Agriculture:
A recent analysis by agricultural experts has revealed that Pradhan Mantri Annadata Aay Sanrakshan Abhiyan will make no difference to the plight of farmers on the ground this season, and will not improve their chances of getting MSP for their crops.Only Madhya Pradesh has opted for the cash payment component. No other state has readied the IT infrastructure needed to implement it.
Giving a major boost to the pro-farmer initiatives of the Government and in keeping with its commitment and dedication for the Annadata, the Union Cabinet approved, in September 2018, a new Umbrella Scheme “Pradhan Mantri Annadata Aay SanraksHan Abhiyan’ (PM- AASHA). The Scheme is aimed at ensuring remunerative prices to the farmers for their produce as announced in the Union Budget for 2018.
The umbrella scheme ‘PM-AASHA’ comprises three sub-schemes:
Price Support Scheme (PSS).
Price Deficiency Payment Scheme (PDPS).
Pilot of Private Procurement & Stockist Scheme (PPPS).
Awards:
Actor Ranbir Kapoor was named ‘Vogue Man Of The Year’ at Vogue Women Of The Year 2018 which was held on Saturday at Grand Hyatt hotel in Mumbai. While Vicky Kaushal won the award for ‘Vogue Trends Disruptor Of The Year (Male)’, Ayushmann Khurrana won the ‘Vogue Man Of The Moment’ award. The event was hosted by filmmaker Karan Johar.
Biodiversity:
Mammals of India (MaOI) is a new model of repository on Indian mammals by the Scientists and Researchers from the National Centers for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore. It is a citizen-scientific repository initiated in September 2018. It is a first such
repository of Mammals in India.
It is an online, freely –accessible portal whose aim is to develop individual pages for all Indian mammals covering all related information about their distribution, breeding, variation, identification and conservation .The website mammalsofindia.org provides a facility to the citizen to upload photographic observations about mammals. 768 images, of 161 species of mammals, have been uploaded by October 25, 2018.MaOI is an initiative under Biodiversity Atlas project. The Biodiversity Atlas is a species-based bioinformatics
platform. India is a mega-diversity country with only 2.4% of the world’s land area but accounts for 7-8% of all global species. There are about 426 species of mammals known from India,, which is about 8.86% of the world species.
Day of Observation:
The 2018 World Day for Audiovisual Heritage is celebrated on October 27. Its theme is “Your Story is Moving”. This commemorative day was chosen by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 2005 to raise of awareness of the significance of and preservation risks recorded sound and audiovisual documents (films, sound and video recordings, radio and television programmes)
72nd Infantry Day Celebrations
Infantry celebrates 27 October each year as Infantry Day to commemorate the first Infantry action post independence. In response to the threat posed to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our Nation, on this day in 1947, the leading elements of the Indian Army from 1st Battalion of the SIKH Regiment air landed at Srinagar and gallantly fought the raiders aided by Pakistan Army.
Cycle rallies were conducted by all 27 Regiments of Infantry to celebrate the 72nd Infantry Day. All teams started from their respective Regimental Centres to New Delhi wherein they were Flagged-In at India Gate on 27 Oct 2018 by General Bipin Rawat, Chief of the Army Staff.The cycle rally from respective Regimental Centres, covered a distance of 2000 Kilometers. Collectively, 27 Regiments covered more than 50,000 km to mark the occasion. During their sojourn enroute, the Infantry soldiers interacted with the Army veterans and motivated the country’s youth towards nation building.
Defence:
The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC), chaired by Defence Minister Smt Nirmala Sitharaman and accorded approval for the Mid Life Upgrade of 17 Dornier Aircraft of Indian Coast Guard (ICG) at an approximate cost of Rs. 950 crore. The upgrades will be carried out by M/s Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), the aircraft manufacturer of India.
ICG is also the nodal agency in India for maritime pollution response. The Coast Guard has a fleet of Dornier aircraft which play a pivotal role in maritime surveillance. In order to enhance the capabilities of the fleet, DAC accorded approval for upgradation of these aircraft with state-of-the-art technology, spares, Special Maintenance Tools (SMT) and Special Test Equipment (STE).
Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) objective is to ensure expeditious procurement of the approved requirements of the Armed Forces, in terms of capabilities sought, and time frame prescribed, by optimally utilizing the allocated budgetary resources.To counter corruption and speed up decision- making in military procurement, the government of India in 2001 decided to set up an integrated DAC. It is headed by the Defence Minister.
Elections
Government of India has notified the Electoral Bond Scheme 2018. As per provisions of the Scheme, Electoral Bonds may be purchased by a person (as defined in item No.2(d) of Gazette Notification), who is a citizen of India or incorporated or established in India. A person being an individual can buy Electoral Bonds, either singly or jointly with other individuals Only the Political Parties registered under Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 (43 of 1951) and which secured not less than one per cent of the votes polled in the last General Election to the House of the People or the Legislative Assembly of the State, shall be eligible to receive the Electoral Bonds.
State Bank of India (SBI) in the 6th phase of sale, has been authorised to issue and encash Electoral Bonds through its 29 Authorised Branches (as per list enclosed) w.e.f. 01.11.2018 to 10.11.2018.
Festivals:
Karva Chauth is a one-day festival celebrated by Hindu women four days after purnima (a full moon) in the month of Kartika. Dates differ according to the Gregorian calendar which is tabular and not based according to constellations.On Karva Chauth women, especially in Northern India, who are married fast from sunrise to moonrise for the safety and longevity of their husbands.
A beautiful queen called Veervati was the only sister of seven loving brothers. She spent her first Karva Chauth as a married woman at her parents’ house. She began a strict fast after sunrise but, by evening, was desperately waiting for the moonrise as she suffered severe thirst and hunger. Her seven brothers couldn’t bear to see their sister in such distress and created a mirror in a pipal tree that made it look as though the moon had risen. The sister mistook it for the moon and broke her fast. The moment she took the first morsel of food, she sneezed. In her second morsel she found hair. After the third she learned the news of her husband, the king, was dead. Heartbroken, she wept through the night until her shakti compelled a Goddess to appear and ask why she crying. When
the queen explained her distress, the Goddess revealed how she had been tricked by her brothers and instructed her to repeat the Karva Chauth fast with complete devotion. When Veervati repeated the fast, Yama was forced to restore her husband to life.
Anil Kapoor’s wife Sunita Kapoor hosted the Karwa Chauth celebrations at her residence with their close-knit friends including Raveena Tandon, Neelam Kothari, Kaykasshan Patel, Varun Dhawan’s mother Lali Dhawan, film producer Renu Ravi Chopra and others, like every year but the family and friends missed the presence of Sridevi, who died earlier this year. The actor was a part of the Kapoor family’s Karwa Chauth celebrations every year along with other Bollywood leading ladies and star wives.
A 21-year-old man allegedly committed suicide in a village in Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura district on Saturday after his recently wedded wife refused to observe Karwa Chauth fast. The woman had refused to fast due to poor health. However, the man was firm on his stand and reportedly locked himself in a room, where he hung himself in the morning.
Geography:
Mexico’s 2017 Earthquake Was So Powerful It Split Through Tectonic Plate.On Sept. 7, 2017, Mexico’s Chiapas state, which borders on Guatemala, was struck with a powerful 8.2 magnitude earthquake that killed nearly100 people and injured hundreds more.:
India_States:
The ‘Experiencing North East’ festival depicting the uniqueness of North Eastern culture is being organised at India International Centre (IIC), New Delhi from 27th-31st October, 2018.North East Festival – Connecting People, celebrating life is an attempt to create awareness about North East India and to promote tourism.India’s North East, comprising 8 states of Assam, Arunachal, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim have enormous potential and tourism propositions.
Former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief G Madhavan Nair on Saturday joined the BJP in the presence of party chief Amit Shah in Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram. Nair had directed 25 successful missions including INSAT and Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) during his tenure as ISRO chief between 2003-09. He is one of the accused in the Antrix-Devas deal case.
At least four Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawans were martyred on Saturday after Maoists blew up their mine-protected vehicle in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district. Two other CRPF jawans were injured in the improvised explosive device (IED) blast. The jawans were out on an ‘area domination’ exercise when the Maoists triggered the blast.
India & US Relations:
US dragged India to the global trade body’s dispute settlement mechanism over export subsidies in May 2018, saying that these incentives were harming the American companies. The US has challenged India’s export subsidy programmes such as Merchandise Exports from India Scheme in the WTO, asserting that these initiatives harm its companies by creating an uneven playing field.
India & Indonesia Relations:
‘Little India Gate’ was inaugurated in northern Indonesia on 27 October 2018.It recognises the contribution of the Indian community in the development of Medan city, Indonesia.The new structure was inaugurated jointly by India’s ambassador to Indonesia and Timor Leste Pradeep Kumar Rawat and Mayor of Medan H T Dzulmi.
Medan city is the fourth largest city in Indonesia.
International Affairs:
A gunman opened fire at a Jewish synagogue in the US city of Pittsburgh with up to eight people feared killed.FBI agents have reached the ‘Tree of Life’ Congregation Synagogue at Squirrel Hill area in Pittsburgh, where a large number of people had gathered for a morning service when the shooting took place.
Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena on Saturday suspended the country’s parliament, a day after he sacked Ranil Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister and replaced him with former President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Sirisena’s move comes after Wickremesinghe, who claimed he remains Prime Minister, asked the Speaker to convene the parliament on Sunday to prove he still retained his parliamentary majority.
International Reports:
Pakistan remains a breeding ground and supporter of global terrorism and is responsible for three times the terror risk to humanity that Syria poses, according to a report by Mumbai-based think tank Oxford University and Strategic Foresight Group (SFG). The ‘Humanity at Risk – Global Terror Threat Indicant’ states that jihadi thought processes began in what is today Pakistan.
Judiciary:
Department of Consumer Affairs & NCDRC had organized a conference to review functioning of State Commissions and District Fora.The Conference is being held to discuss the issues relating to the functioning of the Consumer Fora such as pendency of case and filling up of vacancies in the post of President and Members of the Commissions.
The National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRC), India is a quasi-judicial commission in India which was set up in 1988 under the Consumer Protection Act of 1986.The commission is headed by a sitting or retired judge of the Supreme Court of India
Section 21 of Consumer Protection Act, 1986 provides that the National Consumer shall have jurisdiction to entertain a complaint valued more than one crore and also have Appellate and Revisional jurisdiction from the orders of State Commissions or the District fora as the case may be.
Section 23 of Consumer Protection Act, 1986, provides that any person aggrieved by an order of NCDRC, may prefer an Appeal against such order to Supreme Court of India within a period of 30 days.
Prime Minister:
Prime Minister Narendra Modi embarked on a three-day visit to Japan. During his stay, Mr Modi will attend the 13th India-Japan Annual summit with his counterpart Mr Shinzo Abe. This will be the fifth Annual Summit meeting between Mr Modi and Mr Abe and their 12th meeting overall.
Under the framework of the Special Strategic and Global Partnership between India and Japan, the two leaders will have wide-ranging discussions on bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual interest.
Public Sector:
Navratna Defence PSU Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) has during the second quarter of FY 2018-19, achieved a robust growth in turnover and consequently recorded a healthy growth in profit as compared to the 1stquarter of current year and corresponding quarter of the previous year.
The company has achieved a turnover of Rs. 3282.40 crore, during the 2ndquarter of FY 2018-19, registering a growth of about 35 %, over the turnover of Rs. 2431.73 crore recorded in the corresponding period of the previous year.
Profit After Tax (PAT) during the 2nd quarter of FY 2018-19 stood at Rs. 571.31 crore, registering a growth of about 39 % over the Profit After Tax (PAT) of Rs. 412.39 crore recorded in the corresponding period of the previous year.
Space:
NASA’s 28-year-old Hubble Space Telescope has resumed its operations after 22 days, the agency said. The telescope had suffered a backup gyroscope malfunction on October 5 which caused it to show the rate of rotation far in excess of the actual rates. NASA was able to stablilise and realign Hubble by switching it between different operational modes.
Sports:
Windies defeated India by 43 runs in the third ODI at Pune on Saturday to end India’s 10-match unbeaten streak across formats and level the five-match series 1-1. The ODI witnessed India captain Virat Kohli become the first-ever Indian to smash three consecutive ODI centuries. The fourth ODI will take place at Mumbai on Monday.
India captain Virat Kohli on Saturday smashed a 110-ball century against Windies at Pune to equal ex-South Africa captain AB de Villiers’ record of hitting four consecutive ODI hundreds on the Indian soil. With 62 hundreds, the 29-year-old now stands joint- fourth with Jacques Kallis on the list of most centuries in international cricket. Kohli has scored 10 hundreds in 2018.
Sports:
Indian table tennis player Ayhika Mukherjee has won a silver medal in the under-21 women’s singles category of the ITTF Challenge Belgium Open in De Haan, Belgium.. She lost to Korea’s Youjin Kim in the final. In the semifinals, Ayhika had defeated Hong Kong’s Chengzhu Zhu to enter the finals.
Tributes:
Madan Lal Khurana (15 October 1936 Lyallpur (now Faisalabad), Punjab – 27 October 2018 New Delhi) was an Indian politician also was Chief Minister of Delhi from 1993 to 1996. He also served as Governor of Rajasthan in 2004.He was the Union Minister of Parliamentary affairs and Tourism in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. He was a member of Rashtriya Swayansevak Sangh and Bharatiya Janata Party.His family members donated his eyes to Dadichi Sansthan.
He first ventured into politics as a student after becoming the general secretary of the Allahabad Students’ Union in 1959 during his post-graduation in Economics at the Allahabad University.It was actually him, along with Vijay Kumar Malhotra, Kedar Nath Sahani and Kanwar Lal Gupta, who founded the Delhi wing of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh.He was appointed as the Union Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Tourism in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government until it was dissolved in 1999
Women_#MeeTooMovement:
Kannada film actress Sruthi Hariharan filed a sexual harassment case with the police against actor Arjun Sarja in Bengaluru a week after she had named him on the social media. “Registered an FIR and booked the accused (Arjun) under various sections of the IPC on a complaint Sruthi filed at the Cubbon Park police station through her lawyer,
Sruthi, 29, had named Arjun, 54, in her Facebook post on October 20, accusing him of sexually harassing her on the sets of a Kannada film ‘Vismaya’ in July 2016/
Welfare_Senior Citizens:
An ADIP-RVY Distribution Camp for free of cost distribution of Aids and Assistive Living Devices to Divyangjans and Senior Citizens in BPL category under Rashtriya Vayoshri Yojana (RVY) was organized by the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (DEPwD), Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment Department. The event was organized by Artificial Limbs Manufacturing Corporation of India (ALIMCO), a PSU working under the aegis of Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.
Rashtriya Vayoshri Yojana is fully funded by the Central Government.The expenditure for implementation of the scheme will be met from the “Senior Citizens’ Welfare Fund“. 30% of the beneficiaries in each district shall be women.Free of cost distribution of the devices, commensurate with the extent of disability/infirmity that is manifested among the eligible senior citizens will take place.
As per the Census figures of 2011, the population of senior citizens in India is 10.38 crore. More than 70% of the population of senior citizens live in rural areas of the country. A sizeable percentage (5.2%) of the senior citizens suffers from some sort of disabilities related to old age. Projections indicate that the number of elderly population will increase to around 173 million by 2026.
Further:
India Mobile Congress is one of the biggest marquee Mobile, Internet, and Technology event for South-East Asia organized by COAI and DoT. IMC 2018 was held in Aerocity, New Delhi. The congress was held under the theme of NEW DIGITAL HORIZONS.
The congress aims at building ideas, forging lasting Industry relationships, showcasing cutting-edge mobile technology & product trends, providing sectoral insights, industrial solutions, case studies & workshops.
Four Himalayan peaks near Gangotri glacier have been named after former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee Atal-1, 2, 3 and 4. The peaks are located at 6,557, 6,566, 6,160 and 6,100 metres on the right flank of Gangotri glacier, said Colonel Amit Bisht, principal of Nehru Institute of Mountaineering and leader of the mountain climbing team which recently scaled the newly named peaks.
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