Current Affair 1:

Details about Bharat Ratna

 

It is the highest civilian award of the Republic of India.

• Instituted on 2 January 1954, the award is conferred in recognition of "exceptional service/performance of the highest order", without distinction of race, occupation, position or gender.
• The award was originally limited to achievements in the arts, literature, science, and public services, but the Government of India expanded the criteria to include "any field of human endeavor" in December 2011.
• The recommendations for Bharat Ratna are made by the Prime Minister himself to
• the President. No formal recommendations for this are necessary
• The recipients receive a Sanad (certificate) signed by the President and a peepal leaf-shaped medallion with no monetary grant associated with the award.
• Bharat Ratna recipients rank seventh in the Indian order of precedence.
• The number of annual awards is restricted to a maximum of three in a particular year.
• The first recipients in 1954 included C. Rajagopalachari, the last Governor-General of the Dominion of India; Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the second President and first Vice President of India; and Nobel Prize Laureate and Physicist C. V. Raman.
• Originally, the statutes did not allow for posthumous awards, but in January 1955, amendments were made to permit them.
• The first posthumous honoree was former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri.
• Latest, the award was announced for Karpoori Thakur, L. K. Advani.

Current Affair 2:

Drying up of Panama Canal

 

News:

Reason: Intense and prolonged El Niño season, the trade wind–driven drying season that hit the Pacific in 2023, extending into 2024. Warming ocean temperatures and dry conditions have undoubtedly affected the canal.

Other most important reason is: Deforestation of the Amazon and the driest rainy season on record seen in 2023.

About Panama Canal:

Panama Canal is highly dependent on rainfall volume. The canal comprises a series of interconnected artificial freshwater lakes, the largest and most important of which is Gatun Lake. Water levels at Gatun Lake are at their lowest in the last five years.

Current Affair 3:

Wheat farmers are advised to be vigilant against yellow rust pest

 

News:

Based on the input from wheat researchers and the weather bureau, the Karnal-based Indian Institute of Wheat and Barley Research (IIWBR) has appealed to the farmers to remain vigilant against yellow rust, a pest used to appear a few years ago in some districts of Haryana during this period.

Key facts about yellow rust:

Yellow Rust disease appears as yellow stripes of powder or dust on leaves and leaf sheaths of the wheat crop. This yellow powder comes out on clothing or fingers when touched.

• Rust colonies in the leaves drain the carbohydrates from the plant and reduce the green leaf area.
• The main economic loss from yellow rust is in wheat.
• The disease does occur in barley but it is rare due to effective varietal resistance.
• Areas that have cool, damp summers and mild winters are prone to yellow rust infections, for example, coastal regions or regions around rivers or estuaries.
• Epidemics of yellow rust often start as individual plants, usually in the autumn.
• Symptoms develop slowly over winter and are often missed until the early spring when small patches or foci of infected plants can be seen in fields.
• These patches usually spread in the direction of prevailing wind.
• In India, yellow rust is a major disease in the Northern Hill Zone and the North-Western Plain Zone and spreads easily during the onset of cool weather.

Current Affair 4:

Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI)

 

News:

The Serum Institute of India (SII) will join a growing Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) network of vaccine producers in the Global South. SII becomes the fourth member of CEPI’s global manufacturing network. Other members include Aspen in South Africa, Institut Pasteur de Dakar in Senegal, and Bio Farma in Indonesia.

About:

CEPI was founded in Davos by the governments of Norway and India, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome, and the World Economic Forum.

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations is a foundation that takes donations from public, private, philanthropic, and civil society organisations, to finance independent research projects to develop vaccines against emerging infectious diseases.

It adopted a vision of 100 Days Mission for delivering a vaccine within 100 days with improved surveillance providing earlier detection and warning, and swift use of interventions such as testing, contact tracing and social distancing to suppress disease transmission.

 

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