

11) Ramchandra Guha’s latest book ‘The Commonwealth of Cricket’

•Ramchandra Guha’s latest book ‘The Commonwealth of Cricket’ would be launching virtually in the Tata Literature Live (The Mumbai Lit fest) this month. His latest book juxtaposes his life with his abiding love for the game & this conversation could not come at a better time with India and Australia in the midst of an enthralling test series.

12) India’s first COVID-19 Vaccine recipient is Manish Kumar

•Manish Kumar, a sanitation worker in Delhi, became the first person to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in India after PM Modi flagged off the nationwide vaccination drive on 16 January 2021. Manish Kumar was given the injection at AIIMS in Delhi while Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan was also present.

•PM Modi launched the nationwide vaccine drive via videoconferencing and congratulated the people of India on getting two Made in India vaccines. India’s vaccination programme is based on a very important principle that those who are in need of the vaccine will get vaccinated first. Our doctors, nurses, medical & paramedical staff, sanitation workers in hospitals – be it private or hospital are entitled to get vaccinated. This will be done on priority.

The HINDU Notes – 18th January 2021

the hindu notes

vision cse 13:09

📰 10% of CSIR staff exposed to COVID-19, survey finds

Research suggests smoking, vegetarianism could be ‘protective’ against infection

•A first of its kind pan-India survey tracking about 10,000 employees of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) on the prevalence of COVID-19 found that nearly 10% of the staff were infected. Key neutralising antibodies that protect against the virus waned after infection but were at “detectable levels” even after six months — a proxy for the period of effectiveness of future vaccination and general immunity, the serology survey found.

•About three-fourths of the respondents could not recall having experienced a single one of the symptoms commonly associated with the disease, and a vegetarian diet as well as smoking appeared to be “protective” against the infection.

•The CSIR has about 40 labs across the country in nearly every State and its staff — from scientific staff to contractual employees — is a microcosm of India, Shantanu Sengupta, Scientist at the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB), among the corresponding authors of the study, told The Hindu. “This is a first of its kind longitudinal study anywhere in the world in that we are tracking a cohort over time and will continue to do so. Some of the associations, of smoking and vegetarianism, are significant but we can now only speculate on why this is so but we don’t yet have a cause,” he said in a phone conversation.

•An association between smoking and protection against SARS-CoV-2 has also been reported in studies in China and France. CSIR staff and family members who volunteered to be part of the survey filled out questionnaires on their lifestyle, food and disease histories. They were also tested with two different kinds of antibody tests to study the kinds of antibodies that were produced following infection. It usually takes a week to a fortnight after being infected for antibodies to be detected in the blood.

•If the prevalence in the CSIR were a proxy to the true scale of exposure to the virus, then it is likely that over 100 million persons in India had been infected and had recovered by September 2020. “Probably 2-3x (or 200-300 million) of that by now. Not surprised therefore that India has had a quiet 2021 compared to the world,” Dr. Anurag Agrawal, Director, CSIR-IGIB and a co-author of the study, tweeted.

•A serology survey by the Indian Council of Medical Research has estimated 7% exposure to SARS-CoV-2 until mid-August, and a modelling exercise by the National Supermodel Committee estimated that 30% may have been exposed by September.

•The study, which has been submitted to a peer reviewed journal for peer review but available as a pre-print on MedrXiv, also revealed a distinct class bias in those affected. Those able to work from home and able to access private transport were nearly twice less likely to be exposed to the virus than “outsourced staff” involved with sanitation and security and using public transport.

•“Higher sero-prevalence among outsourced staff and public transport users in our cohort is more likely to be representative of general population of cities and towns that are part of the cohort. Millions of migrant workers trapped in Indian cities during the lockdown returned to villages in June in packed public transport. Outsourced workers, with highest seropositivity, reflect the high infection rate of this subgroup and it can be reasonably assumed that the pandemic had already reached rural India by September 2020,” the study notes.

•There was even a distinction in blood groups. “Sero-prevalence was highest for blood group type AB, followed by group B, group O and the lowest for group A . Blood O was observed to be protective,” the authors noted.

•Dr. Sengupta said that the 10% seropositivity was an average of the range that included 14% in Delhi, 18% in Hyderabad and 1% in Thiruvananthapuram, and could be used a proxy for “future infection trends”. When seen in light of reported trends in cities, a seropositivity of 15% represented a sort of threshold beyond which new cases started to decline. “In Thiruvananthapuram, for instance, we saw an uptick. Based on this, vaccines could be prioritised in rural India or districts with low seropositivity than the big cities that have seen high numbers,” he added.

•In August, the CSIR announced a project to track 10,000 employees of the organisation for at least 30 years to track an array of health vitals and genes. The over-arching aim is to be able to build a medical cohort to give long-term perspective on the malaises that affect Indians, and determine if such a data bank can be used to help with predicting, say, the onset of diabetes or cardiovascular disease.