Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 03 December 2021

::NATIONAL::

India joined the G20 Troika comprising the current, previous and incoming presidencies of the grouping, the Ministry of External Affairs said.
The G20 Troika consists of Indonesia, Italy, and India.

About:

Troika refers to the top grouping within the G20 that consists of the current, previous and theincoming presidencies — Indonesia, Italy and India.
G20 is a strategic multilateral platform connecting the world’s major developed and emergingeconomies.
Together, the G20 members represent more than 80% of world GDP, 75% of international trade and60% of the world population.
As a Troika-member, India will work closely with Indonesia and Italy to ensure consistency and continuity of the G20’s agenda.
India will assume the G20 Presidency on December 1, 2022 from Indonesia, and will convene the G20 Leaders’ Summit for the first time in India in 2023.

The Lok Sabha passed the The Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Bill, 2020 that proposes the establishment of a national registry and registration authority for all clinics and medical professionals serving in the field.

Why was the ART Bill felt necessary?

The growth of ART clinics in India is among the highest in the world, and these are a key part of medical tourism. These offer gamete donation, intrauterine insemination, in-vitro- fertilisation, intracytoplasmic sperm injection, and pre-implantation genetic diagnostic.
India does not have standard protocols of ART clinics yet. Amid questions raised on their ethical, medical, and legal aspects, Lok Sabha passed the Bill that provides for regulation and supervision of ART clinics and ART banks.

What is an ART bank?

Under the Bill, ART will include all techniques that attempt to obtain a pregnancy by handling the sperm or the oocyte outside the human body, and transferring the gamete or the embryo into the reproductive system of a woman.
It defines an ART bank as an organisation set up to supply sperm or semen, oocytes, or oocyte donors to ART clinics or their patients.
ART services will apply to women above the legal age of marriage and below 50, and to men above the legal age of marriage and below 55.

International Organisation for Migration releases World migration report 2022. It is published every second year.

Key highlights of the report:

There were around 281 million international migrants in 2020, accounting for 3.6% of the global population.
Europe and Asia hosted 61% the global international migrant flow.
Number of internally displaced persons rose to 55 million in 2020 from 21 million in 2000.
More people are being displaced by disasters (caused by changing climate) than conflicts. In 2020, 30.7 million new displacements were triggered by disasters.
India reported nearly four million new displacements due to disasters.
There were 26.4 million refugees globally in 2020 up from 26 million in 2019.
While billions of people have been effectively grounded by COVID-19, tens of millions have been displaced within their own countries.
Overall increase in remittances, from $126 billion in 2000, to $702 billion in 2020.
India, China, Mexico, Philippines and Egypt were top five remittance recipient countries.

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) recently launched the India-ITU Joint Cyber drill 2021.

About:

Cyber drill is intended for Indian entities especially Critical Network Infrastructure operators in order to meet the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
ITU, an agency under the United Nations, annually conducts cyber drills worldwide where cyber attacks, phishing, and other information security breaches are simulated to test organisational capabilities to thwart or minimise the impact.
The drill aims to spread awareness among various public sector departments and agencies so that their strategies and procedures can be validated for response mechanisms, prevention recovery and business continuity.

The European Commission announced a plan to mobilise €300 billion ($340 billion) in public and private infrastructure investment around the world, a move seen as a response to China’s Belt and Road strategy.

Global Gateway

The Global Gateway plan does not mention China’s rival and longer-standing international infrastructure strategy by name — but EU chief called it a “roadmap for major investment in infrastructure development around the world.”
The money to be made available will not come from EU and member state coffers, and the plan will need funding from international institutions and from the private sector if it is to get anywhere near its target.
China launched its global investment strategy known as Belt and Road, a flagship project of President Xi Jin ping, in 2013. Beijing has said it had invested $139.8 billion by 2020, including $22.5 billion last year alone.
Officially, it aims to develop land and sea infrastructure to better connect China to Asia, Europe and Africa for trade and development, and it has found many partners around the world.

For the first time ever, researchers have detected neutrino candidates produced by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN facility near Geneva, Switzerland.

About:

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located in Switzerland, gave rise to another important advance in the world of science: the detection for the first time of neutrinos, which due to their unique characteristics are very difficult to observe.
Neutrinos are subatomic particles with a mass similar to that of an electron, but without an electrical charge; Due to the latter, detecting them is a great challenge for scholars.
However, the scientists in charge of the project said that six neutrino interactions were identified during the test, which is a great find, since until now they had not been seen in a particle collider like the LHC.

Significance of Neutrino detection

Neutrinos hold the key to several questions on the origin of Universe and then ergy production in stars.
Another possible application is in detailed investigation of the structure of the Earth from core onwards.