12.07.23 Daily [Assam] APSC Current Affairs

As many as 139 electric vehicle charging stations have been set up byIndian OilinAssamsince 2020-21 to meet the countrys net zero emission target by 2070. Altogether, 270 such stations have been set up across the NE region.

Setting up the stations will encourage people to shift towards electric vehicles and in that way, we together will be able to reduce the Carbon Emission sooner. Net zero emission by 2070 is a target set up by the Central government. However, we believe that if we move in tandem, then we will be able to make zero emission by 2046, which would be 100 years of Independence, he added.

Apart from 139 EV charging stations in Assam, 33 have been set up in Manipur, 31 in Tripura, 27 in Arunachal Pradesh, 26 in Meghalaya, 12 in Nagaland and two inMizoram.

The Assam government brought Electric Vehicle Policy in 2021 and Vehicle Scrappage Policy last year with a view to promote EVs, converting the government vehicles and public transport to EVs by 2030 and scrapping the vehicles reaching 15 years of age.

The electric vehicle policy seeks to encourage rapid adoption of electric vehicles in a manner where they contribute to 25% of all new vehicle registrations by 2026. However, lack of enough charging stations has been the biggest stumbling block in the transition to EVs.

In order to attract people towards EVs, the announced an incentive of Rs 20,000, Rs 50,000 and Rs 1,50,000 for two wheelers, three wheelers and four wheelers respectively for early adoption of EVs. Exemption or reimbursement of registration charges and road tax on electric vehicles for 5 years will also be provided as per the policy.

The independent expert group on strengthening multilateral (MDBs) has proposed the launch of a process to ramp up new Equity of all these agencies by $100 billion as part of the overall strategy to triple annual commitments by 2030.

The panel co-chaired by former US treasury secretaryLarry Summersand 15th Finance Commission chairman N K Singh will share its report at the meeting of G20 finance ministers inGandhinagarnext week.
The first set of the recommendations in its report focuses on “The Triple Agenda” of trebling financing by 2030, setting up a triple funding mechanism through a fund and setting a triple mandate for MDBs that includes eliminating POVERTY, boosting shared prosperity, and contributing to Global Public goods, especially <a href="https://exam.pscnotes.com/Climate-change”>Climate Change.

The All India Football Federation (AIFF) on Tuesday passed a budget of Rs 134 crore — an increase of nearly 50 crore from last year — for 2023-24 during its Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Bengaluru.
The AIFF budget for 2022-23 was Rs 87 crore, which its general secretaryShaji Prabhakaranhad termed “meagre” for a big country like India.

The AGM also approved the appointment of a statutory auditor to audit the accounts of the federation and the financial statements and audit reports of 2022-23.

Chandigarh made a comeback to join Punjab, which retained its top position, to be among the best performing states in the latest Performance Grading Index (PGI) report for school Education. Last years’ top performing states – Kerala and Maharashtra-are among the second best performing states/ UTs in the grading.

But none of the states/UTs could achieve the top five grades in the overall category, based on various domains like access, Learning outcomes, , Equity, teachers’ training and Governance processes. The education ministry on Friday released PGI-2021-22, an index for evidence-based comprehensive analysis of the school education system in India. PGI, revamped in 2021-22 in the wake of National Education Policy, has classified states/UTs into ten grades. The highest achievable grade is Daksh, which is for states/UT scoring more than 940 out of 1000 points. The subsequent grades areUtkarsh(881-940), Atti-Uttam (821-880),Uttam(761-820),Prachesta1 (701-760), Prachesta 2 (641-700), Prachesta 3 (581-640), Akanshi 1 (521-580), Akanshi 2 (461-520) and Akanshi 3 (401-460).

The two domains – access and equity- are the only ones where any state (Delhi) managed the top grade (Daksh). For learning outcomes, one of the key indicators of good performance, the top performers are Punjab, Chandigarh and Rajasthan while no states/ UTs could achieve the top grade for teacher education and training.

In 2019-20, Punjab, Chandigarh,Tamil Nadu, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Kerala topped the index, while the index during theCovidperiod (2020-21) recorded Kerala, Maharashtra and Punjab as the best performing states.

According to the education ministry, many of the indicators in the index had become redundant and hence were aligned with the new initiatives of NEP-2020 to include those relating to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The six domains in PGI 2.0 have 73 indicators relating to educational attainment of states/ UTs.

TheNISAR satellitehas reached a significant milestone as its two major components have been integrated to form a single spacecraft in Bengaluru, the US space agencyNASAhas said in a release.

According to NASA, In June, engineers successfully united the spacecraft bus and radar instrument payload of the NISAR satellite in a clean room at theISROfacility in Bengaluru. The payload had been transported from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California earlier in March, while the spacecraft bus was constructed at the ISRO facility.
The satellites cylindrical radar instrument payload contains two radar systems and is about the size of an SUV and partially wrapped in gold-coloured thermal blanketing. The S-band radar is particularly useful for monitoring crop structure and the roughness of land and ice surfaces, while the L-band instrument can penetrate denser forest canopies to study the woody trunks of trees, among other observables, the release added.

The wavelengths of the S-band and L-band signals are about 4 inches (10 centimetres) and 10 inches (25 centimetres), respectively, and both sensors have the potential to see through clouds and collect data day and night.

NISAR, a collaborative project between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), stands for NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar. This advanced satellite is designed to track the movements of Earth’s land and ice sur