28-01-22 Daily-Himachal Pradesh-HPPSC Current Affairs

The Budget has left a bitter taste in the mouth of apple growers. With their profits sliding year after year due to a volatile market, sharp increase in input costs, and heavy import of apple from other countries, the growers feel the Budget has failed to address any of their concerns.

The biggest disappointment is the unchanged import duty on apple, which continues to be 50 per cent. We have been demanding for long that the duty be raised to 100 per cent. The unchanged duty will continue to hurt the domestic apple market, said Lokinder Bisht, president of the Progressive Growers Association.

Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur had also requested the Centre to increase the import duty on apple to 100 per cent during his meetings for consultation on the Union Budget in Delhi last month. Thakur had even made the suggestion that apple be excluded from the list of fruits and other commodities brought under the Open General License.

At Chandigarh University, Rajnath Singh inaugurates the Kalpana Chawla Centre For Research.

Highlights:

The Kalpana Chawla Centre for Research in Space Science and Technology (KCCRSST) at Chandigarh University was inaugurated by DEFENCE Minister Rajnath Singh.

The Union Minister also announced the launch of a Rs 10 crore Defence Scholarship Scheme at Chandigarh University for the children of three-service military officers. Kalpana Chawla was the first woman of Indian descent to travel to space.

It was founded with the goal of educating students in space science and satellite creation, as well as addressing future difficulties in space research.

The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2021 was announced by Transparency International, and India was rated 85th (Score of 40).

Highlights:

The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2021 was announced by Transparency International, and India was rated 85th (Score of 40).

Three countries, Denmark, Finland, and New Zealand shared first place in the ranking (Score of 88).

This ranking assesses how corrupt each country’s government is thought to be.

The results are graded on a scale of 0 (extremely corrupt) to 100 (very clean) (very clean). There are 180 countries ranked in it.

India was placed 86th with a score of 40 last year (for 2020).

The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for this year shows that corruption is at an all-time low around the world.

For the tenth year in a row, the global Average remains steady at 43 out of 100 points.

Annually on 28 January, Data Privacy Day is commemorated to raise privacy awareness.

Highlights:

The day is observed as “an international effort to raise awareness about the need of respecting privacy, fostering trust, and protecting data.”

Individual privacy is a means of safeguarding everyone’s online safety.

As more people are forced to spend time in the virtual world due to the covid-19 pandemic, it has become a hot issue of conversation in the digitally connected world.

Ijmuiden, Amsterdam, Netherlands, has opened the world’s giant canal lock.

Highlights:

Ijmuiden, a small port city in the Port of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, has opened the world’s giant canal lock.

King Willen-Alexander of the Netherlands opened the sea lock. The sea lock at Ijmuiden is 500 meters (1,640 ft) long and 70 meters broad.

The major project began in 2016 and was supposed to be completed by 2019. It also exceeded the budget by roughly 300 million ($338 million).

Facebook parent company Meta’s new ” supercomputer” will be the fastest across the planet by the center of the year 2022.

Highlights

Meta introduced the AI Research SuperCluster (RSC) on January 24, 2022. It’s believed to be among the fastest AI supercomputers running today.

Currently, AI can perform tasks like translating text between languages and help in identifying potentially harmful content.

However, the development of the next generation of AI would require powerful supercomputers capable of quintillions of functions per second.