Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 19 March 2021

::NATIONAL::

Azim Premji Universityreleases, the first volume on teachers and teacher education. It comprising four papers on the subject.

Key highlights:

Of the 17,503 TEIs in India, more than 90% are privately owned, stand-alone institutions, offering single programmes localised in certain geographies.
Four States, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, account for 54% of all TEIs in the country. Only 12 States/UTs have at least one TEI in each district.
Equally worrying is the level of corruption. There are many sub-standard, dysfunctional TEIs functioning as commercial shops.
TEIs deliberately neglected basic curricular requirements. Classes are neither conducted seriously nor taken seriously by students.Almost all private TEIs allowed students with shortage of attendance to appear for examinations.
More than 60% allowed students who had not completed their school internship to appear for examinations. At least 70% TEIs had an average student attendance below 80%.
Most of the TEIs the authors studied did not have basic instructional facilities. For instance, curriculum laboratories were not available in more than 50%, while 30% did not have libraries, computer labs or seminar halls.
There is increasing prevalence of contract teachers, who are recruited for short periods on inadequate salaries with little or no benefits. This Has caused long-term damage to not just the teaching profession, but has also affected student learning.

Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has been appointed as chairman of the Stop TB Partnership Board in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the movement of eradicating tuberculosis from India by 2025.
The board provides leadership and direction, monitors implementation of agreed policies, plans and activities of the partnership etc.
It was founded in 2001, the Partnership's mission is to serve every person who is vulnerable to TB and ensure high-quality diagnosis, treatment and care to all who need it.
It has over 1700 partners which includes international and technical organizations, government programmes,research and funding agencies, foundations, NGOs, civil society and community groups and the private sector.

Top U.S. and Chinese officials offered sharply different views of the world on March 18 as the two sides met face-to-face for the first time since President Joe Biden took office.
The meetings in Anchorage were a new test in increasingly troubled relations between the two countries, which are at odds over a range of issues from trade to human rights in Tibet, Hong Kong and China’s western Xinjiang region, as well as about Taiwan, China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea and the coronavirus pandemic.

Tanzania was in mourning over the sudden death of President John Magufuli, an authoritarian leader and COVID-19 sceptic.
John Pombe Joseph Magufuli (29 October 1959 – 17 March 2021)was a Tanzanian politician who served as the fifth president of Tanzania from 2015 until his death in 2021.
Magufuli was known for promoting misinformation about COVID-19 during his leadership over the pandemic in Tanzania.
His death on 17 March 2021 was attributed to a long-standing heart issue by the government.

Union Minister for Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari informed that, India will implement a GPS-based toll collection system and do away with all toll booths within a year.
He also shared details of the vehicle scrapping policy, first announced in the Union Budget for 2021-22.

Scrapping policy:

The Minister claimed, it would reduce pollution, improve fuel efficiency, and increase government’s revenue collection from the sale of new vehicles.
The new policy provides for fitness tests after the completion of 20 years in the case of privately owned vehicles and 15 years in the case of commercial vehicles.
Any vehicle that fails the fitness test or does not manage renewal of its registration certificate may be declared as an End-of-Life Vehicle.
In order to encourage vehicle owners to take their old vehicles to scrapping centres, the government has announced several incentives, including advisories to States to give up to 25% rebate in road tax for personal vehicles and up to 15% rebate for commercial vehicles.
The government will also offer waiver of registration fees on the purchase of new vehicles.
The Union government would issue an advisory to auto makers to offer the incentive of a 5% rebate for those who buy a new vehicle after producing a scrapping certificate.

Scientists from Aryabhatta Research Institute of observational sciences (ARIES)undertook a time-dependent study of the generation of wind and its subsequent driving by the radiation from the diffuse material in spiral motion around a massive central body called the black hole accretion disc using numerical simulation techniques developed indigenously.

Key highlights:

The scientists tried to figure out whether driving of the wind by radiation flux can dominate the radiation drag effect--- a motion resisting effect which is similar to the resistance offered by air to a moving stone or to a descending parachute.
This effect is produced when radiation penetrates a moving medium and is proportional to radiation energy density, various components of radiation pressure, and the velocity components of the wind.
The luminous discs can produce winds up to speeds which is about ten percent of the speed of light, and also that these winds originated from regions close to the central black hole.
Radiation drag plays a key role in reducing the speed of light. For less bright discs, radiation drag quenches the wind completely.