Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 10 March 2022

::NATIONAL::

India has achieved significant reduction in coal import despite surge in power demand.
It shows a decline of about 20.52 per cent in coal import.
Union government added that the import of non-coking coal, primarily used in power sector has decreased by 59.20 per cent from 52.49 million Ton to 21.41 million Ton upto December 2021 in comparison to the same period of 2020.

About:

Non-Coking Coal does not have any caking properties and it is mainly used as thermal coal for power generation.
It has a higher ash content.
It is used in industries like cement, fertilizer, glass, ceramic, paper, chemical and brick manufacturing.
Coking coal, also known as metallurgical coal, is used to create coke, one of the key irreplaceable inputs for the production of steel.

The Reserve Bank of India launched a new Unified Payments Interface (UPI) payments solution for feature phone users dubbed ‘UPI123Pay’.

About:

It is a three-step method to initiate and execute services for users which will work on Feature phones.
It can be used to make digital payments without the need for an internet connection.
Users can perform a few offline steps and easily make UPI payments.
This helps in digital innovations which will further deepen the digital ecosystem and financialinclusion in the country.
Additionally, RBI launched DigiSaathi - a 24x7 Helpline to address the queries of digital paymentusers across products.

India, Bangladesh and Nepal finalised an enabling memorandum of understanding (MoU) for implementing the long-gestating Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal (BBIN) Motor Vehicles Agreement (MVA).

About:

The BBIN connectivity project was conceived after the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) failed to agree on a regional motor vehicles agreement at a summit in Nepal in 2014, mainly because of opposition from Pakistan.
The BBIN project suffered a setback in 2017 when Bhutan temporarily opted out of it after being unable to get parliamentary approval for the MVA.
The 3 other countries decided at the time to press ahead with the agreement.
The enabling MoU to be signed by India, Bangladesh and Nepal to implement the BBIN MVA was finalised at a meeting held in New Delhi during March 7-8.
Bhutan participated in the meeting as an observer.

Argentina federal police will now effectively use technique of Yoga for stress management of its personnel.

Key highlights:

Though Yoga has been practiced in this part of globe for last several years, yet in last couple of year, interest in yoga and awareness in Indian culture has increased rapidly. Earlier Yoga and meditation were also taught in some Latin American jails to calm down the convicts.
Embassy of India in Argentina and University Institute of the Argentine Federal Police (IUPFA) will be jointly conducting a workshop on Yoga.
As per The Ministry of Ayush, Yoga can be of immense benefit to the armed and paramilitary forces. Yoga is highly effective in enduring tolerance and proves to be immune-modulatory and also helps in augmenting stress hormones and neurotransmitters.
In India a customized yoga packages has been developed for army, air force and navy to tackle high altitude, hot desert and cold desert conditions and submarine and ship conditions.
According to various research, it has been found that āsanas and prānayāms have enabled its application in combating the stress in soldiers and promoting their psycho-physiological fitness.

For cultivating creepers, the trellis structure is widely adopted in a Tribal village of Akhapolan, close to the Similipal National Park in Odisha.
Akhapolan falls under the Thakurmunda block of Mayurbhanj district. It is now dotted with lush green bitter gourd plantations.

About:

Trellis systems are used in agriculture for cane support with trailing and semi-erect cultivars to keep the fruit off the ground.
A trellis structure is prepared using four pillars, bamboo poles, and rope.
In this, the plants climb vertically with the support of bamboo and ropes.

Benefits:

Ministry of Electronics and IT Petascale Supercomputer ‘PARAM Ganga’ established at IIT Roorkee.

Key highlights:

National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) has now deployed ‘PARAM Ganga’ with a supercomputing capacity of 1.66 Petaflops.
It is designed and commissioned by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) under Phase 2 of NSM.
The missionstarted in 2015. It is being steered jointly by Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology and Department of Scienceand Technology and implemented by C-DAC and Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
Mission envisages empowering our national academic and R&D institutionsspread over the country by installing a vast supercomputing gridcomprising of more than 70 high-performance computing (HPC) facilities.
Till now C-DAC has deployed 11 such facilities under NSM Phase-1 andPhase-2 with a Cumulative Computer Power (CCP) of more than 20 Petaflops.
These supercomputers will also be networked on the National SupercomputingGrid over National Knowledge Network (NKN).