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The first solar powered Textile Mill in Asia will come up in Parbhani district, Maharashtra.   The Jai Bhawani Women's Co-operative Textile Mill will become the first Solar Powered textile mill in Asia. The cost of the project is 100 crore rupees.  COTTON IN INDIA Cotton is one of the principal commercial crops of India and it provides livelihood to about 6 million cotton farmers.  India produces about 6 Million tons of cotton every year which is about 23% of the world cotton.  SOLAR ENERGY SCHEME FOR POWER LOOMS  It was launched in 2018 by Union Ministry of Textiles.  Under this scheme, the centre offered assistance in form of capital subsidy to set up solar power plants to address power shortage issues in the powerloom units.

Argentina’s Congress legalised abortions up to the 14th week of pregnancy.  It is being seen as a ground-breaking decision since Argentina had some of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws. Prior to the passing of the bill, abortions were only permitted in cases of rape or when the woman’s health was at serious risk.  Activists have been campaigning for years, calling for an overturning of this law that has been in existence since 1921. IMPORTANCE  Prior to this, girls and women were forced to turn to illegal and unsafe procedures because abortion was against the law in Argentina.   According to Human Rights Watch, unsafe abortion was the leading cause of maternal mortality in the country. The Catholic Church and the evangelical community wield immense power and influence in Argentina and had strongly opposed the passing of this bill.  The bill had been one of President Alberto Fernández’s campaign promises where he had said he would reintroduce it aft...

The US House of Representatives overrode President Donald Trump’s veto of the annual defence authorisation bill by a vote of 322-87 for the first time during his tenure.  The $740 billion legislation called the National Defense Authorisation Act (NDAA) sets forth the policies for the Department of Defense (DoD)’s programs and activities every year.  This is the first time that Congress has overridden a veto from the president. A report in the Financial Times said that the legislation is a “must pass” since it pays the salaries of the American armed forces and that no lawmaker would want to be associated with efforts to block military pay and the funding of weapons. WHY DID TRUMP VETO THE BILL? Defenders of Trump’s veto on the legislation have said that the legislation fails to terminate Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) and that it is a “gift” to China and Russia. Section 230 of the CDA provides immunity to online platforms and protects them from being liable...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the 351-km New Bhaupur-New Khurja section in Uttar Pradesh of the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor. It was built by the Tata Projects Ltd at a cost of Rs 5,750 crore through a loan from World Bank. PM also dedicated to the nation a state-of-the-art Operation Control Centre in Prayagraj. DEDICATED FREIGHT CORRIDOR (DFC) The DFC consists of two arms.  The section launched recently is part of the 1,839-km Eastern DFC that starts at Sohnewal (Ludhiana) in Punjab and ends at Dankuni in West Bengal.  The other arm is the around 1,500-km Western DFC from Dadri in Uttar Pradesh to JNPT in Mumbai World Bank is funding a majority of the EDFC. The WDFC is being funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency. IMPORTANCE Freight trains plying on this section from now on will help decongest the existing Kanpur-Delhi main line of Indian Railways, which currently handles trains at 150% of its line capacity.  This section will also catch th...

The 11-month transition period during which the UK and the European Union were supposed to negotiate the nature of their post-Brexit economic relationship will come to an end on December 31.  The two sides have struck a trade and co-operation deal. The new agreement which was unanimously approved by the EU nations will come into effect from January 1. CHANGES The UK will leave the EU Single Market and Customs Union (under the customs union the UK could not negotiate with other member nations of the EU separately), all EU policies and international agreements.  This means that the free movement of goods, people, services and capital will stop from January 1 onwards as the EU and UK will become two separate market spaces, with distinct regulations. As part of the free trade agreement, the UK and EU have agreed to a 100 per cent tariff liberalisation, which means that there will be no tariffs or quotas on goods that move between the UK and EU.  The agreement is based on inte...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to flag off the country’s first ‘driverless’ metro in Delhi. The first ‘driverless’ train will roll out on the 38-km-long Line 8 or Magenta Line of the Delhi Metro. The line has a 390-km-long network spread across the national capital and adjoining cities. The Centre notified changes in the Metro Railways General Rules, 2020 as the previous norms did not allow driverless services. Delhi Metro, now the country’s largest urban mass rapid transit system, had commenced operations on December 24, 2002 on a 8.4-km stretch between Shahdara and Tis Hazari stations

Mamata Banerjee on 25 December wrote to Nobel laureate Amartya Sen expressing support for him in a controversy over reports that he is on the Visva Bharati University's list of illegal plot holders. WHAT HAPPENED? Visva-Bharati University Vice-Chancellor Prof. Bidyut Chakrabarty, had claimed that he had received a call from Prof. Sen, who identified himself as “Bharat Ratna Amartya Sen” and requested that hawkers around his house not be evicted as his daughter, who visited Santiniketan often, would be inconvenienced. Amartya Sen, however, denied having any such phone call. On 24 December, VBU authorities wrote to the West Bengal government alleging that dozens of its plots have been recorded wrongly and that the list of unauthorised occupants includes eminent economist Amartya Sen. The university alleged that Sen has reportedly occupied 13 decimals of land, in addition to the 125 decimals of legally leased land given to his father by the university. Amartya Sen responded that the l...

US President Donald Trump has presented the prestigious Legion of Merit, a top US honour, to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his leadership in elevating the strategic partnership of India and the US. India's Ambassador to the US, Taranjit Singh Sandhu, accepted the award on behalf of PM Modi from the US National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien at the White House.   Trump also presented the Legion of Merit to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.  LEGION OF MERIT The Legion of Merit Medal was established by Congress on 20 July, 1942. It is a five-rayed white cross, edged with red, resting on a green wreath with a blue centre containing 13 white stars. It is a military award of the United States Armed Forces that is given for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements. The decoration is issued to members of the eight uniformed services of the United States as well as to...

India ranked 131 among 189 countries on the Human Development Index (HDI) for 2019. It slipped two places from the previous year, according to the Human Development Report (HDR) 2020. The report was released by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Norway topped the index, followed by Ireland and Switzerland. HDI FACTS The first HDR was launched in 1990 by the Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and Indian Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. HDI measures average achievement on three basic aspects of human development, life expectancy, education, and per capita income.  For the first time, the United Nations Development Programme introduced a new metric to reflect the impact caused by each country’s per-capita carbon emissions and its material footprint, which measures the amount of fossil fuels, metals and other resources used to make the goods and services it consumes. INDIA  India’s gross national income (GNI) per capita on the basis of purchasing power parity (PPP), too, fel...

India-Russia annual summit has been postponed for 1st time in two decades.  Some experts cited Moscow’s unease with Quad as a reason of the postponement. However, officials from both countries said that the summit did not take place in 2020 because of the COVID pandemic.  They said that it was a mutually agreed decision between the two Governments. PREVIOUS SUMMITS The last, 20th India-Russia Bilateral Summit was held in September 2019 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had visited the Russian port city of Vladivostok. India had also given Russia a loan of 1 Billion dollars for Vladivostok. INDIA-RUSSIA India and Russia has shared good diplomatic relations with Russia since its independence in 1947. The relationship began with a visit by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to the Soviet Union in June 1955. The first major political initiative, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, between India and Russia began with the Strategic Partnership signed between the two cou...

Recently, India for the first time hosted the heads of governments (HoG) meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). This was three years after India joined the eight-nation group in 2015.  The focus of this virtual conference was in developing a plan to overcome the socio-economic consequences of Covid-19 in the region.  SHANGHAI FIVE GROUP  The Shanghai Five consisted of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. It was established in 1996. It had emerged from a series of border demarcation and demilitarization talks which the four former Soviet republics held with China.  Following the accession of Uzbekistan to the organisation in 2001, the Shanghai Five was renamed the SCO. SCO  Formed : 2001. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Charter, formally establishing the organisation, was signed in June 2002. It entered into force on 19 September 2003.   Headquarters : Bejing, China. Members : 8 (India joined in 2017 along with Pakistan at...

The 47th session of the Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) of OIC was held at the Mahatma Gandhi International Conference Center in Niamey, Niger. The Mahatma Gandhi International Convention Centre (MGICC), was established in Africa by India in the memory of Mahatma Gandhi whose 150th birth anniversary was observed in 2019. OIC RESOLUTION  The resolution on Kashmir was part of the “political resolutions” that are approved every year by the Islamic bloc during their annual gathering. The latest OIC political resolution on the “Jammu and Kashmir dispute” calls on India to rescind the constitutional changes introduced on August 5 2020, describing the move as “illegal and unilateral”.  It also stated that India should cancel the issues of domicile certificates to people from outside the union territory.  RESPONSE OF INDIA India strongly hit out at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and accused it of making "factually incorrect and unwarranted" references to Jammu ...

Iran's senior most nuclear scientist, Mohsin Fakhrizadeh was assassinated near Tehran on November 27. Fakhrizadeh was the Head of Research and Innovation Organization at the defense ministry.  He was widely seen by Western intelligence as the mastermind of clandestine Iranian efforts to develop nuclear weapons. Iran, however, denies that Fakhrizadeh was involved in any such undertaking and that it ever tried to weaponize uranium enrichment for nuclear energy. Fakhrizadeh also has the rare distinction of being the only Iranian scientist named in the International Atomic Energy Agency's 2015 "final assessment" of open questions about Iran's nuclear program and whether it was aimed at developing a bomb.

It is $1.6 billion project of NASA to send the next man and first woman to the moon by 2024. This project is first of its kind as no country has launched a stay mission to the moon. The project is carried out in collaboration with European Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency, Japan Space Agency and Australian Space Agency. ARTEMIS ARTEMIS stands for “Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun”. ARTEMIS is made up of two probes P1 and P2.  These probes were originally members of the successful mission THEMIS in Earth orbit studying Earth’s aurora, but were redirected to the moon in an effort to save the two probes from losing power in Earth’s shade. PURPOSE Through this new mission scientists look to learn more about the Earth-moon Lagrange points, the solar wind, the Moon’s plasma wake and how the Earth’s magnetotail and the moon’s own weak magnetism interact with the solar wind. NAMING The mission is named Artemis after the tw...

The Uttar Pradesh (UP) government recently passed an ordinance to deal with unlawful religious conversions. The ordinance is in news as is it is seen to be in opposition of various judgements of the Supreme Court (SC).  PROVISIONS It makes religious conversion for marriage a non-bailable offence. The onus will be on the defendant to prove that conversion was not for marriage. The notice period to the District Magistrate for the religious conversion is two months. In case of conversion done by a woman for the sole purpose of marriage, the marriage would be declared null and void. Violation of the provisions of the law would invite a jail term of not less than one year extendable to five years with a fine of Rs. 15,000. If a minor woman or a woman from the Scheduled Caste (SC) or Scheduled Tribe (ST) converts, the jail term would be a minimum of three years and could be extended to 10 years with a fine of Rs. 25,000. The ordinance also lays down strict action, including cancellation ...