IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-02

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Pakistan denies President Kovind’s request to use its airspace for his flight to Iceland

News

• Pakistan had refused a request by India to allow President Ram Nath Kovind to use its airspace for his flight to Iceland.

Closed airspace

• The decision was approved by Prime Minister Imran Khan in view of the tense situation in Kashmir.
• Pakistan fully closed its airspace on February 26 after the Indian Air Force fighter jets struck a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorist training camp in Balakot following the Pulwama terror attack in Kashmir in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed.
• In March, it partially opened its airspace but kept its ban on Indian flights.

PM Modi meets Japanese PM Shinzo Abe in Russia

News

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi met his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe and the two leaders pledged to deepen the robust bilateral ties in a number of areas, including in economic and defence sectors.

Bilateral ties

• Indian Prime Minister arrived in Russia on a two-day visit, is the first Indian Prime Minister to visit to the Russian Far East Region.
• The meeting between Indian Prime Minister and Abe comes after they met at the G-20 Summit in Osaka in Japan and on the sidelines of the G7 Summit in Biarritz in France.
• Discussed deepening multi-faceted ties in economic, defense and security, start-up and 5G areas and exchanged views on regional situation.
• Prime Minister arrived in Russia on Wednesday to participate in the 20th India-Russia annual summit and the fifth meeting of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF).
• The forum focuses: on development of business and investment opportunities in the Russian Far East Region, and presents enormous potential for developing close and mutually beneficial cooperation between India and Russia in the region.

Gujarat govt launches biometric online attendance system at 40,000 schools

News

• In a bid to curb absenteeism at government schools, the Gujarat government on Teachers’ Day launched a facial recognition-based biometric online attendance system across 40,000 primary schools.

Biometric online attendance system

• Soon other departments will also move to a similar system that will ensure no teacher or government employee indulged in absenteeism.
• To implement the system, the State Education Department will distribute tablets equipped with geo-tagging and biometrics software to all schools in the next two months.
• From November onward, attendance of students in all government schools will be integrated into the system.

Kerala plans law for Sabarimala temple

News

• An order of the Supreme Court records that the Kerala government counsel has submitted that the State is preparing a separate law to administer the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple.

Separate law

• The new legislation would cover not just the Sabarimala temple, but all temples coming under the Travancore Devaswom Board in the State.
• There are over 150 temples, including the Sabarimala temple, administered by the Board.
• State of Kerala submits that the State is considering enacting a separate legislation with regard to the administration of the Sabarimala Sree Ayyappa Swamy Temple.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-03

Panel set up to identify infra projects for ₹100 lakh-crore investment

News

• The government had constituted a high-level task force to identify infrastructure projects for ₹100 lakh-crore worth investment to be made by 2024-25 as India aims to become a $5-trillion economy.

Task force

• The task force, will draw up a ‘national infrastructure pipeline’ of ₹100 lakh-crore.
• This would include greenfield and brownfield projects costing above ₹100 crore each.
• The task force will comprise secretaries from different Ministries, senior officials and the NITI Aayog CEO.
• It will identify technically feasible and financially/economically viable infrastructure projects that can be initiated in 2019-20.
• Further, it has been asked to list the projects that can be included in the pipeline for each of the remaining five years between FY21 and FY25.
• The task force, constituted by Finance Minister will submit its report on the pipeline for 2019-20 by October 31, 2019 and on the indicative pipeline for 2021-25 by December-end, the Ministry said.
• To achieve the target of scaling India’s GDP to $5 trillion by 2024-25, the country needs to spend about $1.4 trillion (₹100 lakh crore) from the fiscal 2019-20 to 2024-25 on infrastructure.
• In the past decade (fiscal 2008-17), India invested about $1.1 trillion in infrastructure.

Govt to spend ₹3.5 lakh cr on mega water scheme in 5 years, says Modi

News

• Prime Minister said ₹3.5 lakh crore will be spent in the next five years under the newly formed Jal Jeevan Mission.

Aim: to provide piped water (‘Har Ghar Jal’) to all rural households by 2024.

• The move was aimed at fulfilling legendary socialist late Ram Manohar Lohia’s dream of providing water, and toilets, to mitigate the hardships faced by women.

IAF completes first level of selecting astronauts for Gaganyaan mission from its test pilots pool

News

• The Indian Air Force has completed the first level of selecting astronauts for the ambitious Gaganyaan mission from its pool of test pilots.

Selection of astronauts

• The test pilots underwent necessary extensive physical exercise tests, lab investigations, radiological tests, clinical tests and evaluation on various aspects of their psychology.
• 25 test pilots were part of the initial selection process.
• This will be a multi-layered selection process and only 2-3 test pilots will make it to the final list.
• The first Gaganyaan flight scheduled for 2022 will carry three astronauts, who will be picked from among the test pilots in the armed forces.
• The short-listed candidate is being done in batches and the candidates will be sent to Russia for training.

After Vikram lander debacle, ISRO shifts focus to Chandryaan 2’s orbiter

News

• The lander Vikram was to have set itself down on the moon’s surface September 7.

Spacecraft on moon

• It had been descending for 12 minutes. Three minutes before that, it lost contact with earth and went blank.
• It was 2.1 km above the moon’s surface then, ISRO said soon after it detected the setback.
• India the fourth country to place a spacecraft on moon after the then USSR, the U.S. and China. Also, India would have been the first country to reach close to the lunar south pole.
• ISRO now shifts its focus to making the best use of the orbiter, which is moving and working well, at 100 km above moon.
• The orbiter carries eight of the 13 Indian payloads three of which were on the lander and two on the rover Pragyan sitting within the lander.

 

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