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Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 01 May 2022

::NATIONAL::

Government plans to roll out its indigenously developed online e-commerce network in 100 Indian cities to provide millions of Kirana stores and consumers an alternative to multinational platforms such as Amazon and Flipkart.

About:

Open network for digital commerce (ONDC) is globally first-of-its-kind initiatives launched by the Department of Promotion of Industry and Trade to paveway for decentralise and democratising digital commerce to enhance its penetration of digitalcommerce.
Quality Council of India will provide the integration of the e-commerce platform for it.
It is a platform that will allow buyers and sellers to connect and transact with each other online.
It will make a process/software open source by providing technology, code deployment to everyone to use, redistribute and modified.
It aims to promote an open platform for all aspects of the exchange of goods and services.
ONDC would function in the e-commerce domain, akin to the UPI in the digital payment domain.

Significance:

It can potentially discover any seller, product or service by using anycompatible application or platform.
It will enable the consumers to match demand with the nearest available supply.

Atal Innovation Mission launched the phase 1 of the 2nd edition of the Atal New India Challenge (ANIC 2.0).

About:

Atal New India Challenge is a flagship program of Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog.
Aims to seek, select, support and nurture technology-based innovations that solve sectoral challenges of national importance and societal relevance.
The ANIC program is to support innovations in areas critical to India’s development and growth – Education, Health, Water and Sanitation, Agriculture, Food Processing, Housing, Energy, Mobility, Space Application etc.
ANIC solicits innovations from start-ups and MSMEs in the prototype stage and after a competitive process of selection supports them through to the commercialization stage with a funding of up to INR 1 crore along with other associated support from the AIM’s innovation ecosystem.

A new Global Security Initiative put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping will look to counter the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy and the Quad – the India, U.S., Australia, Japan grouping – according to Chinese officials.

Key highlights:

Xi last week first proposed what he called a Global Security Initiative, speaking at the Boao Forum in China, warning against “hegemonism, power politics and bloc confrontation”.
“China would like to propose a Global Security Initiative, which would “oppose unilateralism, and say no to group politics and bloc confrontation.”
This would “oppose the wanton use of unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction”, appearing to refer to Western sanctions.
China’s proposed security initiative would “oppose” what he called “the destruction of the international order under the banner of so-called ‘rules’ and the dragging of the world under the cloud of the ‘new cold war’”, and would “build an Asian security model of mutual respect, openness and integration”.

Aiming to build Asian NATO:

Mr. Wang had also taken aim at the Quad last month, suggesting during the annual National People’s Congress in Beijing that the grouping was equivalent to the “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance involving the Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the U.S. and U.K. and the AUKUS pact, as a key element in what he called U.S. plans to build an “Asian NATO”

The US Food and Drug Administration issued a proposal to ban menthol cigarettes and flavoured cigars.

About:

This aims to reducing tobacco-related health disparities.
The FDA’s move, thus, has been welcomed by many as likely to help reduce the burden of tobacco-related ailments specifically in the Black population.

Why does the FDA consider menthol cigarettes especially dangerous?

The agency says menthol, with its minty taste and aroma, reduces the irritation and harshness of smoking. This increases appeal and makes menthol cigarettes easier to use, particularly for youth and young adults.
Menthol also interacts with nicotine in the brain to enhance nicotine’s addictive effects, while making it more difficult for people to quit smoking.
The agency said “modeling studies have estimated a 15 per cent reduction in smoking within 40 years” if menthol cigarettes were banned.

The Reserve Bank of India has released the Report on Currency and Finance (RCF) for the year 2021-22.
The theme of the Report is “Revive and Reconstruct” in the context of nurturing a durable recovery post-COVID and raising trend growth in the medium-term. The Report reflects the views of the contributors and not of the Reserve Bank.

Key highlights:

The blueprint of reforms proposed in the Report revolves around seven wheels of economic progress viz., aggregate demand; aggregate supply; institutions, intermediaries and markets; macroeconomic stability and policy coordination; productivity and technological progress; structural change; and sustainability.
A feasible range for medium-term steady state GDP growth in India works out to 6.5 – 8.5 per cent, consistent with the blueprint of reforms.
Timely rebalancing of monetary and fiscal policies will likely be the first step in this journey.
Price stability is a necessary precondition for strong and sustainable growth.
Reducing general government debt to below 66 per cent of GDP over the next five years is important to secure India’s medium-term growth prospects.
Suggested structural reforms include enhancing access to litigation free low-cost land; raising the quality of labour through public expenditure on education and health and the Skill India Mission etc.
Industrial revolution 4.0 and committed transition to a net-zero emission target warrant a policy ecosystem that facilitates provision of adequate access to risk capital and a globally competitive environment for doing business.

Qualcomm India has announced a collaboration with the C-DACplans to initiate and conduct the Qualcomm Semiconductor Mentorship Program (‘QSMP’) 2022 for select startups from the semiconductor space in India.

Key objectives:

Nurture technical advancements and intellectual-property-driven innovation and product development required for semiconductor design in the Indian ecosystem
Help reduce risks in innovation; accelerate the pace of business development; and develop soft skills and knowledge base of Indian startups engaged in semiconductor design
Facilitate access for the selected startups with domain experts, VCs, accelerators, incubators, industry associations and large companies that could help them scale up their business
Create platforms and forums that provide opportunities to work with high-growth-potential small businesses and startups who have potentially disruptive technologies that could develop or reshape semiconductor supply chains in the future.

About Qualcomm:

Qualcomm is the world’s leading wireless technology innovator and the driving force behind the development, launch, and expansion of 5G. When we connected the phone to the internet, the mobile revolution was born.