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Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated 17 tourism projects around the Statue of Unity (SoU), now called the ‘Kevadia Tourism Circuit’ The 182-metre-high statue dedicated to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel is nestled between the Satpura and Vindhyachal mountain ranges in Kevadia of Narmada district. It was built at a cost of Rs 3,000 crore and is said to be the tallest in the world. It was inaugurated in October 2018. WHAT IS THE KEVADIA TOURISM CIRCUIT? Kevadia is a village in the tribal Narmada district. It is home to the Sardar Sarovar Dam reservoir on the Narmada river, and was a popular picnic spot even before the SoU came up.  The circuit covers 35 tourist spots. Last year, the Gujarat Assembly had passed a Bill to establish the Statue of Unity Area Development and Tourism Governance Authority (SoUTA). The SoUTA will have powers ranging from acquiring land for any development project in the area, which is predominantly tribal, to taking punitive action against those violating it or...

RURAL DEVELOPMENT FUND  RDF is the 3 per cent cess levied on the purchase or sale of agricultural produce under the Rural Development Fund Act, 1987  The act is executed by Punjab Rural Development Board (PRDB) with the Chief Minister as its chairman. RURAL DEVELOPMENT BOARD The RDB was incorporated in April 1987 under Rural Development Act, 1987. It is mandated with the promotion of better agriculture, and granting relief for the loss and damage to agricultural produce.  It also provides the facility of streets lights, dharamshalas, panchayat ghars, canals and drains, government health infrastructure, drinking water, sanitation, and government educational institutions in rural areas. SOURCE OF FUND FOR PUNJAB It comes mainly from central government’s purchase agency, Food Corporation of India, which buys around 13 million tonnes of wheat and 16 million tonnes of paddy every year. Usually Punjab gets Rs 1,750 crore every year — Rs 1,000 crore as 3 per cent RDF for procuri...

 The people of Chile voted in favour of rewriting the South American country’s nearly four-decade-old constitution, which dates back to the era of military dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet. THE REFERENDUM AND ITS PROVISIONS  78 per cent of people voted ‘yes’ in the referendum that was conducted following mass demonstrations against economic inequality across the country. Chileans also voted to elect an assembly of 155 members to draw up the new constitution.  The body will not include any active lawmakers.  It will have a total of nine months, with the option of a one-time extension of three months, to finalise the new document. BACKGROUND  Weeks of protests against economic inequality led up to Chilean President Sebastián Piñera’s decision to hold the referendum in November last year.  The demonstrations first took place in October after a small hike in metro rail fares in the capital city of Santiago. The student-led protests that took place th...

 The name of ordinance is: The Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas Ordinance, 2020. Through the Ordinance, the Centre has also dissolved the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA) for the NCR (EPCA was created in 1998). BACKGROUND  The Ordinance came within days of the hearing in ‘Aditya Dubey vs Union of India’ in the court of the Chief Justice of India, where Solicitor General Tushar Mehta had indicated the setting up of such a Commission. OBJECTIVES The Ordinance seeks to create an overarching body to consolidate all monitoring bodies, and to bring them on one platform so air quality management can be carried out in a more comprehensive, efficient, and time-bound manner. The Centre also seeks to relieve the Supreme Court from having to constantly monitor pollution levels through various pollution-related cases as per the judgment in ‘M C Mehta vs Union of India’, 1988. COMMISSION DETAILS The Commissio...

India and the USA concluded the 3rd India-USA 2+2 dialogue in New Delhi. TAKEAWAYS  US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defence Secretary Mark Esper held talks with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh The US said it will stand by India in confronting threats to its sovereignty, even as the two sides inked an  agreement  for sharing classified satellite imagery and aeronautical data during their 2+2 ministerial dialogue. The focus of discussions was on ways to jointly deal with these challenges and to boost defence and security cooperation to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific The USA reiterated its support to India in defending its territorial sovereignty in the background of the ongoing standoff between India-China. It also referred to the greater threats posed by China in the Indo-Pacific region and by the Covid-19 pandemic in general. AGREEMENTS SIGNED Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Technical Cooperation in Earth Obse...

India and the United States signed the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA). This along with the two agreements signed earlier, which are the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) and the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA), completed a troika of “foundational pacts” for deep military cooperation between the two countries.  BASIC EXCHANGE AND COOPERATION AGREEMENT (BECA) BECA will help India get real-time access to American geospatial intelligence. This will enhance the accuracy of automated systems and weapons like missiles and armed drones.  Through the sharing of information on maps and satellite images, it will help India access topographical and aeronautical data, and advanced products that will aid in navigation and targeting. BECA will provide Indian military systems with a high-quality GPS to navigate missiles with real-time intelligence to precisely target the adversary. LOGISTICS EXCHANGE MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT (LEMO...

WHAT IS THE ISSUE? Comments made by French President Emmanuel Macron in the aftermath of the beheading of a local schoolteacher by a teenaged extremist have caused a furore in many parts of the Muslim world. The remarks, which have been perceived as “anti-Islam”, have led to calls for boycotting French brands, and hashtags such as #BoycottFrenchProducts, #MacronApologizeToMuslims and #NeverTheProphet have been trending on social media.  WHY THE TEACHER WAS KILLED? A middle school teacher in a Paris suburb, 47-year-old Samuel Paty was killed on October 17 because he took a class on freedom of expression in which he showed cartoons of Prophet Mohammad from the satire magazine Charlie Hebdo for discussion.  HOW MACRON IS INVOLVED? Macron had defended the Charlie Hebdo magazine, saying in early September that the right to free speech included the “right to blaspheme”, and pledged to fight against what he described as “Islamic separatism” in France. After Paty’s murder, Macron came...

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2020 has been awarded to the USA poet Louise Glück. WHY FOR? It was awarded for "her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal." Her poetry focuses on the painful reality of being human, dealing with themes such as death, childhood, and family life. She is the fourth woman to win the prize for literature since 2010. NOBEL IN LITERATURE The Nobel Prize in Literature is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901. Though individual works are sometimes cited as being particularly noteworthy, the award is based on an author's body of work as a whole.  The Swedish Academy decides who, if anyone, will receive the prize.  Sully Prudhomme was the first person to receive the honour. INDIANS IN LITERATURE  Poet and writer Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European and Indian to get a Nobel Prize in 1913 in literature.

American economists, Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson were awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences, 2020. WHY FOR? They were awarded for their work on commercial auctions. Milgrom and Wilson improved the auction theory and invented new auction formats for auctioning off many interrelated objects simultaneously, on behalf of a seller motivated by broad societal benefit rather than maximal revenue. Robert Wilson developed the theory for auctions of objects with a common value – a value which is uncertain beforehand but, in the end, is the same for everyone. Paul Milgrom formulated a more general theory of auctions that not only allows common values, but also private values that vary from bidder to bidder. Their work will help in auctioning goods and services, such as radio frequencies, which are difficult to sell in traditional ways. MEMORIAL IN ECONOMICS   The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences is officially known as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Scie...

 The 2020 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the World Food Programme (WFP). WHY FOR? It was awarded for its efforts to combat hunger, bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and preventing the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict. UN WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME The World Food Programme[a] (WFP) is the food-assistance branch of the United Nations.  It is the world's largest humanitarian organization. Founded: 1961. Headquarters: Rome, Italy Head: David Beasley Parent organization: United Nations General Assembly. NOBEL PEACE PRIZE It is presented by Norwegian Nobel Committee since 1901 The Peace Prize is the only Nobel Prize not presented in Stockholm. Henry Dunant of Switzerland for his role in founding the International Committee of the Red Cross and Frédéric Passy of France for being one of the main founders of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and also the main organizer of the first Universal Peace Congress were awarded the first peace prize. The high...

Emmanuelle Charpentier of France and Jennifer A Doudna of the USA were awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. WHY FOR? They were awarded for developing CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors, which is one of gene technology’s sharpest tools. It was for the first time that a Nobel science prize has gone to a women-only team. The CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors can be used to change the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) of animals, plants and microorganisms with extremely high precision. The CRISPR/Cas9 tool has already contributed to significant gains in crop resilience, altering their genetic code to better withstand drought and pests. The technology has contributed to new cancer therapies. CISPR TECHNOLOGY The CRISPR (short for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) technology for gene-editing was first developed in 2012. It makes gene sequencing very easy, simple and extremely efficient providing nearly endless possibilities. NOBEL IN CHEMISTRY The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is aw...

Awarded to three astrophysicists  Roger Penrose  from the UK,  Reinhard Genzel  from Germany, and   Andrea Ghez  from the USA. WHAT FOR? Roger Penrose received half of this year’s prize for the discovery that a black hole   formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity. The theory explains gravity, as objects try to follow a straight line through a universe whose geometry is warped by matter and energy. As a result, planets, as well as light beams, follow curving paths. Genzel and Ghez received the second half of the prize for the discovery of a   supermassive black hole   at the centre of the Milkyway galaxy, now known to be the Sagittarius A*. It has a mass four million times that of the Sun and is confined to an area roughly the size of our Solar System. BLACK HOLE The term ‘black hole’ was coined in the mid-1960s by American Physicist John Archibald Wheeler. Black hole refers to a point in space where matter is...

 -Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine 2020. • Americans Harvey J Alter and Charles M Rice , and British scientist Michael Houghton were awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology, 2020 for the discovery of the Hepatitis C Virus. • The discovery helped in finding a cure for the disease, and effective anti-viral drugs are now available. • Tests have also been developed to identify blood containing this virus, so that infected blood is not given to any patient. • The Nobel award comes with a gold medal and prize money of 10 million Swedish kronor (over USD 1,118,000) and was created by Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. HEPATITIS  • Hepatitis refers to an inflammatory condition of the liver. • It’s commonly caused by a viral infection, but there are other possible causes of hepatitis like autoimmune responses, medications, drugs, toxins, and alcohol. • There are 5 main hepatitis viruses, referred to as types A, B, C, D, and E. • World Hepatitis Day is observed each year on 2...

Coronaviruses are a large family of single-stranded RNA viruses that cause diseases in animals and humans.  These viruses are named so because of spikes found on their surface that give them the appearance of a crown when looked through an electron microscope. CLASSIFICATION  Broadly, coronaviruses (CoV) are the largest group of viruses that belong to the Nidovirales order, which includes Coronaviridae among three others. Coronavirinae can be further subdivided into alpha, beta, gamma and delta coronaviruses. The Coronavirus Study Group of the International Committee for Taxonomy of Viruses is responsible for classifying them and roughly seven years ago they classified them into the aforementioned divisions instead of the serological groups of three. Out of the seven, two are alpha coronaviruses (229E and NL63) and four are beta coronaviruses (OC43, HKU1, MERS and SARS-CoV). HISTORY OF CORONAVIRUS Till date seven different types of coronaviruses have been identified that infec...