Current Affairs for SSC CGL Exams - 30 October 2020

SSC CGL Current Affairs

::NATIONAL::

Dissolving the 22-year-old Environmental Pollution (Pr-evention and Control) Authority that has so far addressed air pollution in Delhi, the Centre has constituted a “permanent” body — Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas.
Encompassing Delhi, Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, the all-powerful body assumes several powers to coordinate action among States, levy fines — ranging up to ₹1 crore or five years in prison — to address air pollution. Brought in via an ordinance on Thursday, the commission awaits a formal perusal by the Supreme Court before it can be brought into effect.
A major weakness, environmentalists and experts have said in tackling air pollution in Delhi-NCR, has been the inability of agencies such as the CPCB to consistently enforce rules on the ground.

A day after it was slammed by the Central Information Commission over a “preposterous” and “evasive” response to an Right to Information query related to the AarogyaSetu application, the Information Technology Ministry has issued directions to take action against the officers responsible.
“The Ministry has taken the lapses made in providing information on ArogyaSetu app very strictly. We have issued directions to initiate suitable action against the officers responsible for this,” an IT Ministry official, who did not want to be named, said.
“We are committed to furnishing all the information sought under the RTI Act to the applicant and comply with the directions of the Central Information Commission (CIC),” the official said.

Briefing media in New Delhi, Information and Broadcasting Minister PrakashJavadekar said, earlier, there used to be one rate for ethanol but now there will be different prices.
In order to offer fair opportunity to the localized industry within the State and reduce crisscross movement of ethanol, Oil Marketing Companies shall decide the criteria for priority of ethanol from various sources taking in account various factors like cost of transportation, availability, etc.
This programme has been extended to whole of India except Union Territories of Andaman Nicobar and Lakshadweep islands with effect from 1st April, 2019 to promote the use of alternative and environment friendly fuels.

Railways has launched MeriSaheli initiative for focused action on security of women passengers across all zones. Railways Ministry said, the objective of this mission is to provide safety and security to lady passengers travelling by trains for their entire journey from starting station to destination station.
MeriSaheli initiative was started as a pilot project in South Eastern Railway in September this year and after getting encouraging response from lady passengers, it was extended to all zones and Konkan Railway with effect from 17th of this month.
Railway Protection Force, RPF has launched this initiative for the security of lady passengers. This initiative is aimed to instill a sense of security among the lady passengers and respond effectively to any security-related issue faced by lady passengers. The RPF team collects only the seat numbers of the ladies and conveys them to stoppages en-route.

The United Kingdom has entered into a strategic partnership to develop India’s fledgling international financial services centre GIFT City, and agreed to set up a new Fund of Funds to be managed by the State Bank of India (SBI) group in order to route the U.K.’s future capital investments into India.
India and the U.K. also signed off on a new infrastructure finance and policy partnership to help India execute its National Infrastructure Pipeline that envisages investments worth $1.4 trillion, at the 10th Economic and Financial Dialogue between the two countries steered by U.K. Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Finance Minister NirmalaSitharaman on Wednesday.
Bilateral trade between India and the U.K. stood at £24 billion in 2019. India is now the second-largest project investment source for the U.K.
To help combat the pandemic, the U.K. and India announced a joint investment of £8 million for research to understand and address the factors leading to the severity of the novel coronavirus in South Asian populations in the U.K. and in India.

Indian Army has developed a simple messaging application named the Secure Application for Internet (SAI). The application supports end to end secure voice, text and video calling services for Android platform over the internet.
The model is similar to commercially available messaging applications like Whatsapp, Telegram, SAMVAD and GIMS and utilises end to end encryption messaging protocol.
SAI scores over on security features with local in-house servers and coding which can be tweaked as per requirements.
Defence Ministry said, SAI will be utilised pan Army to facilitate secure messaging within the service. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has complimented Col Sai Shankar for his skill and ingenuity for developing the application.