Current affairs : April 12th, 2017 for all competitive exams
The General Assembly declared 12 April as
the International Day of Human Space Flight “to celebrate each year
at the international level the beginning of the space era for mankind.
- 12 April 1961 was the date of the first human space flight, carried out by Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet citizen. This historic event opened the way for space exploration for the benefit of all humanity.
HIV/AIDS
Bill passed in Parliament
The Lok Sabha
has passed the Human Immunodeficiency
Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) (Prevention and
Control) Bill, 2017, which will strengthen the
rights of the people infected with the disease. Rajya Sabha has already passed
the Bill.
- Under
the Bill, central and state governments are obliged to provide for
anti-retroviral therapy (ART) and management of opportunistic infections
(infections that take advantage of weakness in the immune system and occur
frequently).
- The
Bill lays down penal provisions for any discrimination practised against a
person with HIV/AIDS and breach of confidentiality.
URJA
MITRA launched by Ministry of Power
URJA MITRA
App, which was launched recently by the Ministry of Power, empowers citizens by real time information sharing on power
supply.
- The
app is a first of its kind application which provides a central platform,
Web-Portal as well as Mobile App, for State Power Distribution utilities
to disseminate power outage information to urban/rural power consumers
across India through SMS/email/push notifications.
GST
Network to encrypt companies’ data to check leaks
Goods and
Services Tax Network (GSTN), the company that will pore through millions of
invoices daily to ensure that the tax applied on transactions is limited to the
value added at that stage, will encrypt the data submitted by businesses and
have firewalls to prevent leaks.
- Only
two people will have access to data—the taxpayer himself and his assessing
officer. The same data will be stored at four different locations to
safeguard it.
- GSTN
is a private, not-for profit company in which the central government
and states and Union territories together hold 49%.
The rest is owned by financial institutions.
Banning online pre-natal sex
determination content dangerous: SC
The Supreme Court on Tuesday observed that a
general ban on all online content about prenatal sex determination will curtail
the fundamental right to know of a genuine information-seeker who is driven by
curiousity.
- Prenatal
sex determination ads is an offence. But a general prohibitory order
against all online information pertaining to sex determination is
dangerous. We will be curtailing the right to know under Article 19 (1)
(a) of the Constitution.
West
Bengal’s Haldia port cleanest in India: Ministry:
The Haldia port of West Bengal has emerged as
the cleanest in a first-ever ranking of all major Indian
ports on sanitation parameters. Vizag port came second.
- The
ranking of all 13 Indian ports was conducted by the Quality Council
of India (QCI) during the ‘Swachhta Pakhwada’.
Online student database to
help detect fake certificates
Telangana has become the first State in the
country integrating technology with the database of its universities and
potential employers giving open access to the latter to check the genuineness
of the academic certificates of its students.
- Any
employer from any part of the world can now access the Online Verification
system launched by the Telangana State Council of Higher Education (TSCHE)
that created the database of students of the last five years passing out
from its State universities. Five years’ data previous to those five years
will also be uploaded soon.
Malayalam made mandatory in
all Kerala schools
The Kerala government has promulgated an
Ordinance to make teaching of Malayalam mandatory up to the Std. X in all
schools.
- The
new law would come into effect this academic year and be applicable to
government, aided, unaided and self-financing institutions following the
State, CBSE and ICSE syllabi.
- The Ordinance exempts students from other States and countries from learning Malayalam. However, those from linguistic minorities would have the option to learn Malayalam.
Malala
receives highest UN honour to promote girls education
United
Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed
Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai as a UN Messenger of Peace to promote girls education.
- At
19, Yousafzai is the youngest Messenger of Peace, the highest honor given
by the United Nations for an initial period of two years.
G20
Ministers in-charge of digital economy issue declaration on ‘Shaping
Digitalisation for an Interconnected World’
G20
Ministers responsible for the digital economy met in Dusseldorf, Germany
recently for a ministerial conference.
- They
have issued a declaration on ‘Shaping Digitalisation for an Interconnected
World’, laying out priorities and a roadmap for policies.
- The
declaration talks about the need for greater availability of
affordable broadband connectivity, improved digital skills,
and literacy, greater digital entrepreneurship and broader adoption of
digital technologies and services for the digital economy to contribute to
achieving the goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development.
- The
declaration includes three annex papers on ‘A Roadmap for Digitalisation: Policies for a Digital Future’, ‘Digital skills in
vocational education and training’ and ‘G20
Priorities on Digital Trade’. Collaboration between
the countries and with all stakeholders, including academia and private sector
and sharing of best practices forms a key part of all three papers.
G7
ministers seek united front on Russia and Syria’s Assad
Foreign
ministers from the Group of Seven (G7) major industrialised nations met recently in Italy, looking to put
pressure on Russia to break its ties with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
- The
G7 also lent support to the U.S. for its attack on the Syrian
government-controlled Shayrat airfield in Homs province.
- The
Group of 7 (G7) is a group consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy,
Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The European Union is
also represented within the G7.
Belle-II
‘rolls in’ to collision point
The High
Energy Accelerator Research Organisation (KEK) has completed the much-awaited
‘rolling-in’ of the Belle-II experiment in Tsukuba, Japan.
- Belle
II is an upgraded detector to allow the experiment to record the enormous
numbers of particle processes that are produced by the SuperKEKB accelerator.
- This
experiment is designed to study violations of the Standard Model and
dark matter.
UNICEF seeks help from Islamic
bodies to achieve vaccination goal
To quell the rumours around the measles-rubella
vaccine, UNICEF has reached out to Islamic civil society organisations,
religious leaders and academia to create trust and address myths around
immunisation.
- India
has one of the largest immunisation programmes in the world, with nearly
26 million children targeted annually for immunisation.
- This
is the first time the rubella vaccine has been introduced in India’s
childhood immunisation programme and misinformation about the vaccine in
minority communities has caused concern in the government.
- Rubella,
which is commonly referred to as German Measles, is a mild infection, but
can have serious consequences if it occurs in pregnant women. The
introduction of these new vaccines in the Universal Immunisation Programme
aims to reduce childhood mortality and protect children from three major
highly preventable and potentially fatal diseases — measles, pneumonia and
diarrhoea.
New firms to get PAN, TAN in a
day
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has tied
up with Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) to issue Permanent Account Number
(PAN) and Tax Deduction Account Number (TAN) in a day, to improve the Ease of
Doing Business for newly incorporated corporates.
- The Certificate of Incorporation (COI) of newly incorporated companies includes the PAN in addition to the Corporate Identity Number (CIN). TAN is also allotted simultaneously.
