Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh is leading the Joint Indian Ministerial Delegation of Power, New and Renewable Energy and Science and Technology to America to take part in Global Clean Energy Action Forum

• Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh will lead the Joint Indian Ministerial official delegation of the Ministry of Power, New and Renewable Energy and Ministry of Science and Technology on a five-day visit to USA to participate in the Global Clean Energy Action Forum and also to interact with eminent academicians as well as the Indian diaspora.
• The coveted joint convening of the Clean Energy Ministerial CEM13 and Mission Innovation MI-7 will take place from 21st to 23rd of this month at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, USA.
• The event is expected to bring together thousands of clean energy leaders from across the world, including CEOs, innovators, young professionals, civil society and ministers from over 30 countries to accelerate clean energy innovation and deployment.

Net direct tax kitty crosses ₹7 lakh crore

• Net direct tax collections as on Saturday stood at ₹7,00,669 crore, compared with ₹5,68,147 crore as of September 17, 2021, with corporate taxes constituting little over a half of the kitty at ₹3,68,484 crore.
• The personal income tax and the securities transaction tax (STT) have yielded ₹3.3 lakh crore.
• Advance tax collections stood at ₹2,95,308 crore, 17% higher than the corresponding period of 2021-22, with corporate tax contributing a little over ₹2.29 lakh crore and personal income tax bringing in the rest of the ₹66,176 crore.
• The Ministry said there had been a “remarkable increase in the speed of processing of income tax returns filed during the current financial year” with almost 93% of the duly verified ITRs having been processed till September 17.

Lumpy skin disease virus different from 2019 version

• The lumpy skin disease (LSD) virus that has killed at least 50,000 cattle in India this year may be structurally different from the version of the virus prevalent in India in 2019, raising questions on whether the new vaccine being developed for safeguarding cattle may be adequately protective.
• Scientists at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB) and the State Disease Diagnostic Centre, Jaipur, analysed five animals with symptoms of the disease and compared genomes of the virus extracted from them.
• Six genomes (there were multiple genomes from a single animal) showed that it had “little similarity to global genomes” when compared with genetic sequences from earlier outbreaks of the disease.
• The analysis of the genomes revealed 177 unique variants, none of which were found in four genome sequences from India belonging to the 2019 outbreak of the disease deposited in GenBank, a popular database.
• This is significant as Lumpi-ProVacInd, a vaccine developed by the Indian Veterinary Research Institute, and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research’s (ICAR) National Research Centre on Equines is based on LSD virus samples from cattle in Ranchi afflicted in the 2019 outbreak.

NSCN(I-M) to resume peace talks with Centre

• The Nagaland Peace Accord is a peace treaty, signed, on 3 August 2015, between the Government of India, and the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), to end the insurgency in the state of Nagaland in Northeast India.
• The decision follows a meeting between the 11 representatives of the NSCN(I-M) and the 22-member Core Committee on Naga Political Issue comprising MPs and MLAs of Nagaland at Chumoukedima near the State’s commercial hub, Dimapur.
• There are reports that a Central team has been working on a new set of “formulation papers” for packaging a set of offers, along with the old, to facilitate the final peace deal soon.

Fazilka district is known for the best-quality kin

• The harvest of kinnows, the citrus fruit, a hybrid between king (Citrus nobilis) and willowleaf (Citrus deliciosa) mandarins, is likely to witness a drop of about 50% due to many issues, including the early summer that hit Punjab in March.
• Fazilka in Punjab is known for the best-quality kinnow.
• The fruit is grown on about 2.5 lakh acres in the district. Trees and orchards on about 50,000 acres have been estimated as destroyed in the district alone. The trees and orchards have dried up in this area. The reason is polluted canal water. Groundwater cannot be used for kinnow.
• Canal water is polluted with chemicals from factories.

District Disability Rehabilitation centres (DDRCs) were inaugurated by Dr. Virendra Kumar Union Minister of Social Justice & Empowerment

• District Disability Rehabilitation centres (DDRC) spread across the country are providing effective rehabilitation services to the persons with disabilities for last two decades.
• These centres are run jointly by District Management Team headed by DM/Collector and a reputed NGO (Usually Indian Red Cross Society).
• To upscale their services, a MODEL DDRC has been conceptualised by the Department of Empowerment of Persons With Disability in the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment Government of India.
• Nine such model DDRCs, namely- Badaun, Pilibhit, Barielly, Balaghat, Golaghat, Ahmedabad, Amravati , Kullu and Rampur have been upgraded to MODEL DDRC level in the first phase and these 09 model DDRCs were virtually inaugurated by Dr. Virendra Kumar, Minister of Social Justice & Empowerment, Government of India.

State level institution on lines of NITI Aayog to be established in Maharashtra

• It will help to bring drastic changes in sectors like agriculture, health, education, employment, environment etc. in the state.
• Chief executive officer of NITI Aayog and other experts made a presentation on how Maharashtra will be assisted by the Aayog for bringing about changes in various sectors.
• Maharashtra government is planning to achieve target one trillion dollar economy by 2030, but with more hard work it can be achieved by 2027.
• ‘Asset monetization’ is important factor tabled by the NITI Aayog and the new constructed Samruddhi Mahamarg in the state is the best example of asset monetization.

Jaishankar arrives in New York for hectic diplomatic week at UNGA high-level session

• The theme of the 77th UNGA is ''A Watershed Moment: Transformative Solutions to Interlocking Challenges''.
• In keeping with India’s strong commitment to reformed multilateralism, the Minister will host a Ministerial meeting of the G4 - India, Brazil, Japan, and Germany - as well as participate at the High Level Meeting of the L-69 Group on ''Reinvigorating Multilateralism and Achieving Comprehensive Reform of the UN Security Council''.
• The L-69 Group consists of developing countries from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Caribbean and Small Island Developing States, focused on reforms of the UN Security Council.

India emerge as largest bilateral lender for Sri Lanka, overtaking China

• In the past five years from 2017-2021, China has been the largest bilateral lender to Sri Lanka.
• Asian Development Bank (ADB) has been the largest multilateral lender in the past five years and disbursed funds amounting to 610 million dollars in 2021.
• India''s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ruchira Kamboj had said that India had provided nearly 4 billion dollars in food and financial assistance to Sri Lanka. On August 22, India handed over 21,000 tonnes of fertilizer to crisis-ridden Sri Lanka.
• India has been at forefront of extending economic assistance to Sri Lanka as per their requirements and is one of the countries that have provided the maximum amount of assistance in time of need. Since the beginning of 2022, Sri Lanka has experienced an escalating economic crisis and the government has defaulted on its foreign loans.
• Sri Lanka is battling a severe economic crisis with food and fuel scarcity affecting a large number of the people in the island nation.

Indian companies spent more than one trillion rupees in CSR till March this year: Anurag Thakur

• He said, the areas of investment is poverty alleviation, healthcare, education and the environment among other. Mr Thakur said this while giving away the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award India 2022 in New Delhi.
• On April 1, 2014, India became the first country to legally mandate corporate social responsibility.
• The rules in Section 135 of India’s Companies Act make it mandatory for companies of a certain turnover and profitability to spend 2% of their average net profit for the past three years on CSR.