Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 16 March 2021

::NATIONAL::

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) moved a bill in the Lok Sabha in which it proposed that “government” in the national capital territory of Delhi means the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi.

Key highlights of the bill:

The Bill proposes to amend Sections 21, 24, 33 and 44 of the 1991 Act.
The Bill gives discretionary powers to the L-G of Delhi even in matters where the Legislative Assembly of Delhi is empowered to make laws.
The proposed legislation also seeks to ensure that the L-G is “necessarily granted an opportunity” to give her/his opinion before any decision taken by the Council of Ministers (or the Delhi Cabinet) is implemented.
Delhi is a Union Territory with a legislature and it came into being in 1991 under Article 239AA of the Constitution inserted by the Constitution (Sixty-ninth Amendment) Act, 1991.
As per the existing Act, the Legislative Assembly of Delhi has the power to make laws in all matters except public order, police and land.

The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Centre and the Election Commission of India to respond to a plea that fresh elections should be conducted in constituencies where the maximum votes polled are NOTA.
The petition said candidates ‘rejected’ by voters should not be fielded again in the fresh polls.
Chief Justice of India Sharad A. Bobde expressed doubts initially about the feasibility of the petition by advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay to arm the electorate with the “right to reject” and nudge political parties to present voters with a better choice of candidates to pick from.
Chief Justice Bobde said if voters kept rejecting candidates, Parliament/Assembly seats would continue to remain vacant, affecting legislative functioning.
But the petition argued that “if voters are given the power to reject, political parties will take care to field worthy candidates in the first place...”
The ‘right to reject’ was first proposed by the Law Commission in its 170th Report in 1999.

Having left the European Union’s flagship Erasmus scholarship programme after Brexit, the UK launched its own replacement called the Turing scheme to enable UK students to study abroad.
Named after the celebrated English mathematician and codebreaker Alan Turing, the scheme will enable schools, colleges and universities in the UK to apply for government funding to allow students to study and work across the globe, including in India.

What is the UK’s Turing Scheme for students?

The scheme, for which the British government has allocated 110 million pounds for the first year, starts in 2021/22, and would enable up to 35,000 students from across the country to study or work across the world from September this year.
Under the programme, after schools and universities successfully apply for funding for exchanges, university study and work placements, they can invite their students to apply for individual fundings.
The scheme would be a global programme in which every country in the world will be able to partner with UK institutions. This is in contrast with the Erasmus+ programme, which only included European countries.

How will the scheme impact India?

The UK’s Department for Education (DfE) has confirmed that India, already a top source of international students to the UK, could be among the leading list of countries with which UK universities seek to strike student exchange projects.

Israeli archaeologists said dozens of new Dead Sea Scroll fragments bearing a biblical text and hidden nearly 1,900 years ago have been discovered in a desert cave.
The parchment fragments are the first new scrolls found in archaeological excavations south of the city of Jerusalem in the last 60 years.

What have archeologists found?

The artifacts have been radiocarbon dated to the 2nd century AD, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The lines of Greek text on the fragments come from the biblical books of Zechariah and Nahum.
The fragments are believed to have been hidden during the Bar Kochba Revolt, an armed uprising against Rome during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, between 132 and 136 AD.
The fragments also include passages written in Greek from the Book of the Twelve Minor Prophets, which is part of the Hebrew Bible.

What are the Dead Sea Scrolls?

The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of Jewish texts found in desert caves in the West Bank in the Qumran caves above the Dead Sea.
They include some 900 manuscripts found between 1947 and 1956.
The scrolls date from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD and include the earliest known copies of biblical texts. The documents are also considered to be of use in outlining the beliefs of a little-understood Jewish sect.

Ministry of Food Processing and Industries (MoFPI) declined Indian Railways (IR) proposal to include major items like tea leaves, bamboo, rubber etc. from Northeast under Operation Greens-TOP to Total Scheme.
Reason cited by MoFPI is that they are neither fruits nor vegetables.
Under ‘Operation Greens - TOP to Total’ scheme of MoFPI a subsidy of 50% is being granted on the transportation of fruits and vegetables via Kisan Rail.
Last year, IR had started KR to transport perishables and agri-product, including milk, meat and fish.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has launched a sounding rocket to study attitudinal variations in the neutral winds and plasma dynamics.

About:

Sounding Rockets are one or two stage solid propellant rockets used for probing the upper atmospheric regions and for space research.
They also serve as easily affordable platforms to test or prove prototypes of new components or subsystems intended for use in launch vehicles and satellites.
ISRO has developed a series of sounding rockets called Rohini series. Ex - RFI-200, RFH-300 (The number indicates the diameter of the rocket in mm).
RH-560 aims to study attitudinal variations in the neutral winds and plasma dynamics from Sriharikotaspaceport.

Antoine Rozner of France holed a 60-foot birdie putt on the final hole for a 2-under 69 and a one-shot victory in the Qatar Masters.This moving him high enough in the world ranking to qualify for theWorld Golf Championship in Texas in two weeks.
Antoine Rozner (born 12 February 1993) is a French professional golfer who plays on the European Tour.
In May 2019, he won two tournaments on the Challenge Tour, the Challenge de España and the Prague Golf Challenge.