Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 18 DECEMBER 2019

::NATIONAL::

The Centre on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has decided to shelve its proposal to hire a social media agency to monitor online platforms.
The top court was told by the Centre that UIDAI's Request for Proposal (RFP) issued for a social media agency has not been pursued by it and as of today there was no plan to have any such an agency.
The top court had last year questioned Moitra, then MLA of TMC over her claim that the Centre's move of hiring a social media monitoring agency was aimed at "mounting surveillance on social media platforms" and asked her to submit material within two weeks in support of her apprehension.
The Centre had earlier told the court that it was willing to accommodate the suggestions of the TMC leader in UIDAI's proposal to hire a social media agency to monitor online platforms.

The government is planning to upgrade services with facilities like creche and smart teaching/learning aid at about 2.5 lakh anganwadi centres across the country in the next five years, senior Women and Child Development Ministry official said.
Currently, a total of 13.77 lakh anganwadi centres are operational in the country with a strength of 12.8 lakh workers and 11.6 lakh helpers, as per the official data.
It is still at a planning stage and is being discussed at multiple levels in the government. After getting necessary approvals, it will be implemented most likely next year, he told PTI on the sidelines of the event.
The objective is to make anganwadi centres interactive and "more child-friendly" by providing additional facilities like creche as well as smart teaching and learning aid, he added.
The official also highlighted the progress made in the implementation of the 'POSHAN Abhiyan' (National Nutrition Mission) that aims to reduce the level of stunting, under-nutrition, anaemia and low birth weight babies.The Mission strives to achieve reduction in stunting from 38.4 per cent to 25 per cent by 2022.

Crop assessment will turn hi-tech from the next crop season in June 2020 as the government plans to use remote sensing, satellites, drones and artificial intelligence extensively to get realtime estimates of crop yields accurately from villages, which will help officials plan food supply better and speed up insurance claims.
“First we will integrate the new age technology with the age-old method of crop cutting experiments (CCE) used to assess crop losses. Gradually we will replace it,” a senior agriculture department official, who is directly involved in the government’s crop insurance scheme, told.
CCE is performed in the field by marking a specific area (25 square metres) in the field, harvesting the crop in the area and weighing the produce, which is taken as the yield per acre. The result, despite not representing the yield of the entire agroclimatic zone, is taken into consideration while calculation crop damage.
The government is already conducting a pilot study of using technology for the assessment of crop yield and harvest losses in at least two districts across states of different agro-climatic zones. It has commissioned the study to 12 technology companies, including government-owned IASRI, ICRISAT and SAC.

India’s banks are set for a $7.6 billion earnings windfall this month as the country’s bankruptcy court has made sudden progress in clearing a backlog of large cases.
The gains will be welcome news for banks, which are facing a further increase in their $130 billion pile of bad loans thanks to India’s shadow banking crisis and the slowdown in the economy. Many lenders are expected to set aside additional provisions in their earnings reports for this quarter.
The total proceeds from the bankruptcy cases should total Rs 54,000 crore ($7.6 billion), according to KarthikSrinivasan, group head of financial sector at ICRA Ratings, the local arm for Moody’’s Investors Service. The banks should be able to use a large part of it “to step up provisioning as bad loans continue to rise,” Srinivasan added.
India has seen slow progress since the bankruptcy court was set up in 2016 to get to grips with the bad loan crisis. Only 15% of cases admitted to the court had produced a resolution plan as of September, according to data published by the insolvency board.
However, the December bonanza will be shortlived as India’s prolonged economic downturn continues to push up overall bad loans, said Suresh Ganapathy, who oversees financial research at Macquarie Capital Securities.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called on countries to take joint responsibility to care for a surging number of displaced people.
In his opening speech to the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva today, Guterres said it is a moment to build a more equitable response to the refugee crisis through a sharing of responsibility.
The forum will last through Wednesday. It begins exactly a year after the UN General Assembly adopted a framework aimed at creating a more predictable and equitable approach to providing assistance to refugees and host communities.

Pakistan's former dictator Pervez Musharraf was today sentenced to death in a case of treason for subverting the Constitution.
This is the first time in Pakistan's history that a military chief has been declared guilty of high treason and handed the death sentence.
A three-member bench of a special court, headed by Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth, found the ailing 76-year-old former Army chief guilty of high treason and handed him the death sentence.
Musharraf is currently living in Dubai on self-exile. The former Army chief left for Dubai for medical treatment in March 2016 and has not returned since, citing security and health reasons.
His indictment for treason was a highly significant moment in a country where the powerful military has held sway for much of its independent history.
Musharraf seized power by ousting then-prime minister Nawaz Sharif in a 1999 bloodless coup. He has also served as Pakistan's president from 2001 to 2008. He was sentenced for suspending the Constitution and imposing extra-constitutional emergency in 2007.

India today successfully conducted a developmental trial of the land-attack version of BrahMos supersonic cruise missile from Chandipur Integrated Test Range, off Odisha coast.
DRDO said, the test was conducted at 0830 hrs, met all flight parameters. It said, the missile flew in the designated complex trajectory meeting all mission parameters. The nine-meter long missile can travel at thrice the speed of sound and carry a conventional warhead weighing up to 300 kg.
In March, 2017, the first extended version of the BrahMos missile, which had a strike range of 450 km, was test-fired successfully from Odisha coast.