Teachers'' Day 2022

• The day is celebrated on the birth anniversary of educationist and former President Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.
• President Droupadi Murmu will confer National Awards to 46 selected teachers for the year 2022 in New Delhi.
• The Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education has been organising a national level function on Teachers Day every year to confer the National Awards to best teachers of the country. The selection is done through a transparent and online three stage selection process.
• The purpose of National Awards to Teachers is to celebrate the unique contribution of teachers in the country and to honour those teachers who through their commitment and industry have not only improved the quality of school education but also enriched the lives of their students.

What is kurki, and why is it a big issue in Punjab?

• Kurki means attachment of a farmer’s land, already pledged to the money lending institution or individual, in case of a loan default. Apart from banks, private moneylenders, commission agents also get these decrees against farmers from time to time.
• Kurki orders are executed under Section 60 of Civil Procedure Code, 1908. The land which is pledged by the farmer to the bank or money lender gets registered in their name. In some cases, the land is auctioned as well.
• The process begins after the money lender moves court to get kurki orders in case the farmer is unable to pay back his loan. In kurki, attachment of farmer’s land as well as his tractor can be done as per the Section 60.

Japan’s government has “declared a war on floppy disks”.

• Decades after the unwieldy magnetic storage disks became obsolete and were phased out globally, Japan’s digital ministry has announced that it will finally do away with floppy disks and other outdated technology in a bid to modernise its bureaucracy.
• Japan may be home to some of the world’s leading tech giants, but the Japanese have always had an affinity for older technology. According to a BBC report, cassettes were still widely used in 2015.
• Popularly used between the 1970s and 1990s, a floppy disk is a removable disk storage device used to save computer data and programmes.
• The disk, first developed by IBM, is only able to store about 800 KB of data, which is about 0.0008 GB.
• To put that in perspective, today one can find hard drives with storage up to 20 TB (20,000 GB).

AG K.K. Venugopal Refuses Consent To Initiate Contempt Proceedings Against Sr. Adv. Kapil Sibal

• Contempt is “the disobedience of an order of a court” and, “also conduct tending to obstruct or interfere with the orderly administration of justice”.
• According to The Contempt of Courts Act, 1971, contempt of court can either be civil contempt or criminal contempt.
• Civil contempt means “wilful disobedience to any judgment, decree, direction, order, writ or other process of a court, or wilful breach of an undertaking given to a court”.
• Criminal contempt, on the other hand, is attracted by “the publication (whether by words, spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representations, or otherwise) of any matter or the doing of any other act whatsoever which:
  • scandalises or tends to scandalise, or lowers or tends to lower the authority of, any court; or
  • prejudices, or interferes or tends to interfere with, the due course of any judicial proceeding; or
  • interferes or tends to interfere with, or obstructs or tends to obstruct, the administration of justice in any other manner.”

CPM scuttled Ramon Magsaysay Award for KK Shailaja

• The foundation wanted to honour her for the public service and community leadership during the Nipah outbreak and COVID-19 pandemic in Kerala. However, Ms. Shailaja felt she could not accept the offer extended to her as an individual since the effort was collective.
• The Ramon Magsaysay Award, widely considered to be Asia’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize, recognises outstanding leadership and communitarian contributions in Asia.
• The prize was established in April 1957 by the trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund based in New York City with the concurrence of the Philippine government.
• The Ramon Magsaysay Award is presented in formal ceremonies in Manila, Philippines on August 31st, the birth anniversary of the much-esteemed Philippine President whose ideals inspired the Award’s creation in 1957.
• From 1958 to 2008, the Award was given in six categories annually: (1) Government Service, (2) Public Service, (3) Community Leadership, (4) Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts, (5) Peace and International Understanding and (6) Emergent Leadership.
• Starting in 2009, the Ramon Magsaysay Award is no longer being given in fixed Award categories, except for Emergent Leadership.

Indian winners on the list

• Prominent Indians who have won the award include Vinoba Bhave in 1958, Mother Teresa in 1962, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay in 1966, Satyajit Ray in 1967, Mahasweta Devi in 1997.
• In recent years, Arvind Kejriwal (2006), Anshu Gupta of Goonj (2015), human rights activist Bezwada Wilson (2016), and journalist Ravish Kumar (2019) have won the award.

Home Minister Amit Shah unveils mascot of 36th National Games in Ahmedabad

• The mascot is named as Savaj which means cub in Gujarati. The anthem is based on the theme of Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat.
• The National Games will be organised between 29th of this month to 12th of next month at six cities in the state namely Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot and Bhavnagar.
• The event also witnessed the closing of 11th Khel Mahakumbh. Winners of Khel Mahakumbh were given away prizes at the hands of Mr. Shah.