Excellence by Saikat Sir: 08/28/20

CURRENT AFFAIRS: NATIONAL

The Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry has launched a toll-free helpline to enable access to mental health resources.
The “Kiran” mental health rehabilitation helpline number, 1800-599-0019, will provide callers “support for early screening, first-aid, psychological support, distress management, mental well-being, preventing deviant behaviours, psychological crisis management etc.,
The helpline will offer services in 13 languages.
It targets to resolve issues of people across the country experiencing stress, anxiety, depression, panic attack, adjustment disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, pandemic-induced psychological issues and mental health emergency.

With a vision to provide high-quality protection, especially in the healthcare industry and its frontline workers, USafe’s US9 Respirator Mask has 98.03% PM0.3 filtration rate and 99.7% bacterial filtration rate (better than N95 standards).
The home-grown innovation in tune with the ‘Make in India’ and ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ aspirations, US9 Respirator Mask, has been designed, developed and produced in collaboration with Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad under the mentorship of Prof Surya Kumar and Prof Renu John.

Centre has approved 78 new additional routes to be awarded under the fourth round of the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS)- ‘Ude Desh Ka Aam Nagrik’ (UDAN) focusing on boosting connectivity in the North East, hilly states and islands.
The Udan is a regional airport development scheme aimed at enhancing connectivity to remote and regional areas of the country and making air travel affordable.
The scheme is a key component of Centre’s National Civil Aviation Policy led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and launched in June 2016.
“Special boost is being given to connectivity in North East with routes from Guwahati to Tezu, Rupsi, Tezpur, Passighat, Misa and Shillong. People will be able to fly from Hissar to Chandigarh, Dehradun and Dharmshala under these UDAN 4 routes.
Routes from Varanasi to Chitrakoot and Shravasti have also been approved. Agatti, Kavaratti and Minicoy islands of Lakshadweep have also been connected by the new routes of UDAN 4.0,” the ministry said in a statement.

The Arunachal Pradesh Assembly has passed a resolution to bring the state under the ambit of Sixth Schedule of the Constitution besides amending Article 371(H) by inserting provisions to safeguard tribes of the state.
The resolution which was moved by Legislative Affairs Minister Bamang Felix on behalf of the State Government was passed by voice vote following a marathon discussion in the house.

Private life insurer Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance has launched a new technology service called ‘Smart Assist’ that provides real-time assistance to customers.

Smart Assist is designed to help customers know all about their product, through virtual assistance, since face-to-face meetings have been a challenge amid the coronavirus pandemic.
It can be accessed from any device, including desktop, laptop and mobile phone. This platform provides application processing, providing consent through a one-time password and online payment collection.
Using a screen sharing feature, the agent will be able to assist customers live to fill up the proposal form and also help them in the policy purchase journey.
Even if there is an error in the form that has to be corrected in the proposal form, this can be done through the screen-sharing process. No additional application needs to be downloaded.

The World Bank has decided to pause the publication of its Doing Business report following a number of irregularities regarding changes to data in previous reports.
A number of irregularities have been reported regarding changes to the data in the Doing Business 2018 and Doing Business 2020 reports, published in October 2017 and 2019.
The changes in the data were inconsistent with the Doing Business methodology.

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