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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 10 June 2022

::NATIONAL::

The government has amended service rules of the armed forces, making all serving and recently retired three-star officers — Lt General, Air Marshal and Vice Admiral — under the age of 62 eligible for the post of CDS, according to notifications brought out by the government.

About:

The new rules mean that the recently retired chiefs of services will not be considered. The amendments also indicate that an announcement on the new CDS is imminent.
The CDS is the most senior uniformed officer in rank, the first among equals — the only four-star officers in the country are the CDS, the chiefs of the Indian Army, Indian Navy and Indian Air Force.
He is the Permanent Chairman of Chief of Staff Committee (CoSC) and work for greater synergy among the armed services andoptimise the resource utilisation.
The Naresh Chandra Task Force (2012), and D.B. Shekatkar Committee (2016) also recommended a one command structure.

On World Food Safety Day, Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya released the 4th State Food Safety Index (SFSI) by FSSAI to measure the performance of States across five parameters of food safety and felicitated the winning State/UTs based on the ranking for the year 2021-22.

Key findings

SFSI is a dynamic quantitative and qualitative benchmarking model thatprovides an objective framework for evaluating food safety across allStates/UTs.
Five parameters of food safety are Human resources and institutionaldata, compliance, food testing facility, training and capacity building andconsumer empowerment.
Tamil Nadu topped Index, followed by Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Among smaller States, Goa stood first, followed by Manipur and Sikkim.
Among UTs, Jammu and Kashmir topped, followed by Delhi and Chandigarh.

The UN nuclear watchdog, IAEA's 35-nation board of governors passed a resolution criticizing Iran for failing to explain uranium traces at undeclared sites.

Key highlights:

The resolution was submitted by the UK, France, Germany and the US to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and was backed by 30 countries. Only Russia and China opposed the move.
However, Iran condemned the resolution. In a statement Iranian Foreign Ministry said, Tehran had been cooperating with international nuclear investigators. Iran had said, it disconnected two IAEA cameras which monitor its nuclear sites prior to the adoption of the resolution.
The motion is the first to chide Iran over its nuclear ambitions since 2020. It comes as talks to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) remain stalled.

International Atomic Energy Agency:

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is an international organization that seeks to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Though IAEA was established as an autonomous organization on 29 July 1957 through its own international treaty, the IAEA Statute, the IAEA reports to both the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council.

World Ocean Day is celebrated every year on June 8 to raise public awareness of the ocean and its resources in order to promote global ocean and resource sustainability.
The theme for this year is "Revitalization: Collective Action for the Ocean".

About:

The Day is celebrated every year on June 8.
The Day was proposed in 1992 and was officially recognised by the United Nations in 2008.
The purpose of the Day is to raise public awareness on Oceans and its resources and also to inform the public of the impact of human actions on the ocean.

Importance:

Ocean covers over 70 percent of the planet. According to the UN, oceans produce about 50 percent of the planet’s oxygen and are home to earth’s biodiversity.
It is the main source of protein for more than a billion people around the world.

The Reserve Bank of India has proposed to allow the linking of credit cards with the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).
The integration will first begin with the indigenous RuPay credit cards. Both the RuPay network and UPI are managed by the same organisation – the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

What is the significance of the move?

Industry experts believe that the linkage of UPI and credit cards could possibly result in credit card usage zooming up in India given UPI’s widespread adoption.
The integration also opens up avenues to build credit on UPI through credit cards in India, where in the last few years, a number of startups like Slice, Uni, One etc. have emerged.
The move could also be a push to increase adoption by banking on UPI’s large user base. So far, UPI could only be linked to debit cards and bank accounts.

Concerns:

There are some regulatory areas that would have to be addressed before the linkage happens.
The MDR is a fee that a merchant is charged by their issuing bank for accepting payments from their customers via credit and debit cards.

In a paper published in Nature, astronomers have reported a fast radio burst (FRB) whose characteristics are different from almost all other FRBs previously detected, except one. The scientists used the National Science Foundation’s Karl G Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) and other telescopes to study the object.

About:

FRBs are bright flashes of light that appear for a few milliseconds and then vanish.
Since the first FRB was discovered in 2007, 140 more were discovered until June 2021, according to a post on the MIT website.
Their origins are unknown, and their appearance is unpredictable.
The new study in Nature describes FRB 20190520B, first discovered in 2019. What makes it different is that unlike many other FRBs, it emits frequent, repeating bursts of radio waves. And between bursts, it constantly emits weaker radio waves.