Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 12 May 2021


Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 12 May 2021

::NATIONAL::

NITI Aayog, Mastercard release report on Connected Commerce

  • NITI Aayog and Mastercard have jointly released a report highlighting key elements of a roadmap India can follow to achieve the next level of digital transformation in the next three years.
  • This report titled ‘Connected Commerce: Creating a Roadmap for a Digitally Inclusive Bharat’ identifies challenges in accelerating digital financial inclusion in India and provides recommendations for making digital services accessible to its 1.3 billion citizens.

Key recommendations by the report:

  • To strengthening the payment infrastructure to promote a level playing field for NBFCs and banks.
  • To enabling agricultural NBFCs to access low-cost capital and deploy a ‘phygital’ (physical + digital) model for outcomes.
  • To leveraging existing smartphones and contactless cards, and aim for an inclusive, interoperable, and fully London ‘Tube’.

Har Ghar Jal mission

  • Puducherry has achieved the target of 100% piped water connection in rural areas under the Jal Jeevan Mission.
  • With this, the UT became the fourth State/UT after Goa, Telangana and Andaman and Nicobar Islands to provide assured tap water supply to every rural home.
  • Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) envisages supply of 55 litres of water per person per day to every rural household through Functional Household Tap Connections (FHTC) by 2024.

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::INTERNATIONAL::

Rheas

  • Conservationists in Chile are reintroducing the rhea to its native Patagonia region, after the flightless bird was brought to near-extinction by illegal hunting.

About Rheas:

  • Rheas Are the largest flightless bird of South America.
  • These play a fundamental role in creating and maintaining healthy grasslands by dispersing seeds to renew vegetative growth.
  • Rheas are listed as near-threatened on the IUCN’s Red List ofThreatened Species.

H1-B visa

  • Recent study showed that ending the lottery-based system of allocating H-1B visas in favour of awage-based system will make it harder for international students to get a work permit in the US.

About HI-B visa:

  • H1-B Visa is a multiple entry non-immigrant visa which allows foreign workers employed by US companies to work in the United States.
  • H1B visa holders can work in the United States fora maximum period of 6 years.

::ECONOMY::

Sebi notifies relaxed rules for listing start-ups

  • With an aim to boost listing of start-ups, markets regulator Sebi has notified a slew of relaxations to norms, including reducing holding period for pre-issue capital and allowing discretionary allotment to eligible investors.

About:

  • The changes have been made to the framework for listing on the Innovators Growth Platform (IGP).
  • This comes after the board of Sebi approved a proposal in March in this regard.
  • Other relaxations include easing delisting requirements and relaxation in guidelines for migrating to main board.
  • This is aimed at making the platform more accessible to companies in view of the evolving start-up ecosystem.
  • The regulator has reduced the period of holding of 25 per cent of pre-issue capital of the issuer company by eligible investors to one year from the current requirement of two years.

::SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY::

OSIRIS-REx

  • On May 11, NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft will depart asteroid Bennu, and start its two-year long journey back to Earth.
  • OSIRIS-REx is NASA’s first mission to visit a near-Earth asteroid, survey its surface and collect a sample from it.

About Asteroid Bennu:

  • Bennu is an asteroid about as tall as the Empire State Building, located about 200 million miles away from the Earth.
  • Bennu is named after an Egyptian deity. The name was suggested by a nine-year-old boy from North Carolina in 2013, who won NASA’s “Name that Asteroid” competition.
  • The asteroid was discovered by a team from the NASA-funded Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research team in 1999.
  • Bennu is a B-type asteroid, implying that it contains significant amounts of carbon and various other minerals.
  • Bennu is considered to be an ancient asteroid that has not gone through a lot of composition-altering change through billions of years, which means that below its surface lie chemicals and rocks from the birth of the solar system.
  • Therefore, scientists and researchers are interested in studying this asteroid as it might give them clues about the origins of the solar system, the sun, the Earth and the other planets.

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