Assam Current Affairs – May 2018
( Covers all important Assam Current Affairs & GK topics for the month of May 2018 )
May 2018 – eBook Monthly PDF | May 2018 – Monthly Quiz PDF
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May 7
India’s ‘amazingly fast’ 7% projected Growth Rate for the current Fiscal: ADB
Asian Development Bank Chief Economist Yasuyuki Sawada stated India’s projected GDP growth of over 7 percent for the current fiscal (2018-19) is amazingly fast and if this momentum is maintained the size of the economy can double within a decade.
According to ADB, India should not worry about not achieving 8 percent growth but focus on increasing domestic demand by reducing the income inequality.
Highlights
- The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has projected that India will remain the fastest growing Asian nation with 7.3 per cent growth in 2018-19, and 7.6 per cent in 2019-20.
- The Indian economy is forecast to grow at 6.6 per cent in the 2017-18 fiscal ended March 31, slower than 7.1 per cent in 2016-17.
- The size of India’s economy is about USD 2.5 trillion currently, making it the sixth largest in the world.
- Growth is driven more by domestic consumption than exports.
*Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg had said recently that the country is on track to doubling the size of its economy to USD 5 trillion by 2025.
Festival of Bharat to be organized in Delhi
Delhi will host a Festival of Bharat between May 9 and May 14 as 21stcentury tribute to the dignity and depth of civilization of India.
The event will be held at Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) in New Delhi.
The event will be attended by the Scholars, Grammy award winning artistes, rising new stars and prominent public figures.
First Indus river dolphin count begin in Punjab
Punjab government along with World Wide Fund (WWF)-India is organizing the 1stcount of Indus dolphins (one of the world’s rarest mammals).
Found only in India and Pakistan, the Indus dolphins are restricted to only 185 km stretch between Talwara and Harike Barrage in India’s Beas River in Punjab.
First sighted officially in 2007 the number of Platanista Gangetica minor popularly known as Indus river Dolphins in Harike Wildlife Sanctuary and Beas river were believed to be more than a dozen in number which face danger from indiscriminate fishing and rising pollution levels.
FACTFILE – Indus river dolphin
- The Indus river dolphin (Platanista gangetica minor) is a subspecies of freshwater river dolphin currently only found in the Indus river of India and Pakistan.
- This dolphin was the first discovered side-swimming cetacean. It is patchily distributed in five small, sub-populations that are separated by irrigation barrages.
- From the 1970s until 1998, the Ganges River dolphin and the Indus dolphin were regarded as separate species; however, in 1998, their classification was changed from two separate species to subspecies of a single species.
- Only about 1,000 to 2,000 of this unique dolphin species exist today in the lower reaches of the Indus River in Pakistan.
- IUCN suspects the population size of the Indus river dolphins has reduced by more than 50 per cent since 1944.
- A blind species that communicates through echo like a Bat does, Indus dolphins are one of the seven freshwater dolphins found across the world.
- Indus river dolphin is the national mammal of Pakistan
- IUCN conservation status ‘Endangered’
Skill India organized ‘Ajeevika and Kaushal Vikas Mela’ in Bhubaneswar
Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) and Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), together joined hands to amplify the “Gram Swaraj Abhiyaan” of the current incumbent government which is promoting social harmony and awareness around the pro-poor initiatives of the government.
More than 29 states of art multi-skill ‘Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendras’ was also launched digitally across the country by Union Minister for Petroleum & Natural Gas, Skill Development & Entrepreneurship Dharmendra Pradhan.
The Kaushal Mela organized on the sidelines of the event, saw an exhibition being put multiple stakeholders including Sector Skill Councils, Bankers, Training Partners, Industries, ITIs etc., which provided counselling for the candidates and their parents, and helped them understand various opportunities available in the skill development ecosystem.
FACTFILE – NRLM/Ajeevika
- National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) was a scheme promoted by the Indian government under its Ministry of Rural Development. It was basically a poverty relief project.
- The scheme promoted self-employment and organisation of the poor in rural India.
- The scheme sought to organise poor people in rural areas into SHG or Self Help Groups and turn them self-employment-ready.
- NRLM was a rehashed and improved version of the Swarnajayanti Grameen Swarojgar Yojana.
- NRLM was started in 2011 and also had World Bank support. In September 2015, it was replaced by the Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana.
May 8
India to host 15th Asia Media Summit
India would be hosting the 15th Asia Media Summit (AMS-2018) in New Delhi. The theme of this summit is “Telling our Stories Asia and More”. The summit mainly aims to provide a unique opportunity to the broadcasters in Asia to share their thoughts on broadcasting and information.
Asia-Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development (AIBD) will organize this annual summit in corporation with its partners and international organizations.
Google launches Android ‘Things’, it’s IoT platform
Alphabet Inc’s Google launched Android Things (codenamed Brillo), a variant of an Android Operating System for the Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Its goal is to enable IoT machines developers to be built faster, cheaper and more secure.
Google’s version of Android for IoT devices aims to solve a problem that affects most of the current IoT devices on the market, developers routinely fail to update their devices. With Android Things, each connected device that uses the platform will receive three years of OS updates directly from Google and all of these updates will be free.
FACTFILE – Android Things
- It is Android-based embedded operating system.
- It is aimed to be used with low-power and memory constrained Internet of Things (IoT) devices, which are usually built from different MCU platforms.
- It is designed to work as low as 32–64 MB of RAM.
- It will support Bluetooth Low Energy and Wi-Fi.
India signed $200 million loan deal with World Bank for National Nutrition Mission
India has signed $200 million loan deal with World Bank for the National Nutrition Mission (POSHAN Abhiyan). This loan would help India in attaining its goal of reducing stunting (a rare disease that stops growth) in children of age 0-6 years from 38.4% to 25% by the year 2022.
The loan approved today will support the first phase scale up to 315 districts across all states and union territories (UTs).
A large section of POSHAN Abhiyan involves gradual increase of the interventions supported by World Bank assisted Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Systems Strengthening and Nutrition Improvement Project (ISSNIP) to all districts in the country over a 3-year period.
The POSHAN (PM’s Overarching Scheme for Holistic Nourishment) Abhiyaan was launched by the Prime Minister on 8th March 2018 at Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan.
Vladimir Putin to be sworn in as Russian President
Vladimir Putin is to be sworn in as president of Russia for 4th term in the Grand Kremlin Palace, Moscow. Putin will now be serving the office of President for another six years. He won the presidential elections with 76% of the votes and defeated Pavel Grudinin, who fetched 11.8% of votes.
FACTFILE – Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
- He is a Russian politician serving as the current President of Russia since 7 May 2012, previously holding the position from 2000 until 2008.
- Putin is the former agent for the Russian spy agency KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti).
- He was Prime Minister of Russia from 1999 until the beginning of his first presidency in 2000, and again between presidencies from 2008 until 2012.
- During his first term as Prime Minister, he served as Acting President of Russia due to the resignation of President Boris Yeltsin.
- During his second term as Prime Minister, he was the chairman of the ruling United Russia party.
ISRO’s indigenous clock to prop up India’s own GPS
Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has developed an atomic clock for navigation satellites to measure accurate location data. Once it successfully passes all tests, the tomic clock will be used in experimental navigation satellite to test its accuracy and durability in space.
The indigenous atomic clock is being developed by the Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad. Currently, ISRO imports atomic clocks from European aerospace manufacturer Astrium (EAMA) for navigation satellites.
FACTFILE – NavIC (Navigation in Indian Constellation)
- India’s own ‘regional GPS’ NavIC (Navigation in Indian Constellation) is yet to become officially operational owing to repeated failures of the atomic clocks on the satellites.
- The rubidium atomic clocks from Europe started failingon the first navigation satellite, IRNSS-1A, around 2016, soon after ISRO put the last and seventh satellite in orbit.
- Until a few months ago, three more satellites were said to have suffered “one or two dysfunctional clocks” each, while two satellites did not have any problematic clocks.
- Each satellite carries three atomic clocks, including a standby.
- In view of the cascade of failing imported atomic clocks — nine out of the 21 clocks in the fleet have failed— ISRO has decided to add buffers to the NavIC by adding four more satellites. It hopes to have an indigenous atomic clock in each of them.
- NavIC is meant to give Indian civil and military users reliable location and time information, for which the performance of the atomic clocks is critical.
May 2018 – eBook Monthly PDF | May 2018 – Monthly Quiz PDF
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