Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 15 December 2020

::NATIONAL::

The Centre told the Supreme Court on Saturday that it was against coercing couples into having a “certain number of children” in a bid to curb population explosion.
In fact, the government said that 2001-2011 witnessed sharpest decline in decadal growth rate among Indians in 100 years.
“The Family Welfare Programme in India is voluntary in nature, which enables couples to decide the size of their family and adopt the family planning methods, best suited to them, according to their choice, without any compulsion,” the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare said in an affidavit.
India was a signatory to the Programme of Action (POA) of the International Conference on Population and Development, 1994, which was unequivocally against coercion in family planning.

Lakshadweep and Meghalaya are the best among all the 35 states and Union Territories at providing land rights to women; Punjab and West Bengal are the worst, according to an index created by the Bhubaneswar-based Centre for Land Governance, an arm of consultancy firm NR Management Consultants.
The index was prepared using the data on women’s operational holdings from the agriculture census of 2011, the share of adult women owning farm land from the Indian Human Development Survey of 2011-12.
The share of women-headed households owning land from the Socio-economic Caste Census of 2011, and the share of women owning house and/or land (alone or jointly) from the National Family Health Survey of 2015-16.
The index ranks states in terms of women holding land rights in percentage points. On average, 12.9% of Indian women hold land.
In the southern states, 15.4% of women hold land, and in the northeast, 14.1%. Despite such low figures, these states outperform the northern states (9.8%), and the eastern states (9.2%).

In Cuba, a country under an authoritarian communist regime for more than six decades, a campaign by artists and activists demanding greater freedom of expression is fast grabbing the limelight.
The Movimiento San Isidro, or the San Isidro Movement (MSI), started two years ago to protest state censorship of artistic works, and has now become a platform for Cuban dissidents both within and outside the Caribbean nation.

What is Cuba’s San Isidro Movement (MSI)?

The movement started in September 2018, when the Cuban government sought to enforce Decree 349, a law that would have given powers to the nation’s Culture Ministry to restrict cultural activity it did not approve of.
To protest against the decree, artists, poets, journalists and activists gathered in San Isidro, a Black-majority locality that is among Havana’s poorest yet most culturally active wards, and which also forms part of the Old Havana UNESCO World Heritage Site.
What gave crucial firepower to the movement was a landmark 2015 deal between Cuba and the US, one of whose provisions stipulated that the Cuban regime should allow its people greater internet freedoms in exchange for opening bilateral relations with Washington.
Thus, the protesters managed to connect and amplify their message over the internet with relative ease, in a country where the government controls all modes of communication, and where no political opposition has been permitted.

The United Arab Emirates has launched Covid-19 vaccinations in the capital Abu Dhabi.
It is approved the jab by Chinese drugs giant Sinopharm.
The wealthy Gulf nation is one of the first countries to start widespread inoculation, after Britain became the first to roll out a campaign using a vaccine by US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
Gulf countries UAE and Bahrain, where third-phase trials of the Sinopharm vaccine were carried out, have both officially registered it for public use after it was previously approved for emergency use for frontline health workers.
Residents in the capital can book an appointment through the Abu Dhabi Health Services (SEHA) hotline.
Sinopharm -- which uses an inactive form of the novel coronavirus -- is administered in two doses, 21 days apart, according to SEHA.
The UAE has so far recorded more than 184,000 novel coronavirus cases, including 617 deaths.
China has four vaccines, including Sinopharm, in the final stages of development and is well advanced with mass human testing in a number of countries, including Brazil, the UAE and Turkey.

In the Union Budget 2020, Finance Minister had announced for setting up an International Bullion Exchange at the International Financial Services Centre in GIFT City, Gandhinagar, Gujarat.
The Government of India had notified the bullion spot delivery contract and bullion depository receipt (with bullion as underlying) as Financial Products and related services as Financial Services under the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) Act, 2019.
IFSCA has been entrusted with the responsibility of operationalization of this Exchange.
In this regard, International Financial Services Centres Authority (Bullion Exchange) Regulations 2020 were approved by the Authority in its meeting held on October 27,2020.
The said regulations have been notified and published in the Gazette of India on December 11, 2020.
The regulations inter alia cover the Bullion Exchange, Clearing Corporation, Depository and Vaults.
The regulations are divided into the 16 chapters. First half of the regulation deals with the Exchange and Clearing Corporations while the second half pertains to the Vaults and Depositories and related provisions.

Google has a subsidiary called Project Loon, which comprises of helium-filled balloons that aim to deliver internet access to remote parts of the world.
These high-altitude balloons are found in the stratosphere and create aerial wireless networks.
It is a network of stratospheric balloons designed to bring Internetconnectivity to rural and remote communities worldwide.It is a project under a Google subsidiary.
Huge helium filled balloons are launched at altitudes of 20 km above theearth, above the zone where airplanes fly.
The balloons can then act as cell towers to receive and transmit signals.
Recently, Loon seta new record for the longest stratospheric flight by staying inair for 312 days.

The International Cricket Council announced that as many as 86 teams will fight for the 15 spots in the 2022 T20 World Cup in Australia, the qualifying phase comprising 225 matches across 13 months.
The 15 spots will be decided through a four-step qualifying process which starts in April next year. Eleven regional qualification tournaments across five regions have been rescheduled to 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and will now feed into the 2022 Australia event.
For the first time ever Hungary, Romania and Serbia will be competing for men’s T20 World Cup qualification and Finland will play host to an ICC event for the very first time.
It will also be the first time that Japan will host a men’s T20 World Cup Qualifier, on the back of the U19 World Cup Qualifier they will host two weeks before.
At regional level there will be 67 associate members taking part.