Daily Current Affairs April 15 2022

 

CURRENT AFFAIRS: IMPORTANT DAYS

Ambedkar Jayanti -14 April

• April 14 is marked as Ambedkar Jayanti to honour Dr Ambedkar’s countless contributions in the making of present-day India.
• Ambedkar Jayanti is also celebrated to remember the jurist’s dedication in fighting social evils like caste discrimination and oppression.
• On the occasion of Dr Ambedkar’s 131st birth anniversary, President Ram Nath Kovind greeted the fellow-citizens and hailed the architect of the Indian Constitution.
• Ambedkar is known as the Father (chief architect) of the Indian Constitution.
• He was the first Law and Justice Minister of the country after the independence.
• Dr Bhim has been bestowed with the country’s highest civilian honour, Bharat Ratna in 1990 posthumously.

World Chagas Disease Day – 14 April

• To raise awareness about a life-threatening disease that can cause serious heart and digestive issues, every year April 14 is observed as World Chagas Day.
• The disease is also called American trypanosomiasis, silent disease or silenced disease.
• It is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma crizu.
• It is often termed a “silent and silenced disease” as the infected majority have no symptoms or extremely mild symptoms.
• World Chagas Disease Day was first observed on April 14, 2020 with an aim to raise the awareness and the visibility of the people suffering from the disease.
• April 14 was chosen to mark the day as the first case of Chagas disease in a human was reported on this day in 1990.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: NATIONAL NEWS

Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry launches ‘SVANidhi se Samriddhi’:

• Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has launched ‘SVANidhi se Samriddhi’ program in additional 126 cities across 14 States/ UTs.
• ‘SVANidhi se Samriddhi’, an additional program of PMSVANidhi was launched on 4th January 2021 in 125 cities in Phase 1, covering approximately 35 Lakh Street vendors and their families.
• Considering the success of Phase I, MoHUA launched the program expansion to additional 126 cities with an aim to cover 28 Lakh Street vendors and their families, with a total target of 20 Lakh scheme sanctions for FY 2022-23.
• MoHUA has been implementing Prime Minister Street Vendors AtmaNirbhar Nidhi (PM SVANidhi), a Central Sector Scheme since 1st June 2020.
• The scheme aims to provide an affordable working capital loan to Street Vendors and has successfully crossed the 30 Lakh mark.

ICCR has Launched India Alumni Portal for Foreign Students:

• The Indian Council for Cultural Relations, ICCR has launched an India Alumni Portal in New Delhi.
• It is a platform to connect with foreign students around the world who have studied in India.
• Minister of State for External Affairs Meenakshi Lekhi launched the portal in the presence of ICCR president Dr. Vinay Sahasrabuddhe.
• ICCR has been offering scholarships to foreign students for the past 40 years and now, through the portal, the organization hopes to create an important platform of cultural ambassadors of India.
• It is estimated that the ICCR alumni are nearly 30,000 strong and the portal will, therefore, also facilitate re-connecting with past scholars.

UNDP Declares Grants of $2.2 Million in Climate Action for Innovators:

• The UNDP and partners of the Adaptation Innovation Marketplace (AIM) have announced $2.2 million in climate action grants for 22 local innovators across 19 countries, including India.
• The first round of funding through the Adaptation Fund Climate Innovation Accelerator (AFCIA) window will enhance local climate action and accelerate the delivery of targets outlined in the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals.
• The Adaptation Innovation Marketplace will provide technical support and know-how for new funding applications launched.
• AIM is a strategy platform that supports scaled-up adaptation at the local level, concentrating on civil society, non-governmental organisations, and women and youth innovators, and was launched by UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner at the Climate Adaptation Summit in January 2021.

CURRENT AFFAIRS : STATE NEWS

Community museum inaugurated in Gya – Sasoma villages of Leh district, Ladak

• The Chairman/CEC, LAHDC Leh, Adv. Tashi Gyalson inaugurated the Community Museum at Sasoma village in Gya in the direction of preserving and forwarding its rich cultural heritage to future generations.
• The Community Museum is a joint collaboration between National Museum Institute (NMI), New Delhi and Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC), Leh, Ladakh.
• Gya is the first village and oldest inhabitation in Upper Ladakh.
• Along with the Gya-Sasoma villagers, women associations of the villages, the Department of Museology National Museum Institute, NMI New Delhi, and the LAHDC, Leh together have participated in the establishment of the Community Museum.

Main attractions of the Museum :

• Traditional utility items, textiles, dresses and the antiquities of day-to-day life of Gya-Sasoma.
• The traditional house, where the museum is established, has various architectural spaces and features.

About LAHDC :

• The Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, Leh (LAHDC Leh) is an Autonomous District Council that administers the Leh district of Ladakh, India.
• Chief Executive Councilor : Tashi Gyalson

Uttarakhand govt implements Him Prahari scheme

• The Uttarakhand government has implemented the Him Prahari scheme, it is meant for ex-servicemen and youngsters.
• Also the govt of Uttarakhand has been seeking the Centre’s cooperation in implementing the ‘Him Prahari’ scheme.

About Him Prahari scheme :

• The scheme was announced by the BJP Uttarakhand unit in its 2022 Election Manifesto.

Aim :

• To stop the migration of people from Uttarakhand.
• The scheme will focus on areas where migration occurs at a rapid phase so that people stay put, and not move out.
• Under the scheme, the state government will prioritize settling of ex-servicemen in areas bordering the state.
• An expenditure of about Rs 5 crore 45 lakh is estimated on this scheme.
• Also, Uttarakhand CM Dhami has requested Rs 25 crore for the Nirbhaya Fund for the relief and rehabilitation of women victims of crime.

About Uttarakhand :

• Governor: Gurmit Singh
• Chief minister: Pushkar Singh Dhami
• Capital : Bhararisain & Dehradun

CURRENT AFFAIRS : BANKING & FINANCE

ADB sanctions Rs 551 Cr for 3 projects : Agartala Smart City

• The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has sanctioned an amount of $76.25 million or Rs 551 crore for three specific projects under the Agartala Smart City Limited.
• The ADB agreed to fund 23 kilometers of road by retrofitting 15 stretches at a cost of Rs 444 crore.
• Revive lakes and water bodies of Maharaja Bir Bikram College and its adjoining areas at Rs 30.67 crore
• Renovate and restore Ujjayanta Palace and its surrounding at Rs 35.68 crore in the current financial year in a phased manner.
• The ADB will release the funds to the Centre for the Agartala infrastructure development and work on these projects will start by mid-May.
• As per estimation, the entire work will be completed in the next one year along with other city development programmes.

About ADB :

• Established : 19 December 1966
• Headquarters : Mandaluyong, Metro Manila, Philippines
• President : Masatsugu Asakawa
• Membership : 68 countries

ADB provides $2 million loan to support urban development in Nagaland

• The Central government and the Asian Development Bank signed a $2 million Project Readiness Financing (PRF) Loan for designing climate resilient urban infrastructure, strengthening institutional capacity and improving municipal resource mobilization.

Signatories :

• Rajat Kumar Mishra, Additional Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance who signed for the Government of India
• Takeo Konishi, Country Director of ADB’s India Resident Mission who signed for ADB.
• The project aimed at improving urban infrastructure and services in Nagaland to help the state realize its economic potential.
• The PRF loan will help design water supply, sanitation, solid waste management and urban roads in 16 DTHs with climate resilient features and improved access to the poor and vulnerable.

CURRENT AFFAIRS: BUSINESS NEWS

WTO cuts global trade growth forecast to 3% in 2022:

• The World Trade Organization has slashed its forecast for global trade growth this year to 3% from 4.7% due to the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war and warned against the global economy dividing into rival blocs because of the conflict.
• By 2023, this merchandise trade volume growth is projected at 3.4%.
• Under these assumptions, world GDP at market exchange rates is expected to grow by 2.8% in 2022, down 1.3 percentage points from the previous forecast of 4.1%. Growth should pick up to 3.2% in 2023.

CURRENT AFFAIRS : AWARDS & HONORS

Nykaa founder Falguni Nayar wins the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Award 2021

• At the 23rd edition of the EY Entrepreneur of The Year India awards, Founder and CEO of Nykaa, Falguni Nayar has been named the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2021.
• Nayar will represent India at the EY World Entrepreneur of the Year Award on June 9, 2022 in Monaco.
• Meanwhile A M Naik, Group Chairman, Larsen & Toubro, who was felicitated with the Lifetime Achievement Award.
• The winners were selected by a nine-member independent Jury Panel led by KV Kamath, former chairman of ICICI Bank.
• Bhupender Yadav, Minister of Labour & Employment and Environment, Forest & Climate Change graced the ceremony as the Chief Guest and addressed the audience.
• Awards were also announced for nine other categories with the winners representing both mature industries and young entrepreneurs from startups including unicorns.

Category Winners :

• Start-up: Vidit Aatrey, Co-founder & CEO and Sanjeev Barnwal, Co-founder & CTO, Fashnear Technology (Meesho)
• Business Transformation: Abhay Soi, Chairman and Managing Director, Max Healthcare
• Manufacturing: Sunil Vachani, Founder and Executive Chairman, Dixon Technologies
• Services: Sahil Barua, Co-founder and CEO, Delhivery
• Consumer Products & Retail: Shiv Kishan Agarwal, Chairman; and Manohar Lal Agarwal, Chairman and Managing Director respectively, Haldiram Group
• Life Sciences & Healthcare: Satyanarayana Chava, Founder and CEO, Laurus Labs
• Financial Services: Harshil Mathur, Co-founder and CEO; and Shashank Kumar, Co-founder and CTO, Razorpay
• Technology, Media and Telecom: Girish Mathrubootham, Co-founder and CEO, Freshworks
• Entrepreneurial CEO: Vivek Vikram Singh, Managing Director and Group CEO, Sona Comstar

About EY Entrepreneur Of The Year :

• The EY Entrepreneur of the Year Awards previously Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards is an award sponsored by Ernst & Young in recognition of entrepreneurship.
• It is the only global business award program in the world, celebrated across 60 countries.

CURRENT AFFAIRS : MOU & AGREEMENTS

Odisha signs MoU with BPCL for developing renewable energy plant & green hydrogen plant

• The Odisha Government and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to take vital steps towards the proliferation of green energy in the state.
• It is for a five-year period to collaborate in the fields of the feasibility of setting up renewable energy plant and green hydrogen plant (both for domestic and export customers), round the clock (RTC) power for consumers and proposed green hydrogen plants, setting up of requisite infrastructure, training, and knowledge sharing, etc.
• Bhupendra Singh Poonia, Managing Director Industrial Promotion and Investment Corporation of Odisha Limited (IPICOL), and Amit Garg, Executive Director Renewable Energy, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), signed a Memorandum of Understanding.

Additional Info :

• Now, More than 33 percent of the steelmaking capacity in Odisha though making it the primary prospect of green hydrogen and green ammonia.
• BPCL plans to spend Rs 25,000 crore to build a renewable energy capacity of 10 gigawatts comprising a mix of solar, wind, small hydro and biomass by 2040.

About Odisha :

• Governor: Ganeshi Lal
• Capital: Bhubaneswar
• Chief minister: Naveen Patnaik

About BPCL :

• Headquarters: Mumbai, Maharashtra
• Chairman & MD : Arun Kumar Singh
• BPCL is an Indian government-owned oil and gas explorer and producer.
• It is under the ownership of the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Government of India.

Aim :

• To achieve Net-Zero, in Scope I and II emissions, by 2040.

CURRENT AFFAIRS : SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

MeitY launches 3 Indigenous Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) Solutions for Indian Traffic Management

• The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has launched 3 applications under the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) as part of the InTranSE- II program to improve India’s traffic scenario.

The 3 applications are :

1.Onboard Driver Assistance and Warning System (ODAWS)

2.Bus Signal Priority System

3.Common SMart iot Connectiv (CoSMiC)

• The product was developed as a joint initiative by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) and Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M).
• Mahindra and Mahindra was the industrial collaborator for the project.

Onboard Driver Assistance and Warning System – ODAWS:

Aim :

• To improve the highway infrastructure as the number of vehicles, speed on roads has increased, exacerbating safety concerns.
• As per Ministry of Road Transport and Highways of India (MoRTH), in around 84 percent of cases, “driver error” was cited as the cause of the accident.
• ODAWS incorporates vehicle-borne sensors for monitoring driver propensity and vehicle surroundings to deliver acoustic and visual alerts for driver assistance.
• The project involves the development of sub-modules such as the navigational unit, driver assistance console, and mmWave radar sensor.
• The positional and dynamic characteristics of surrounding vehicles are probed using mmWave radar sensors.
• The ODAWS algorithm is used to interpret sensor data and offer real-time notifications to the driver, boosting road safety.

Bus Signal Priority System:

• To attract more travelers to public transport, Bus Signal Priority System has been proposed.
• Bus signal priority System is an operational strategy that modifies normal traffic signal operations to better accommodate in-service public buses at signal-controlled intersections.
• Unlike a blind priority that is given for emergency vehicles, here it is a conditional priority, which is given only when there is an overall reduction in delay for all vehicles.
• The developed system will enable to minimize person delay by providing priority to public transport buses, either through Green extension or Red truncation, considering all vehicles approaching a signalized intersection.

Common SMart iot Connectiv (CoSMiC):

• It is a middleware software providing standard based deployment of IoT adhering to oneM2M based global standard.
• It facilitates users and application service providers in various vertical domains to use application agnostic open standards and open interfaces for end to end communication with well-defined common service functionalities complying with oneM2M standard.
• The horizontal silo architecture ensures interoperability and data exchange between different IOT devices and applications and avoids vendor lock-in.
• CoSMiC comply with 12 common service functions which are Registration, Discovery, Security, Group Management, Data Management & Repository, Subscription & Notification, Device Management, Application & Service Management, Communication Management, and Delivery Handling, Network Service Exposure, Location, Service Charging and Accounting.
• The CoSMiC platform also provides Interworking Proxy Entity (IPE) APIs for connecting non-oneM2M (NoDN) devices or third-party applications to get connected to the CoSMiC platform.
• It provides a Dashboard page showing IoT units, products, applications, and its live data in a Geographical Information System (GIS) map.
• A secondary data repository is also available for historic charts and reports.
• CoSMiC provides an end-to-end solution for the seamless connection of IoT devices and applications.

About Ministry of Electronics & IT :

• Cabinet Minister : Ashwini Vaishnaw
• Minister of State : Rajeev Chandrasekhar

CURRENT AFFAIRS: SPORTS NEWS

Netherlands won FIH Junior Women’s Hockey World Cup 2022:

• The Netherlands lifted their fourth FIH Junior Women’s Hockey World Cup title after beating Germany 3-1 in the final at Potchefstroom, South Africa.
• Giving an early lead to the Netherlands, Danique van der Veerdonk scored first goal in seven minutes.
• Then, Germany’s Sophia Schwabe equalized the score in 32nd minute.
• Beetsma then bagged her brace in 44th minute.
• England defeated India 3-0 in the shoot-out after a 2-2 draw to claim the bronze medal in the third-place match.
• The FIH has banned Russia from the 2022 Women’s FIH Hockey Junior World Cup due to 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
• The 2023 Women’s FIH Hockey Junior World Cup will be the tenth edition and will be held in Santiago, Chile.

Victoria to host 2026 Commonwealth Games across cities:

• Victoria will host the 2026 Commonwealth Games with the Australian state’s regional centres organising the majority of events in a break from the traditional single host city model.
• The Games will be staged in March 2026 across multiple cities and regional hubs including Melbourne, Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat and Gippsland, each with its own athletes’ village.
• The opening ceremony will take place at the iconic 100,000-capacity Melbourne Cricket Ground, the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF)
• The roadmap was accepted during the CGF’s General Assembly, which took place about a year ago.
• The Games in 2026 will be the 23rd edition of the major multi-sport event, which began in 1930 in Hamilton, Canada.

Daily CA on April 15:

• April 14 is marked as Ambedkar Jayanti to honour Dr Ambedkar’s countless contributions in the making of present-day India.
• To raise awareness about a life-threatening disease that can cause serious heart and digestive issues, every year April 14 is observed as World Chagas Day.
• Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has launched ‘SVANidhi se Samriddhi’ program in additional 126 cities across 14 States/ UTs.
• The Indian Council for Cultural Relations, ICCR has launched an India Alumni Portal in New Delhi.
• The UNDP and partners of the Adaptation Innovation Marketplace (AIM) have announced $2.2 million in climate action grants for 22 local innovators across 19 countries, including India.

• The Chairman/CEC, LAHDC Leh, Adv. Tashi Gyalson inaugurated the Community Museum at Sasoma village in Gya in the direction of preserving and forwarding its rich cultural heritage to future generations.
• The Uttarakhand government has implemented the Him Prahari scheme, it is meant for ex-servicemen and youngsters.
• The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has sanctioned an amount of $76.25 million or Rs 551 crore for three specific projects under the Agartala Smart City Limited.
• The Central government and the Asian Development Bank signed a $2 million Project Readiness Financing (PRF) Loan for designing climate resilient urban infrastructure, strengthening institutional capacity and improving municipal resource mobilization.

• The World Trade Organization has slashed its forecast for global trade growth this year to 3% from 4.7% due to the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war and warned against the global economy dividing into rival blocs because of the conflict.
• At the 23rd edition of the EY Entrepreneur of The Year India awards, Founder and CEO of Nykaa, Falguni Nayar has been named the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2021.

• The Odisha Government and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to take vital steps towards the proliferation of green energy in the state.
• The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has launched 3 applications under the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) as part of the InTranSE- II program to improve India’s traffic scenario.

• The Netherlands lifted their fourth FIH Junior Women’s Hockey World Cup title after beating Germany 3-1 in the final at Potchefstroom, South Africa.
• Victoria will host the 2026 Commonwealth Games with the Australian state’s regional centres organising the majority of events in a break from the traditional single host city model