Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 26 May 2022

::NATIONAL::

In a significant order recognising sex work as a “profession” whose practitioners are entitled to dignity and equal protection under law.

Key highlights:

The Supreme Court has directed that police should neither interfere nor take criminal action against adult and consenting sex workers.
Notwithstanding the profession, every individual in this country has a right to a dignified life under Article 21 of the Constitution.
The Bench ordered that sex workers should not be “arrested or penalised or harassed or victimised” whenever there is a raid on any brothel, “since voluntary sex work is not illegal and only running the brothel is unlawful”.
A child of a sex worker should not be separated from the mother merely on the ground that she is in the sex trade.
Basic protection of human decency and dignity extends to sex workers and their children.
Further, if a minor is found living in a brothel or with sex workers, it should not be presumed that the child was trafficked.

Union Government has launched the Eighth Edition of Swachh Survekshan – SS-2023 under Swachh Bharat Mission Urban 2.0.

About:

Swachh Survekshanintroduced by MoHUA in 2016, is the world’s largest annual survey ofcleanliness, hygiene and sanitation in villages, cities and towns across India.
Designed with the theme of ‘Waste to Wealth’ as its driving philosophy, Swachh Survekshan- 2023 is curated towards achieving circularity in waste management.
Swachh Survekshan has emerged as the largest Urban sanitation survey in the world.

Evaluation for SS-23 is based on 3 components:

Service Level Progress - Covers Segregated collection, Processing, and disposal,Used water management, and Safaimitra Suraksha.
Certification - For Garbage Free City star rating and ODF/ODF+/ODF++/water +certification.

The World Economic Forum launched Indian CEO’s Alliance to supercharge India’s climate action and decarbonization efforts.

About:

Part of the World Economic Forum’s Climate Action Platform, the Alliance will continue efforts to achieve the vision outlined in the white paper released last year, "Mission 2070: A Green New Deal for a Net Zero India", on India’s low-carbon transition by 2070.
It will bring together the government, businesses, and other key stakeholders to achieve the Indian Prime Minister’s ambitious five-part ‘Panchamrit’ pledge, which includes the country’s net-zero carbon emission target by 2070.

About the five elements of ‘Panchamrit’

India reaching its non-fossil energy capacity to 500 GW by 2030.
Meeting 50% of its energy requirements from renewable energy by 2030.
Reducing total projected carbon emissions by one billion tonnes from nowonwards till 2030.
Reducing carbon intensity of its economy by less than 45 percent by 2030.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has concluded his official visit to Japan for the 4th Quad leaders summit in Tokyo.
There is action-oriented cooperation among Quad partners and the countries of the Indo-Pacific for a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific aimed at peace, stability and prosperity in the region.

Key highlights about the summit:

Quad nations agreed to create an Earth observation-based monitoring andsustainable development framework to combat illegal, unregulated andunprotected (IUU) fishing.
It will include sharing of space-based civil Earth observation data and a"Quad Satellite Data Portal” to aggregate links to respective nationalsatellite data resources.
To extend over 50 billionUSD of infrastructureassistance and investmentin the Indo-Pacific, over thenext five years.

In a bid to cool inflation in edible oils, Government allowed duty-free import of 20 Lakh metric tonnes each of crude soyabean oil and crude sunflower oil for this year as well as 2023-24.

About:

The exemption will help cool domestic prices and control inflation.
India could cut an import tax on crude soyoil and crude sunflower oil as the world’s biggest vegetable oil importer tries to tame food inflation.
India has already abolished the basic import tax on crude palm oil, crude soyoil and crude sunflower oil, but continues with the 5% Agriculture Infrastructure and Development Cess (AIDC) on these three grades of edible oils.
India imports more than two-thirds of its edible oil needs and a sharp drop in the supplies of sunflower from the Black Sea region has further stoked local prices.

A project called ‘Intelligent Solutions for Road Safety through Technology and Engineering’ (iRASTE) is being implemented in Nagpur to tackle the problem of road accidents.

About:

The project is based on artificial intelligence (AI) and will help identify potential accident-causing scenarios while driving a vehicle. iRASTE will alert drivers about the potential accident with the help of the Advance Driver Assistance System (ADAS).
The iRASTE project is being undertaken by the I-Hub Foundation, IIIT Hyderabad, a Technology Innovation Hub (TIH) set up in the technology vertical- Data Banks and Data Services.
iRASTE: Predicting accidents
The unique AI approach that iRASTE uses could predict and identify risks on the road, and a collision alert system to communicate timely alerts to drivers, to make several improvements related to road safety.
The project (iRASTE) will also identify ‘greyspots’, by data analysis and mobility analysis by continuously monitoring dynamic risks on the entire road network.
The need to identify ‘greyspots’ is of immense importance because if they remain unaddressed, they can become blackspots (locations with fatal accidents).

Benefits:

The AI project will help in preparing a critical resource for future use by researchers, startups, and industry, mainly in the areas of smart mobility, healthcare along with smart buildings.