Government declares top sporting events as events of national importance

• The notification, which supersedes the earlier one issued in March 2021, has declared all Olympics Games, Commonwealth Games and Asian Games as events of national importance.

The following list is not exhaustive:

• Under the cricket category, all official One-Day, Twenty-20 and Test matches played by the Indian team and all International Cricket Council (ICC) Test matches featuring India; semi-finals and finals of ICC One-Day international World Cup; semi-finals and finals of ICC Twenty-20 World Cup have been recognised.
• The tennis category includes all matches featuring India in Davis Cup, and in Grand Slam tournaments, finals of men’s singles, women’s singles and all matches featuring Indian player from the quarter-finals onwards.

Punjab promoting green manure big time

• Green manures are crops grown specifically for maintaining soil fertility and structure.
• They are normally incorporated back into the soil, either directly, or after removal and composting.
• There are three main varieties of green manure, including Dhaincha, Cowpea, Sunhemp.
• Also some crops such as summer moong, mash pulses and guar act as green manure.
• Green manure varieties are incorporated into the soil when the crop is 42-56 days old.
• Green manure must be leguminous in nature, bear maximum nodules on its roots to fix large amount of atmospheric nitrogen in the soil.
• It helps in enhancing the organic matter in the soil, meets the deficiency of the micronutrients and reduces the consumption of the inorganic fertilisers etc.

Medication Abortions Are Increasing

• Medication abortion is a regimen of pills women can take at home, a method increasingly used around the world.
• The protocol approved for use in the United States includes two medications.
• The first one, mifepristone, blocks a hormone called progesterone that is necessary for a pregnancy to continue. The second, misoprostol, brings on uterine contractions.
• The Food and Drug Administration has approved medication abortion for up to 10 weeks of pregnancy. World Health Organization guidelines say it can be used up to 12 weeks at home and after 12 weeks in a medical office.
• Is it effective, and is it safe? Yes on both counts. In US studies, the combination of these pills causes a complete abortion in more than 99% of patients and is as safe as the traditional abortion procedure administered by a doctor in a clinic.
• During the pandemic, medication abortion became more common because patients wanted to avoid going to clinics in person, and a change in federal law made it easier for them to get prescriptions via telemedicine.

Army Chief Gen. Manoj Pande receives Param Vishisht Seva Medal

• Param Vishisht Seva Medal (PVSM) is a military award of India.
• It was constituted in 1960 and since then it is awarded in recognition to peace-time service of the most exceptional order and may be awarded posthumously.
• All ranks of the Indian Armed Forces including Territorial Army, Auxiliary and Reserve Forces, Nursing officers and other members of the Nursing services and other lawfully constituted Armed Forces are eligible for the award.

Four Reuters photographers win Pulitzer

• Arguably the most coveted award for journalists from across the world, the Pulitzer is announced by America’s Columbia University and bestowed on the recommendation of the Pulitzer Prize Board.
• The Pulitzer Prize is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature and musical composition within the United States.
• It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer.
• Prizes are awarded yearly in twenty-one categories.

Indians who have previously won the Pulitzer

• A member of the Ghadar Party in America, Indian-American journalist Gobind Behari Lal, was the first from India to win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism in 1937. He won the award for reporting with four others, for their coverage of science at the tercentenary of Harvard University.
• In 2000, London-born Indian-American writer Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for her debut short story collection Interpreter of Maladies.
• In 2011, Siddhartha Mukherjee (Indian-American physician, biologist and author) won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his demystification of cancer in The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.

Over half of India’s population is still under age 30, slight dip in last 5 years

• There has been only a slight dip in the young population’s share in the last five years.
• Between the National Family Health Survey-4 (2015-16) and NFHS-5 (2019-21), the under-15 population has declined by 2 percentage points, from 29% to 27%, while the over-60 population has increased by as many points, from 10% to 12%.
• Over half the population (52%) is below 30, compared to 55.5% in NFHS-4.
• The NFHS divides the population into 5-year age groups from 0-4 years to 75-79, while those over 80 are counted in a single age group.
• The age pyramid shows India’s population is young, which is typical of developing countries with low life expectancy.
• The pyramid also shows that the average household size has decreased slightly between 2015-16 and 2019-21 (from 4.6 persons to 4.4).
• Just over one-sixth of households (18%) have female heads, up from 15% in NFHS-4.

J&K LG Manoj Sinha visits 8th Century Sun Temple in Anantnag

• The ASI, which functions under the Ministry of Culture, is the custodian of the protected monument.
• According to ASI officials, prayers are allowed at its protected sites only if they were “functioning places of worship” at the time it took charge of them. No religious rituals can be conducted at non-living monuments where there has been no continuity of worship when it became an ASI-protected site.
• Although the Martand Sun Temple was once a thriving place of worship, commissioned by Lalitaditya Muktapida in the eighth century, it was destroyed by Sikandar Shah Miri in the 14th century.

Himachal Pradesh is the first ‘smoke-free state’ in India.

• This milestone has been achieved due to the effective implementation of Central Governments’ Pradhan Mantri ‘Ujjwala Yojana’(PMUY) and ‘Himachal Grihini Suvidha Scheme’ of the Himachal Pradesh government.
• Now, 100% of households in Himachal Pradesh have LPG connections in their houses.
• Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 1, 2016 from Ballia district in Uttar Pradesh to provide clean cooking fuel to poor households and the target to provide Eight crore deposit free LPG connections was achieved in September, 2019.
• With the implementation of PMUY, approx. 1 lakh people have got employment through the LPG distribution system all over India as of February 23, 2022.