Daily Current Affairs - Civil Services - 10-04-2020

Useful compilation of Civil Services oriented - Daily Current Affairs - Civil Services - 10-04-2020

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• SECTION 1 - TEN NEWS HEADLINES

1. The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said the country has maintained a steady rate of COVID-19 positive cases — 3% to 5% over the past month and half — and has registered no significant increase in this trend so far. The country currently has 5,865 confirmed cases and 169 deaths. This includes 591 new cases and 20 deaths in the last 24 hours. 473 people had recovered and been discharged so far. The ICMR noted that 1,44,910 samples from 1,30,792 individuals had been tested as on April 9. Of these, 5,734 samples tested positive till date.
2. Odisha extended the lockdown till April 30. The state became first to do so. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik made the announcement after a Cabinet meeting held through videoconferencing. He said one had to decide between protecting the lives of the people and economic activity at this crucial juncture, and the Cabinet decided that saving lives was the topmost priority now. Patnaik announced that the State would recommend to the Central government to extend the national lockdown up to April 30. Patnaik said his government's intervention for their well-being would be through the State governments concerned. Activities related to agriculture, animal husbandry and MGNREGS would be facilitated during the lockdown period.
3. The Delhi government will carry out ‘Operation SHIELD’ at 21 locations identified as containment zones in the Capital. ‘Operation SHIELD’, which includes sealing, identifying and quarantining people in containment zones, doorstep delivery of essential items and door-to-door chec-king of people in those areas, will be undertaken by the Delhi government.
4. With Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan making it clear that the State would explore all available treatment options for COVID-19, the State has gone a step ahead and won the Indian Council of Medical Research’s approval to explore the feasibility of administering convalescent plasma transfusion on critically ill patients. It may be noted that plasma from the blood of previously infected yet healthy individuals had been transferred to five critically ill patients in China and their condition had steadily improved and were subsequently discharged from hospitals. The Transfusion Medicine Department of Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology would help the State Health Department in exploring the feasibility of plasma therapy for COVID-19 treatment.
5. India’s factory output accelerated 4.5% in February in comparison to the previous year. The growth in the Index of Industrial Production came on the back of higher output in mining, electricity and manufacturing sectors, according to the data released by the National Statistical Office. The cumulative growth for the financial year so far, from April to February 2019-20, stands at 0.9%. February saw the second straight month of improved industrial output after a contraction in December.
6. The rupee hit a record low during intraday trade, which prompted the central bank to intervene to help the currency to cut some losses. After opening at 76.11 a dollar as compared to its previous close of 76.34, the rupee hit an all-time low of 76.55 in afternoon deals. It finally closed at 76.28, up 6 paise from its previous close. The rupee has been depreciating despite the Reserve Bank of India infusing dollars in the currency market since last month.
7. India’s Covid-19 count rose sharply with states confirming 781 new cases—the highest single-day tally so far and 30% more than the previous highest of 598 recorded earlier. Maharashtra led the surge with 229 cases, followed by TN (96), Rajasthan (80), Gujarat (76) and Delhi (51). Thursday’s figure also broke the pattern of the last 7 days, when daily cases had remained in the 500-600 zone. Thirty-one deaths were reported, taking the toll in India to 232.
8. As people work from home during the lockdown, cases of cyberattacks, hacking, phishing and even ransomware have been on the rise, posing a serious challenge to the new economic realities where digital networks are increasingly fuelling GDP, businesses, government machinery, and even school & college classes. Against the relatively secured networks at offices and workplaces, home networks are highly vulnerable, especially when many teammates are logging in through their personal devices under “bring your own device (BYOD)” practices.
9. Google was ordered by French antitrust regulators to pay publishers to display snippets of their articles after years of helping itself to excerpts for its own news service. The French antitrust agency gave the Alphabet Inc unit three months to thrash out deals with press publishers and agencies demanding talks on how to remunerate them for displaying their content. The firm may have abused its dominant market power, causing “serious and immediate harm” to the media, the Autorite de la concurrence warned. European publishers have been pushing regulators for over a decade to tackle the power of Google, which has lured away billions of euros in advertising revenue. This is the first time they have landed a punch. The EU has failed to act on complaints that Google unfairly displays publishers’ content.
10. Ipca Labs has said there is a large supply of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), the much-touted drug being used for treating certain Covid-19 patients, with the capacity in India built for global markets besides meeting the country’s demand. The Mumbaibased pharmaceutical company is one of the two largest manufacturers of HCQ. Ipca is not part of the US supply line at present due to logistical issues, but hopes to catch up soon in about a month’s time. It is, for now, helping the Indian government to build its buffer stock of 10 crore dosages, and an additional 3-4 crore dosages for state governments. 

 

Important Exam Notifications
S. No.	Institution	Exam or Post Name	Vacancies or Seats	Qualification	Last Date to Apply	Link for Details
1	ESIC Medical College & Hosp Faridabad	Research Scientist, Research Asst	6	MBBS, PG (Relevant Discipline)	--	https://www.esic.nic.in/attachments/recruitmentfile/895999690ec4517cb0246a1aeccea1dc.pdf
2	IITM	Research Fellow	36	PG (Relevant Discipline)	April 30, 2020	https://www.tropmet.res.in/jobs_pdf/1586177149IITM-JRF-2020-21-Research-Fellowship-under-MRFP.pdf
3	IITM	Research Associate, Research Fellow	30	Degree, PG (Relevant Discipline)	April 30, 2020	https://www.tropmet.res.in/jobs_pdf/1586176601IITM-JRF-2020-21-Research-Associateships-and-Research-Fellowships.pdf
4	Western Railway	Full Time Contract Medical Practitioner	28	--	April 10, 2020	https://wr.indianrailways.gov.in/cris//uploads/files/1586086379671-New%20Doc%2004-05-2020%2013.13.42.pdf
5	South East Central Railway	Staff Nurse, Pharmacist, Dresser, Lab Technician & Other	103	Matriculation/ HSC, 10+2, Diploma, B.Sc	April 13, 2020	https://img.freejobalert.com/uploads/2020/04/Notification-South-East-Central-Railway-Para-Medical-Staff-Posts.pdf
6	North Western Railway	Staff Nures, Hospital Attendant, X-Ray Technician, Lab Technician & Other	168	10th, 10+2, Diploma, Degree	April 9, 2020	https://nwr.indianrailways.gov.in/ticker/1586145038547jp.pdf
7	Northern Railway	Contract Medical Practitioner	26	MBBS	April 15, 2020	https://nr.indianrailways.gov.in/nr/recruitment/1586173876070_vacancy%20notification%2006042020.pdf

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• SECTION 2 - DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS

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• 1. CONSTITUTION AND LAW (Prelims, GS Paper 2, Essay paper)

1.1 Weekly Roundup – Constitution and Law

• SC allows NDTV’s appeal to quash Income Tax re-assessment notice – Bench of Justice L. N. Rao and Deepak Gupta.
• SC bats for amicable settlement between Kerala and Karnataka: Karnataka road blockade - Bench of Justice L. N. Rao and Deepak Gupta.
• “High Court can only exercise jurisdiction over state of which it is the high court” – SC holds in judgement – Bench of Justice Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose
• SC holds that person who take benefit of a portion of the will cannot change the remaining portion of the will - Bench of Justice L. N. Rao and Deepak Gupta.
• Expressing concern over plight of migrant workers, notice issued on PIL seeking wages by government by SC -  Bench of Justice L. N. Rao and Deepak Gupta.
• Notice issued by Supreme Court in letter to CJI by MP Mahua Moitra, highlightig plight of migrant workers - Bench of Justice L. N. Rao and Deepak Gupta.
• A plea filed before the Supreme Court seeking restoration of 4G mobile internet services in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir amid COVID 19 outbreak.
• VVIP Chopper Scam: SC directs accused Christian Michael to approach High Court for Interim Bell – Justice DY Chandrachud and MR Shah
• SC directs centre to ensure welfare of migrant workers, spread awareness of and take action against fake news – Bench of Justice S. A. Bobde and Justice L. N. Rao
  

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• 2. ECONOMY (Prelims, GS Paper 3, Essay paper

2.1 New Great Depression in World

• As death tolls in the U.S. and Europe soared higher world powers scrambled to build a global response to the human tragedy and once-in-a-century economic collapse caused by the coronavirus epidemic.
• In a locked-down New York, the UN Security Council was to meet on the pandemic for the first time.
• EU Finance Ministers are wrangling over how to bail out their worst hit members Italy and Spain.
• The U.S. Federal Reserve tossed out just such a rescue to Americans, with chairman Jerome Powell announcing financing facilities of $2.3 trillion to provide as much relief and stability as we can during this period of constrained economic activity.
• The U.S. economy is moving with alarming speed towards very high unemployment.
• Another 6.6 million U.S. workers filed for unemployment benefits last week meaning that nearly 17 million workers have lost their jobs since mid-March.
• The staggering jobless numbers came even as President Trump and his team grappled with restarting the economy amid signs that the pandemic is tailing off due to mitigation efforts.
• Meanwhile, the number of worldwide cases of the novel coronavirus since it spread from China earlier this year topped 1.5 million, according to an AFP tally. More than 88,981 people have died.
• Alongside the personal tragedies and the pressure on overburdened hospitals the World Trade Organization warned of the worst recession of our lifetimes.
• The worst-hit countries in Europe — the worst-hit continent — are Italy and Spain, where daily death tolls are now down from their peaks but still running high, despite strict lockdowns.

2.2 Reserve Bank of India launched Twitter campaign featuring Amitabh Bachchan to promote digital modes of payment among COVID-19 pandemic.

 

2.3 GDP growth of India in 2020-21 to decline to 4.8% due to COVID-19 pandemic: UN ESCAP (United Nations Economic and Social Survey of Asia and the Pacific) 2020.
 

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• 3. ENVIRONMENT AND ECOLOGY (Prelims, GS Paper 3, Essay paper)

3.1 Not Available Today

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• 4. FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Prelims, GS Paper 2, Essay paper)

4.1 A double blow for India-Gulf economic ties 

• The Gulf region is at the epicentre of a perfect storm: apart from the COVID-19 pandemic, it also has an oil price meltdown. 
• India’s relations with the eight Gulf countries needs to be anticipated and managed.
• Oil prices in a tailspin - The region, especially Iran, has been mauled by COVID-19, and the figures are yet to peak. The pandemic has put nearly a third of the world’s population under some form of lockdown curbing the consumption of hydrocarbons, the mainstay of Gulf economies. The consequent oil glut began depressing the price but the OPEC+ failed to reach a production-curtailing strategy. As a result, OPEC+ unravelled with each producer chasing a higher share in a collapsing market. Consequently, the oil prices went for a tailspin having fallen by 55% during March to an 18-year low on March 30. International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that developing countries’ oil and gas revenues will decline by 50% to 85% in 2020 with potentially far-reaching economic and social consequences. The global economy is expected to have a recession induced by COVID-19 this year.
• India’s economic ties with the Gulf states have two dominant verticals: the economic symbiosis and India’s expatriate community. 
• Bilateral economic ties are strong: the India-Gulf trade stood around $162 billion in 2018-19, being nearly a fifth of India’s global trade. It was dominated by import of crude oil and natural gas worth nearly $75 billion, meeting nearly 65% of India’s total requirements. Some of these countries have large Indian investments and some have planned large investments in India. 
• Second, the number of Indian expatriates in the Gulf states is about nine million, and they remitted nearly $40 billion back home. Both these intertwined pillars of India-Gulf ties have been affected by the recent maelstrom roiling the shared region.
• India being the world’s third largest importer of crude, a sharp and prolonged decline in oil prices helps its current account. However, this is not an unmitigated blessing. The Gulf’s lower oil revenues also presage decreased bilateral trade and investments as well as expatriates’ remittances — all of them adding to India’s current financial stress.
• Oil is a cyclic commodity and the Gulf producers have long evolved a pattern to handle its periodic lows. They tend to tighten their belts and dip into their reserves. They also transfer the burden on to the last person in line, viz. the Asian expatriate. The fresh recruitment stops, salaries are either lowered or stalled, taxes raised and localisation drives launched. The net result is that a large number of expatriates return to their homes. 
• In the longer run, it is quite clear that we need to find new drivers for the India-Gulf synergy.

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• 5. GOVERNMENT SCHEMES (Prelims, GS Paper 2, GS Paper 3)

5.1 New features added to e-NAM allowing farmers to trade from warehouse, collection centres

• The government on April 2, 2020 launched new features in electronic agriculture market platform (e-NAM), enabling direct trading from warehouses as well as collection centres of farmers producers organisations (FPOs) as part of its effort to decongest wholesale markets amid coronavirus threat.
• Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar launched two new features of National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) Platform to strengthen agriculture marketing by farmers which will reduce their need to physically come to wholesale mandis for selling their harvested produce.
• The first one, warehouses-based trading modules in e-NAM software will facilitate trade from warehouses as per the e-NWR (electronic negotiable warehouse receipt).
• The other one is FPO trading module in e-NAM where by FPOs can trade their produce from their collection centre without bringing the produce to APMC (Agricultural Produce Market Committee).
• e-NAM was launched on 14 April 2016 as a pan India electronic trade portal linking APMCs across the states. Already 585 mandis in 16 States and two Union Territories have been integrated on e-NAM portal.

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• 6. MISCELLANEOUS (Prelims, Various GS Papers)

6.1 Weekly Roundup – Defence

• 1971 war icon Chandan Singh dies at 95 - Air Vice Marshal (AVM) Chandan Singh (retired), 95, who played a pivotal role in transport operations during the 1962 war between India and China, and who was instrumental in helicopter operations during the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh passed away in J    odhpur on March 29, 2020. He was decorated with a Maha Vir Chakra and a Vir Chakra.

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• 7. POLITY (Prelims, GS Paper 2)

7.1 Centre approved Rs 15,000 crore COVID-19 Emergency Response and Health System Preparedness package for States/UTs

• An amount of Rs. 7,774 crore sanctioned so far will go into immediate emergency response, the rest of the money will be used for medium-term support (1-4 years) under a mission mode approach.
• The health ministry has already disbursed Rs. 4,113 crore to all states and Union territories for dealing with the emergency response.
• The project will be implemented in three phases between January 2020 and March 2024.  
• Phase 1 will span January 2020 to June 2021, phase 2 from July 2020 to March 2021 and Phase 3 from April 2021 to March 2024.
• The key activities to be implemented under Phase 1 will be support for development of dedicated covid-19 hospitals and other hospitals, isolation blocks, negative pressure isolation rooms, lCUs with ventilators, oxygen supply in hospitals, strengthening of laboratories and hospitals, hiring of additional human resources and incentives for human resources and community health volunteers.
• Other activities to be done in the first phase will be procurement of personal protection equipment (PPE) and procurement of N95 masks and ventilators, over and above what is being procured and supplied by the government.
• During Phase 1, states would also be strengthening identified laboratories and expanding diagnostics capacities, including procurement of diagnostic equipment, testing kits and other reagents and mobility support for sample transport, disinfection of hospitals, government ambulances, information education and surveillance activities.
• The Union health ministry is authorized to re-appropriate resources among components of the package and among the various implementation agencies which are NHM, Central Procurement, railways, department of health research, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), National Centre for Disease Control on the basis of the evolving situation.
• A total of 223 laboratories comprising a network of 157 government and 66 private laboratories are conducting screening.

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• 8. SOCIAL ISSUES (Prelims, GS Paper 1, GS Paper 2)

8.1 Human Resources Development Ministry launched 'Integrated Government Online Training Portal' for workers combating coronavirus outbreak.

8.2 Health and Family Welfare Ministry, AIIMS launch training module for physicians to care for pregnant women who are either suspected or confirmed of coronavirus.

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• 9. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (Prelims, GS Paper 3)

9.1 CSIR & NCL, Pune develop Digital IR Thermometer and oxygen enrichment unit (OEU)

• The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune announced two innovations -- Digital IR Thermometer (in photo) and oxygen enrichment unit -- that can help in the mitigation of the coronavirus outbreak.
• The CSIR-NCL's Venture Centre's incubatee BMEK headed by Pratik Kulkarni has developed a handheld digital IR thermometer, which is an important component of measures to mitigate COVID-19.
• This is an effort to enable a large number of manufacturers to manufacture the thermometers and cater to their local demands.  
• Now it is being scaled up in partnership with Bharat Electronics Limited, Pune and about 100 prototype units will be made for pilot distribution and testing at TUV Rheinland India Private Limited, Bangalore.
• The second innovation is the oxygen enrichment unit (OEU), which is of the critical needs of COVID-19 patients is the need to meet the oxygen requirements due to their lungs being compromised.
• About 10 OEU machines will be assembled by NCL and BEL in Pune and after the trials, scale-up will be done.

 9.2 Centre, Tamil Nadu launch Arogya Setu Interactive Voice Response System service.

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• 10. FACTS, CHARTS, RANKINGS and EDITORIALS (Prelims + GS Mains)

10.1 University of Oxford launches COVID-10 Government Response Stringency Index to estimate the impact of lockdown measures

You can visit the index at below link -

 

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid-stringency-index.

10.2 Daily dose of  FIVE Facts -

• Famous musician Bill Withers died on March 30, 2020 in Los Angeles at the age of 81.
• UN observed International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade on March 25.
• Ajay Kumar was appointed as India’s next High Commissioner to Uganda in March 2020.  
• What was the theme of World Consumer Rights day observed on 15, 2020? The Sustainable Consumer
• Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) comes under the purview of Ministry of Corporate Affairs.

10.3 Today's best editorials to read

• We offer you 7 excellent editorials from across 10 newspapers we have scanned. 

CLICK HERE TO OPEN AND READ!

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• SECTION 3 - MCQs (Multiple Choice Questions)

Solve the online quiz given, right now. Check scores, and relative performance!

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