JIMEX 2022: India-Japan joint naval drills in the Bay of Bengal begins

• The Japan Maritime Self Defence Force (JMSDF) ships are being led by R Adm Hirata Toshiyuki, Commander Escort Flotilla Four, and Indian Naval ships by R Adm Sanjay Bhalla, Flag Officer Commanding Eastern Fleet.
• JIMEX 22 involves two Phases; exercises at sea and a harbour phase at Visakhapatnam.
• This edition marks the 10th anniversary of JIMEX, which began in Japan in 2012.
• It also coincides with the 70th anniversary of establishing of diplomatic relations between India and Japan.
• JIMEX 22 seeks to consolidate the high degree of interoperability that exists between maritime forces of the two countries, through complex exercises in the surface, sub-surface and air domains.

EXERCISES KAKADU

• INS Satpura and a P8 I Maritime Patrol Aircraft of the Indian Navy reached Darwin in Australia on 12 September 2022, for participation in the multinational Exercise Kakadu – 2022, hosted by the Royal Australian Navy.
• The two week-long Exercise, both in harbour and sea, involves ships and maritime aircraft from 14 navies. During the harbour phase of the exercise, the ship’s crew will engage in operational planning interactions and sports activities with participating Navies.

Annual Flagship Event’s theme for this year is ‘Gati Shakti vision for 5G & Beyond’

• The Minister for Communications, Electronics & Information Technology and Railways, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw will be the Chief Guest at Digital Infrastructure Providers Association (DIPA) Annual Flagship Event 2022.
• The Minister of State for Communications, Shri Devusinh Chauhan will be the Guest of Honour.
• DIPA, an apex industry body of digital infrastructure providers is all set to host its Annual Flagship Event with new theme for this year, “Gati Shakti vision for 5G & Beyond”.
• The event is said to be the biggest event of Telecom industry of year 2022.
• The event’s theme is “Gati Shakti vision for 5G & Beyond”, is fully in line with PM Modi’s Gati Shakti National Master Plan which has helped country’s telecom infrastructure to be more stable.
• DIPA acknowledges Department of Telecommunications (DoT) as the supporting partner of DIPA’s Annual Flagship Event 2022.

Shri Piyush Goyal chairs the first meeting of the newly reconstituted Board of Trade

• The Board of Trade meeting focused on export target setting, the new Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) (2022-27), and the strategies and measures to be taken in order to take forward domestic manufacturing and exports.
• Board of Trade (BOT) has been constituted by merging Council for Trade Development and Promotion with Board of Trade vide notification No. 11/2015-20 dt 17th July 2019.
• The Board of Trade, inter alia, advises the Government on policy measures connected with the Foreign Trade Policy in order to achieve the objectives of boosting India’s trade.

Union Health Minister releases NLEM 2022: Check list

• 384 drugs have been included in this list with addition of 34 drugs, while 26 from the previous list have been dropped. The medicines have been categorized into 27 therapeutic categories.
• The following criteria are followed for inclusion in NLEM:
  • be useful in diseases which is a public health problem in India
  • be licensed/ approved Drugs Controller General (India) (DCGI)
  • have proven efficacy and safety profile based on scientific evidence
  • be comparatively cost effective
  • be aligned with the current treatment guidelines
  • recommended under National Health Programs of India. (e.g. Ivermectin part of Accelerated Plan for Elimination of Lymphatic Filariasis 2018).
  • when more than one medicine are available from the same therapeutic class, one prototype/ medically best suited medicine of that class to be included.
  • price of total treatment is considered and not the unit price of a medicine
  • fixed dose combinations are usually not included
  • vaccines as and when are included in Universal Immunization Program (e.g. Rotavirus vaccine).

CRISPR technology to cure sickle cell disease

• CRISPR is short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, which is a reference to the clustered and repetitive sequences of DNA found in bacteria, whose natural mechanism to fight some viral diseases is replicated in this gene-editing tool.
• Its mechanism is often compared to the ‘cut-copy-paste’, or ‘find-replace’ functionalities in common computer programmes.
• A bad stretch in the DNA sequence, which is the cause of disease or disorder, is located, cut, and removed — and then replaced with a ‘correct’ sequence. And the tools used to achieve this are not mechanical, but biochemical — specific protein and RNA molecules.
• The technology replicates a natural defence mechanism in some bacteria that uses a similar method to protect itself from virus attacks.

Who was Arattupuzha Velayudha Panicker, on whose life Malayalam movie Pathonpatham Noottandu is based?

• It is based on the life of Arattupuzha Velayudha Panicker, a social reformer from the Ezhava community in Kerala who lived in the 19th century.
• Born into a well-off family of merchants in Kerala’s Alappuzha district, Panicker was one of the most influential figures in the reformation movement in the state.
• He challenged the domination of upper castes or ‘Savarnas’ and brought about changes in the lives of both men and women.
• The social reform movement in Kerala in the 19th century led to the large-scale subversion of the existing caste hierarchy and social order in the state.
• Panicker is credited with building two temples dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva, in which members of all castes and religions were allowed entry.
• In 1858, he led the Achippudava Samaram strike at Kayamkulam in Alappuzha. This strike aimed to earn women belonging to oppressed groups the right to wear a lower garment that extended beyond the knees.
• In 1859, this was extended into the Ethappu Samaram, the struggle for the right to wear an upper body cloth by women belonging to backward castes.

Who was activist-author Annabhau Sathe, whose statue Devendra Fadnavis unveiled in Moscow?

• Maharashtra’s Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis is in Moscow to unveil the statue of Lok Shahir (balladeer) Annabhau Sathe at the All-Russia State Library for Foreign Literature. An oil painting of Sathe, who passed away in 1969, will also be unveiled at the Moscow’s Indian consulate.
• Sathe’s work was immensely inspired by the Russian revolution and the Communist ideology. He was a member of the Communist Party of India (CPI), and featured among the selected authors from India whose work was translated in Russian.
• Tukaram Bhaurao Sathe, who later came to be known as Annabhau Sathe, was born in a Dalit family on August 1, 1920 in Maharashtra’s Wategaon village in Satara district.
• Sathe belonged to the Matang community among Dalits.
• He formed Dalit Yuvak Sangh, a cultural group and started writing poems on workers’ protests, agitations.
• In 1939, he wrote his first ballad ‘Spanish Povada’.
• In 1943, he along with Amar Sheikh and Datta Gavhankar, formed the Lal Bawta Kala Pathak.

What are the instant loan apps, and their link to China?

• The arrest of a Chinese national by the Chandigarh Police for allegedly blackmailing and extorting money from people through instant loan mobile applications has raised several concerns.
• The racket of luring people to take instant loans via mobile apps and then extorting money from them gained momentum during the Covid-19 pandemic.
• These mobile applications provide small amounts in instant loans at a higher interest rate, ranging from 15 per cent to 20 per cent. These applications do not follow the strict procedures followed by banks before giving out loans, such as customer verification.
• A person who installs the application and wants a loan has to fill out an online form.
• To get the loan, the mobile user has to allow the application to access the contacts, photos, videos and all other digital content of the mobile phone.
• Many mobile applications provide the loan amount after deducting the interest from the principal amount. Some of the applications even recover the interest on a daily or weekly basis.