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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 01 February 2021

::NATIONAL::

Ministry of Home Affairs has said that the three-language policy is not applicable to offices of the Uniongovernment.
In these offices bilingual policy is applicable in accordance with the Official Language Act,1963.
Three-language policy was first devised by the centre through the National Education Policy,1968.
The policy mandated the states to implement a three-language formula for secondary stage education.
The 3 languages referred to are Hindi (or any modernIndian languagesin Hindi speaking areas),English and the regional language of the respective States.

Maharashtra Government published a book titled ‘Maharashtra-Karnataka Seemavad: Sangharsh Aani Sankalp’ (Maharashtra-Karnataka Boundary Dispute: Struggle and Pledge).
The book is a collection of articles, news, and other material on the demand that Marathi-speaking areas in Karnataka should be integrated into Maharashtra.

About:

The Maharashtra Chief Minister demanded that, until the Supreme Court gives is verdict on the dispute, the areas should be declared a Union Territory.
The dispute between Maharashtra and Karnataka over Belgaum and other border areas is pending before the Supreme Court for many years. The matter has been in the Supreme Court since 2004.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray now says his government is committed to incorporating into the state the areas of Karnataka where Marathi-speaking people are in majority.
Since the reorganisation of states had been done on linguistic grounds, Maharashtra has been persistently claiming the regions which have majority Marathi speakers and were part of the erstwhile Bombay Presidency.
Maharashtra demands the “correction” of the wrong step of including these areas into Karnataka - the neighbouring state. Belgaum, Karwar and Nipani are the key disputed areas.

A major crack appeared in the Antarctic ice giant, A68a, once the world’s biggest iceberg, as captured in satellite images.
A68g is the chunk of iceberg that was separated from the giant iceberg A68a (5,800 square kilometers) that broke off Antarctica in 2017.
Since then, A68a has split into 6 smaller units.
This year the iceberg was propelled into the South Atlantic Ocean and has been drifting towards the remote sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia.
They might squish small marine species under their weight or erasing the lands where their food grows.

World Leprosy Day is observed on the last Sunday in January every year.
India is home to the highest number of new cases of leprosy in the world.
Leprosy (also called Hansen’s Disease) is a chronic, progressive bacterial infection caused by bacterium calledMycobacterium Leprae.
It spreads through breathing airborne droplets from the affected individuals.

Steps taken by Government:

National Leprosy Elimination Project - 1993 onwards and SPARSH LeprosyAwareness Campaign - 2017.

Union Finance minister increased the foreign direct investment (FDI) limit in the insurance sector from the existing 49% to 74%.
Amending the Insurance Act, 1938 to increase the permissible FDI limit from 49% to 74% in insurance companies in the Budget 2021-22.
In 2015, the government hiked the FDI cap in the insurance sector from 26% to 49%. The government has earlier allowed 100% foreign direct investment in insurance intermediaries. Intermediary services include insurance brokers, reinsurance brokers, insurance consultants, corporate agents, third party administrators, surveyors and loss assessors.
Under the new structure, the majority of directors on the board and key management persons would be resident Indians with at least 50 per cent of directors being independent directors and specified percentage of profits being retained as general reserve.

Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) has “evolved” the design for the country’s first public private partnership research reactor for production of nuclear medicines.

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The state-run the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) will share the technology of production of a variety of nuclear medicines and the private entities will get exclusive rights to process and market the isotopes produced in the research reactor, in lieu of investing in the reactor and processing facilities.
Earlier, Union Finance Minister Nirmala announced establishment of a Research Reactor in public private partnership (PPP) mode for production of medical isotopes as a part of Aatma Nirbhar Bharat initiatives for DAE.
DAE has initiated discussion with potential Indian and global investors regarding this project to seek their inputs, and investor roadshows are planned starting from the ongoing quarter.
Adding this will be followed with a formal tender process for selection of private partners.
The proposed reactor is expected to come online within five years of the beginning of the construction.
The construction is planned to start after obtaining all requisite permissions.
This project will be a major step towards making India self-reliant in key radio isotopes used in medical and industrial applications. As a result, it will increase availability of effective and affordable treatments for cancer.
The large scale and the technology being deployed for the planned research reactor will enable India to not only become a significant global player in the growing nuclear medicine market, but also have one of the most modern research reactors anywhere in the world.

US President Joe Biden has appointed Indian-origin Raj Panjabi to lead his Malaria Initiative, which is mainly in African and Asian countries.
He was born in Liberia, Panjabi and his family fled the county during its civil war and arrived in the United States as refugees in the 1990s.