Daily Current Affairs 26 November 2019

Current Affairs of Today are

1) i­-Start Single Window

• A draft start­up and innovation policy, released here as part of the Rajasthan Innovation Vision, has laid emphasis on creating an infrastructure for attracting entrepreneurs and bringing new ventures to the State. The policy will encourage the youths from the State settled elsewhere to come back with their startups.
• The policy would promote partnerships and collaborations and encourage the youths to establish their units and scale up the work by utilizing niche technologies in both the products and processes to compete at the global level

Centers of excellence 

Five centers of excellence in the areas of agriculture, energy, artificial intelligence, niche technologies, internet of things, healthcare, tribal entrepreneurship, and rural entrepreneurship are proposed to be established along with 10 government­owned incubators, which will be operationalized in the State.

The State government has already relaxed procurement norms for goods and services up to ₹1 crore to facilitate the establishment of start­ups. According to the sources, the incubators will also be utilized for implementing i­Start Acceleration Programmes which will be sector­specific and will be delivered in a combination of on­site and online modes

2)  Gangadhar Meher Lift Canal System.

• The government of Odisha had announced the State’s first underground irrigation project Gangadhar Meher Lift Canal System
• The administrative sanction for the project, which entails an investment of ₹1,340.55 crores, has been approved by the government. In 2018-­19 and 2019­-20 budget provision of ₹200 crores and ₹100 crores have been made
• As per the plan, water will be drawn from Hirakud Dam through Bargarh Main Canal. 
• The water will travel 17.64 km through the pipeline up to Barihapali Secondary Reservoir.  From the Barihapali reservoir, the water will be delivered to farmers in the designed ayacut area, including 74 villages in Bijepur block. 
• There will be a mix of underground gravity and pressure pipe distribution network with outlets every 4.5-hectare patch of land. 
• It is estimated that an area of about 25,600 hectares would be irrigated in the three blocks.

3)  Etalin Hydroelectric Project

The Centre has recommended a biodiversity study of the proposed 3,097 MW Etalin Hydroelectric Project in Arunachal Pradesh by a credible international institute since the current environmental impact assessment was found to be “completely inadequate”.

Effects on the ecosystem of that are

Indo­-Malayan bio­geographic regions.

Palaearctic bio­geographic regions.

• The Forest Advisory Committee of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) had recently discussed the diversion of 1,165.66 hectares of forest land for the construction of the mega project in the State’s Dibang Valley district by Etalin Hydroelectric Power Company Limited.
• The project, estimated to cost ₹25,296.95 crores, is proposed to be completed in seven years but would entail felling 2,80,677 trees and threatens the existence of six globally­endangered mammal species. The area also has 680 species of birds, which is about 56% of the total avian species found in India.
• The committee advised caution in pursuing the project since it falls under the “richest bio-geographical province of the Himalayan zone” and would be located at the junction of the Palaearctic, Indo-Chinese, and Indo­-Malayan bio­geographic regions.
• The panel also sought the views of the National Tiger Conservation Authority as the area is a big cat habitat with 12 tigers and eight clouded leopards having been spotted

4)  Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI)

• Data released by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) for 2018­-19, when 1,06,459 samples were analyzed.
• This was the first year the data had been compiled for unsafe, substandard and labeling defects separately. This would help authorities take precise corrective and preventive action.
• On enforcement of norms has noted that 3.7% of the samples collected and analyzed were found unsafe, 15.8% substandard and 9% samples had labeling defects.
• While there should be zero tolerance to unsafe food, sub­standard and labeling defects require greater efforts on capacity building of the businesses and standards, as well as labeling requirements
• There has been a 7% increase in the number of samples analyzed during 2018­-19 compared to 2017­18. Compared to the previous year, 25% more samples were found non­conforming. This shows that there has been better targeting of enforcement efforts by States/UTs
• There has been a 36% increase in civil cases launched and a 67% increase in the number of cases where penalties were imposed. The amount of penalty ₹32.58 crores imposed has increased by 23% during 2018­-19 compared to the previous year. There has been an 86% increased in criminal cases launched. Since the conclusion of criminal cases takes time, 5,198 cases were concluded during 2017-­18 that included a backlog of previous years. During the year there have been 701 convictions in criminal cases so far.

States performance

• Ten States/UTs that have performed well include Uttarakhand, Goa, Bihar, Sikkim, Gujarat, and Telangana
• Ten States that have performed poorly include Nagaland, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Jharkhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Rajasthan, and Punjab.
• Many of the poorly performing States have not been able to put in place full­time officers and do not have proper testing laboratories

5) U.S. missions against IS in Northern Syria resumed

U.S. troops have resumed large­scale counterterrorism missions against the Islamic State group in northern Syria, military officials said, nearly two months after President Donald Trump’s abrupt order to withdraw U.S. troops opened the way for a bloody Turkish cross­border offensive.

Reason for resumption

• Several hundred other troops, some with armored Bradley Fighting Vehicles, arrived from Iraq and Kuwait under a subsequent order from Mr. Trump to protect Syria’s eastern oil fields from the Islamic State, as well as from the Syrian government and its Russian partners
• The resumption of extensive counterterrorism operations capped a tumultuous two months, in which many of the nearly 1,000 U.S. troops in northeastern Syria flew or drove out of the country under Mr. Trump’s withdrawal order

6) AYUSH Ministry hosting WHO Meetings on developing Standardized Terminologies and Benchmarks documents of Practice for Traditional Medicine

Ministry of AYUSH is hosting two important WHO meetings during the last week of November and the first week of December 2019 at the Institute of Prost Graduate Teaching and Research in Ayurveda (IPGT & RA), Jamnagar, Gujarat and another is Morarji Desai National Institute of Yoga & Naturopathy, New Delhi.

WHO is developing Benchmarks Document for Practice of Ayurveda, Panchakarma & Unani and International Terminologies Documents in Ayurveda, Siddha & Unani as part of its global strategy to strengthen the quality, safety and effectiveness of Traditional and Complementary Medicine (T&CM).  Development of this benchmarks document is included in the Project Collaboration Agreement (PCA) signed between the World Health Organization (WHO) and Ministry of AYUSH, Government of India on Cooperation in the field of Traditional and Complementary Medicine under WHO strategy on T&CM covering the period 2014-2023.

The practice benchmark documents are expected to serve as international benchmarks for the qualified practice of Ayurveda, and Unani. They will frame the safety requirements for practicing Ayurveda, Panchakarma, and Unani and provide qualifying criteria for practitioners of Ayurveda and Unani among addressing other details and nuances of medical practice. These documents shall serve as a reference to national authorities to establish/strengthen regulatory standards and ensure the practice of Ayurveda, Panchakarma, and Unani, and assure patient safety.

The purpose of the WHO Working Group Meeting (WGM) is to review, comment and revise the draft documents prepared on the Standard Terminologies of Ayurveda, Unani, and Siddha by a select group of nine experts. The WGM shall help in arriving at an international consensus regarding the structure and content of each of the documents, including on occasions, consensus on the meanings and definition of words used in these systems. The documents are expected to provide: list of terms in the respective systems,  

• their definitions (short or explanatory descriptions as required) including contextual meanings of the terms,  classical usage/ of the terms with references to the definitions,  
• suggested English terms, synonyms, and even define exclusions to the meanings of the term in medical context.  

The documents shall cover terms related to basic principles, fundamental theories, human structure and function, diagnosis, pathologies, patterns, and body constitutions, pharmacognosy, pharmacology, preparation of food and medicines, therapeutics, and preventive and health promotion interventions, and miscellaneous terms in the respective medical systems.

7) CLSS Awas Portal (CLAP)

Shri. Hardeep S Puri, Minister of State (I/C) for Housing and Urban Affairs launched the CLSS (Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme) Awas Portal (CLAP).

About CLAP

The Ministry has developed a web-based real-time monitoring system called CLAP in which all stakeholders such as MoHUA, Central Nodal Agencies (CNAs) and Primary Lending Institutions (PLIs), and Beneficiaries are integrated as a well-designed concept in using an IT-based platform to bring transparency and efficiency in the release of subsidy to the beneficiaries under CLSS. This Portal will enable the processing of the individual application, verification at the initial stage, the release of subsidy, transparency and minimizing grievances.