Latest News
06th Sep 2021
40 CENTRAL UNIVERSITIES TO IMPLEMENT CREDIT BANK
Forty central universities will kick off implementation of innovative measures such as the academic credit bank and the glue grant meant to encourage multi-disciplinarity.
Glue Grant Scheme:
The India Plastics Pact is uniting businesses, the government, NGOs non-profits and other stakeholders to:
- The scheme was announced in the budget 2021-22 by the Finance Minister.
- The institutions in the same city would be encouraged to share resources, equipment and even allow their students to take classes from each other.
- Finance minister proposed to set up an umbrella body as part of the glue grant scheme to monitor and conduct joint operations between the industries and the academic institutions.
- This will help to integrate the educational and professional domains of the country.
- It will also help to reform the academic curriculum as per the requirement of the professional world and to produce better human resources.
- It is funding provided in the educational sector to link the academic institutions with the industrial demand.
- Aim: To create a sustainable partnership between multidisciplinary institutions in order to promote development that benefits the whole nation.
- Six cluster cities have been identified and the glue grant framework has been initiated with the support of Principal Scientific Advisor (PSA).
- The identified cities are:
- Delhi NCR
- Bengaluru
- Pune
- Hyderabad
- Jodhpur
- Bhubaneswar
- Academic Bank of Credit is envisaged as a digital bank that holds the credit earned by a student in any course.
- It is a major instrument for facilitating multidisciplinary and holistic education and multiple entry and exit in higher education.
- The Academic Credit Bank would have to be adopted separately by the academic council of each university to kick off implementation.
- The Academic Bank of Credits will enable students to select the best courses or combination of courses to suit their aptitude and to tailor their degrees or make specific modifications or specialisations rather than undergoing the rigid, regularly prescribed degree or courses of a single university.
- Academic Bank of Credits will provide a variety of services including credit verification, credit accumulation, credit transfer or redemption and authentication of academic awards.
- To start with, the system would allow students to attain qualifications by amassing credits rather than specific durations on campus.
- A certain number of credits would add up to a certificate, then a diploma and then a degree, allowing for multiple entry and exit points.
- Students can earn up to 40% of their credits in online Swayam classes, rather than in the physical classroom.
- In the future, these credits will hold validity across different institutions.
- This mutant virus was first found in Colombia in January 2021. Its presence has been reported in about 39 countries across the globe.
- The genomic structure of the Mu variant is different from the original strain of the virus.
- It can easily evade the protection provided by the COVID-19 vaccines being administered across the globe.
- A variant of the virus occurs when there is a change or mutation in the original genomic structure of the virus.
- It is the general nature of the RNA of the virus including coronavirus to evolve and change structure over time.
- That may happen due to geographic separation. All viruses including flu and cold mutate over time.
- Viruses are generally categorised under two sections-'variant of concern' and 'variant of interest.'
- The Mu variant has been termed as the variant of interest, which means it has the potential to cause greater harm.
- Apart from this new variant, the WHO has branded four other variants -Eta, Iota, Kappa and Lambda- as the variants of interest.
- The India Plastics Pact is a collaboration between World Wide Fund for Nature and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
- It is supported by WRAP, a global NGO based in the United Kingdom.
- WRAP is providing operational and technical support to many other Plastics Pacts, as well as running the UK Plastics Pact.
- It will provide a platform for collaboration, learning and tangible action to stop- Plastic pollution.
The India Plastics Pact is uniting businesses, the government, NGOs non-profits and other stakeholders to:
- Set a collective, national strategy to transition to a circular economy for plastics in India.
- Develop a roadmap to reach the targets and stimulate progress through collaborative action-oriented workstreams.
- Empower businesses, government and stakeholders to reduce plastic packaging from their value chain.
- Catalyse effective policy to accelerate progress, and measure and report progress.
- Engage citizens in the practice of reuse, recycle and reduction of plastics.
- Defining a list of unnecessary or problematic plastic packaging and items and take measures to address them through redesign and innovation.
- About 100% of plastic packaging to be reusable or recyclable.
- 50% of plastic packaging to be effectively recycled.
- Use of 25% average recycled content across all plastic packaging.
- India generates 9.46 million tonnes of plastic waste annually.
- 40% plastic waste goes uncollected.
- 43% all plastics produced in India is used for packaging, majority of them being single-use.
- The UK is India’s biggest European research partner, with £400 million of joint investment since 2008.
- It focused on the need for keeping a continuous vigil on the financial sector by the government.
- The 24th meeting deliberated on various mandates of FSDC such as financial stability, financial sector development, inter-regulatory coordination, financial literacy, financial inclusion, and macro prudential supervision of the economy including the functioning of large financial conglomerates.
- Issues relating to management of assets, strengthening institutional mechanism for financial stability analysis.
- Framework for resolution of financial institutions and issues related to IBC
- Banks’ exposure to various sectors and government.
- Internationalization of the Indian rupee and pension sector related issues.
- The Financial Stability and Development Council (FSDC) was constituted by the Union Government as a non-statutory apex body under the Ministry of Finance in 2010.
- Raghuram Rajan Committee (2008) on financial sector reforms first proposed the creation of FSDC.
- Chairman- Finance Minister
- Reserve Bank of India (RBI)
- Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA)
- Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI)
- Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA)
- Other members are Finance Secretary, Chief Economic Advisor and Secretary of the Department of Financial Services.
- It was established as an autonomous body dealing with macroprudential and financial regularities in the entire financial sector of India.
- The body envisages to strengthen and institutionalize the mechanism of maintaining financial stability, financial sector development along macro-prudential regulation of the economy.
- No funds are separately allocated to the council for undertaking its activities.
- Bringing about stability in the financial sector
- Development of the Financial Sector
- Coordination of Inter-Regulatory bodies
- Promoting financial literacy
- Ensuring financial inclusion
- Macroprudential supervision of the economy including the functioning of large financial conglomerates.
- India applauded Russia’s vision for development of Russian Far East region.
- India reiterated its commitment of being a reliable partner of Russia as part of its Act East Policy.
- The importance of health and pharma sectors as important areas of cooperation was highlighted. Other potential areas of economic cooperation include diamond, coking coal, steel, timber etc.
- Eastern Economic Forum is an international forum held annually in Vladivostok, Russia for encouraging foreign investment in the Russian Far East.
- Established by President of Russian Federation in 2015.
- It is also a key platform for discussion of issues in world economy, regional integration, and the development of new industrial and technological sectors, as well as of the global challenges faced by Russia and other nations.
- Forum’s business programme includes a number of business dialogues with leading partner countries in Asia-Pacific region, and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
- Russian Far East is a region in Northeast Asia and the easternmost part of Russia.
- It is located between Lake Baikal and the Pacific Ocean.
- It shares land borders with Mongolia, China, and North Korea to its south.
- It shares maritime boundaries with Japan to its southeast, and United States along the Bering Strait to its northeast.
- INS Dhruv was built by Hindustan Shipyard in collaboration with Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO).
- It has the capability to map ocean beds for research and detection of enemy submarines.
- The ship can also detect ballistic missile tests carried out by other countries.
- INS Dhruv is equipped with DRDO developed state of the art active scanned array radar or AESA with the ability to scan various spectrums to monitor spy satellites watching over India as well as monitor missile tests in the entire region.
- This will add to the Indian Navy’s capability to monitor the region from the Gulf of Aden to the ingress routes to the South China Sea via Malacca, Sunda, Lombok, Ombai and Wetar straits.
- The 10,000-tonne ship will be at the heart of India’s future anti-ballistic missile capability as it will act as an early warning system for enemy missiles headed towards Indian cities and military establishments.
- The ship will be a vital key to maritime domain awareness in the Indo-Pacific and is being commissioned at the time when the era of underwater armed and surveillance drones has dawned.
- The nuclear missile tracking ship will be manned by Indian Navy personnel with the Strategic Forces Command (SFC).
- Such ships are operated by France, the US, the UK, Russia, and China only.
- INS Dhruv by mapping the Indian Ocean bed will also help the Indian Navy plan better military operations in all three dimensions—sub-surface, surface and aerial.
- The latest Indian ship will help India’s electronic intelligence-gathering spy agency, the NTRO, to project threat to India in real-time.
- India will be able to keep an eye on the nuclear arsenal of countries like China and Pakistan.
- It is a collaboration between Air Force Research Laboratory, and Defence Research and Development Organisation towards design, development, testing and evaluation of systems to develop an ALUAV prototype.
- Aim:
- To bring sustained leadership focus to promote collaborative technology exchange.
- To create opportunities for co-production and co-development of future technologies for Indian and U.S. military forces.
- Under DTTI, Joint Working Groups on land, naval, air, and aircraft carrier technologies have been established for focus on mutually agreed projects.
- DTTI was announced in 2012 as an ambitious initiative for co-production and co-development of military.
- The three species being conserved at:
- Red-crowned Roofed Turtle (Batagur kachuga)- Sunderbans
- Northern River Terrapin (Batagur baska)- Chambal
- Black Softshell Turtle (Nilssonia nigricans)- different temples in Assam
- The award has been bestowed by several global bodies involved in turtle conservation such as Turtle Survival Alliance, IUCN/SSC Tortoise and Freshwater Turtle Specialist Group, Turtle Conservancy, and the Turtle Conservation Fund.
- The Behler Turtle Conservation Award was established in 2006 to recognise outstanding achievements, contributions and leadership excellence in international turtle conservation and biology.
- There are 29 species of freshwater turtles and tortoises in the country.
POSTED ON 06-09-2021 BY ADMIN
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