11 JUNE 2021 CURRENT AFFAIRS

1.PAKKE TIGER RESERVE

More than 200 contingency workers of the Pakke Tiger Reserve in Arunachal Pradesh went on an indefinite strike over non-payment of wages since December 2020.

About:

• Names: Pakke Tiger Reserve, also known as Pakhui Tiger Reserve, is a Project Tiger reserve.
• Location: It is located in the Pakke Kessang district of Arunachal Pradesh.
• Neighbouring areas and rivers: Towards the south and south-east, the sanctuary adjoins Nameri National Park of Assam. To the east lies the Pakke River and to the west, the park is bounded by the Bhareli or Kameng River.
• Biodiversity: It falls within the Eastern Himalaya Biodiversity Hotspot. 

Source : The Hindu

2.SMART KITCHEN PROJECT

The Kerala government has announced the introduction of a Smart Kitchen project.

About:

• Objective: It is meant to modernise kitchens and ease the difficulty faced by homemakers in household chores. By enhancing mechanisation in kitchens, women participation in labour could be increased.
• It would be implemented through the Kerala State Financial Enterprises (KSFE), a state-run chit fund and lending firm.
• Under the scheme, KSFE would give soft loans to women from all walks of life for purchasing household gadgets or equipment.
• Members of Kudumbashree, which is Kerala’s women empowerment and poverty alleviation scheme, would get preference in purchasing kitchen gadgets under smart kitchen scheme. No collateral would be demanded from Kudumbashree members, as per the initial plan.

Source : Indian Express

3.CHHATRAPATI SHIVAJI MAHARAJ TERMINUS (CSMT) RAILWAY STATION

The Indian Railway Stations Development Corporation Ltd (IRSDC), which is the nodal agency for station redevelopment in India, has shortlisted nine bidders for the redevelopment of the iconic Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) railway station in Mumbai.

About:

• Located at the heart of Mumbai, the CSMT railway station is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
• Its construction had begun in 1878 and was completed in 10 years. Back then, it was known as Victoria Terminus (VT) railway station.
• It was designed by British architect FW Stevens.
• The architecture of the building is an example of the Indo-Saracenic style, which is a mixture of the Victorian Gothic Revival style and the traditional Indian style. The Victorian Gothic Revival influence comes from the architecture of the St Pancras railway station in London.
• The station also houses Central Railway headquarters.

Source : Indian Express

4.MSP FOR KHARIF CROPS

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by PM Modi, has approved the increase in the Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) for all mandated Kharif crops for marketing season 2021-22.

About:

• MSP for common paddy was hiked to ₹1,940 a quintal for the coming kharif season, less than 4% higher than last year’s price of ₹1,868.
• The highest absolute increase in MSP over the previous year has been recommended for sesamum (Rs. 452 per quintal) followed by tur and urad (Rs. 300 per quintal each).
• In case of groundnut and nigerseed, there has been an increase of Rs 275 per quintal and Rs 235 per quintal respectively in comparison to last year.
• The differential remuneration is aimed at encouraging crop diversification.
• The expected returns to farmers over their cost of production are estimated to be highest in case of Bajra (85%) followed by urad (65%) and tur (62%). For rest of the crops, return to farmers over their cost of production is estimated to be at least 50%. 

Source : PIB

5.CIBER-2

The Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment-2 (CIBER-2) was launched by NASA on June 6, 2021 from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, USA.

About:

• Objective: The aim of this mission is to count the number of stars that exist in the Universe.
• How? The experiment is measuring a mysterious glow of infrared light that fills our skies called the cosmic infrared background, which is emitted by some of the most common stars.

Is it the first of its kind?

• While this is not the first time that such a mission has been undertaken, the CIBER-2 instrument has been improved upon to see if any stars had been undercounted in the previous counting attempts.
• The European Space Agency (ESA) infrared space observatory Herschel also counted the number of galaxies in infrared and measured their luminosity previously.

Important Info :

How Many Stars Are There?

• Scientists have estimated that on average each galaxy consists of about 100 million stars, but this figure is not exact. The figure of 100 million could easily be an underestimation, probably by a factor of 10 or more.
• To put this into perspective, an average of 100 million stars in each galaxy (there an estimated 2 trillion of them as per NASA), would give a total figure of one hundred quintillion stars or 1 with 21 zeroes after it.

Source : Indian Express

6.ANTI-HAIL GUNS

To help out horticulturists who face crop damage due to hailstorms, the Himachal Pradesh government will be testing the use of indigenously developed ‘anti-hail guns’. The indigenous guns have been developed by IIT Bombay along with Dr Y S Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry at Nauni (Solan).

About:

• An anti-hail gun is a machine which generates shock waves to disrupt the growth of hailstones in clouds.
• It comprises a tall, fixed structure somewhat resembling an inverted tower, several metres high, with a long and narrow cone opening towards the sky.
• The gun is “fired” by feeding an explosive mixture of acetylene gas and air into its lower chamber, which releases a shock wave (waves which travel faster than the speed of sound, such as those produced by supersonic aircraft).
• These shock waves supposedly stop water droplets in clouds from turning into hailstones, so that they fall simply as raindrops. 

Important Info :

Hail

• Hail is solid precipitation made of balls or irregular lumps of ice, each of which is called a hailstone. Unlike graupel or snow-ice pellets that are smaller and translucent, hailstones consist mostly of water ice and measure between 5 mm and 15 cm in diameter.
• Any thunderstorm, which produces hail that reaches the ground, is termed a hailstorm.
• Maharashtra is India’s most hailstorm-prone state, as reported in an IMD analysis of hailstorms across the country between 1981 and 2015. 

Source : Indian Express

7.NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR THE EMPOWERMENT OF PERSONS WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITIES (NIEPID)

The Union Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment inaugurated the Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Bhawan (Hostel Building) of NIEPID Secunderabad.

About:

• It is an Autonomous Body under the administrative control of Deparment of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (Divyangjan), Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment
• It is dedicated to provide quality services to Persons with Intellectual Disabilities (Divyangjan) in the National interest.
• It was formerly known as National Institute for the Mentally Handicapped.
• Established in the year 1984
• HQ: Secunderabad (Telangana).
• NIEPID has three regional centers located at Noida/ New Delhi, Kolkata, & Mumbai. 

Source : PIB

8.UN SECRETARY-GENERAL

The United Nations Security Council formally approved Secretary-General António Guterres for a second term, assuring that the former Prime Minister of Portugal retains the top job for five more years starting January 1, 2022. The recommendation will now go to the 193-member General Assembly, which is expected to make the appointment on June 18

About:

• The Secretary-General of the United Nations (UNSG or SG) is the head of the United Nations Secretariat, one of the six principal organs of the United Nations.
• The Secretary-General is appointed by the General Assembly, on the recommendation of the Security Council. The Secretary-General's selection is therefore subject to the veto of any of the five permanent members of the Security Council.
• The office's qualifications are open to interpretation and have been established by custom and precedent in previous selections.
• The length of the term is discretionary, but all secretaries-general since 1971 have been appointed to five-year terms.
• While there are no term limits applicable to this post, no Secretary-General has so far served more than two terms. No secretary-general since 1981 has attempted to secure a third term.

Source : Indian Express

9.FASTLY

On 8 June 2021, Fastly reported problems with their CDN service which caused many major websites, such as Reddit, gov.uk, Twitch, Spotify and Amazon, along with major news sources such as The New York Times, The Guardian, CNN and the BBC, to become unavailable.

About

• Fastly is an American cloud computing services provider.
• It describes its network as an ‘edge cloud platform’, which is designed to help developers extend their core cloud infrastructure to the edge of the network, closer to users.
• The Fastly edge cloud platform includes their content delivery network (CDN), image optimization, video and streaming, cloud security, and load balancing services.
• A content delivery network is an arrangement that allows customer websites to store data such as images and videos on various mirror servers across countries so that the data is closer to users, and thus shows up faster.
• Customers rely on Fastly and its rivals to host and protect their website data from denial-of-service attacks and disruption from spikes in traffic. 

Source : Indian Express

10.EAGLE ACT

Democrat Representative Zoe Lofgren and Republican John Curtis, introduced the Equal Access to Green cards for Legal Employment (EAGLE) Act of 2021 in the House of Representatives.

About:

• The bipartisan act seeks to phase out the seven per cent per-country limit on employment-based immigrant visas and raises the per-country limit on family-sponsored visas from seven per cent to 15 per cent.
• It provides for a nine-year period for the elimination of this limit.
• The seven per cent limit was introduced in the mid-20th century, which has led countries with relatively small populations to be allocated the same number of visas as a relatively large-population country. 

Important Info :

Significance

• It will “benefit the US economy by allowing American employers to focus on hiring immigrants based on their merit, not their birthplace”.
• The bill will be advantageous for Indian job-seekers who currently rely on temporary visas or await green cards to work in the US.

Source : Indian Express