Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 21 July 2022

::NATIONAL::

Himalayan glaciers resisting global warming

A recent study conducted under his supervision has postulated a new theory to explain this defiance of the impacts of global warming in certain pockets as opposed to other glaciers of the region.

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In a paper published in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate, his group claimed that the recent revival of western disturbance has been instrumental in triggering and sustaining the Karakoram Anomaly since the advent of the 21st century.
Researchers have taken a significant leap toward solving the mystery of why few pockets of glaciers in the Karakoram Range are resisting glacial melt due to global warming, defying the trend of glaciers losing mass across the globe, with the Himalayas being no exception.
They have attributed this phenomenon called ‘Karakoram Anomaly’ to recent revival of western disturbances (WDs).
Himalayan glaciers are of paramount importance in the Indian context, especially for the millions of dwellers living downstream who rely on these perennial rivers for their day-to-day water needs.
They are fast receding under the impacts of global warming, and stifling stress on the water resources is inevitable in the coming decades. In contrast, the glaciers of central Karakoram have surprisingly remained unchanged or slightly increased in the last few decades.

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NITI Aayog Releases Report on Digital Banks

NITI Aayog’s report makes a case and offers a template and roadmap for a licensing and regulatory regime for digital banks. It focuses on avoiding any regulatory or policy arbitrage and offers a level playing field to incumbents as well as competitors.

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The report recommends a carefully calibrated approach, comprising the following steps:
1.   Issue of a restricted digital bank licence (to a given applicant) (the license would be restricted in terms of volume/value of customers serviced and the like).
2.   Enlistment (of the licensee) in a regulatory sandbox framework enacted by the Reserve Bank of India.
3.   Issue of a ‘full-scale’ digital bank licence (contingent on satisfactory performance of the licensee in the regulatory sandbox, including salient, prudential and technological risk management).

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::INTERNATIONAL::

US overtakes UAE to become top remittance source for India

According to the World Bank, India received $87 billion in 2021, showing a growth of 4.6%. China and Mexico come next, with $53 billion remittances each.

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The US surpassed the UAE as the top source country, accounting for 23% of total remittances.
World Bank too in its recent report said that economic recovery in the US was one of the important drivers of India’s remittances growth.
India’s overall inward remittances remained resilient even during the pandemic. But, off late, there has been a big shift.
Amid steady migration of skilled workers, advanced economies, particularly the US, the UK and Singapore emerged as big sources of remittances, accounting for 36% of total remittances in 2020-21.

Reasons:

Compositional shift in India's migrationtowards advanced economies i.e., in the U.S.,U.K., Canada, and South Africa, dominated byhigh-skilled white-collar workers.
Gulf countries that are trying to diversifyaway from oil revenue are favoring their citizens in employment instead of migrants.
Migration from India to the GCC countriesslowed in the last five years due toeconomic slowdown.

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India and Maldives to sign MoU on judicial cooperation

The Union Cabinet, approved the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) in the field of judicial cooperation, between India and Judicial Service Commission of Maldives.

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The MoU will provide a platform to tap benefits of Information Technology for court digitization, and can be a potential growth area for the IT companies and start-ups in both the countries.
This is the eighth MoU signed between India and other countries in the field of Judicial Cooperation.
With the signing of this agreement on cooperation in the field of law and justice, the good relations between the two countries will receive further impetus.

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::ECONOMY::

Central Bank Digital Currency

The Reserve Bank of India(RBI) is in the process of implementing the CentralBank Digital Currency(CBDC) in a phased mannerfor wholesale and retail segments.

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The introduction ofCBDC was announced in theUnion Budget 2022-23, byFinance Minister and necessaryamendments to the relevantsection of the RBI Act, 1934have been made with thepassage of the Finance Bill2022.
The passage of the bill hasenabled the RBI to conducta pilot and subsequent issuance of CBDC, he said.
The RBI is also workingon phased implementationof a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in both wholesale and retail segment,” Mr.Choudhary said while delivering a keynote address atthe ‘PICUP Fintech Conference & Awards’ by FICCI.

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::SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY::

Wormhole

With rapid advances in observational cosmology in recent times, there is gathering support for the existence of entities such as the wormhole and others that have not yet been “seen”.

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The wormhole theory postulates that a theoretical passage through space-time could createshortcuts for long journeys across the universe.
A wormhole can act as a bridge or a shortcut between two points in curved spacetime which are well separated in practical terms to the inhabitants of the universe.
The existence of wormholes has been predicted by Ludwig Flamm, in 1916, soon after Einstein proposed his General Theory of Relativity. However, the presence of wormholes has not yet been established through observation or inference by astronomers.

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