Daily Current Affairs for UPSC IAS: 6th October 2022

herSTART Initiative:

herSTART was recently launched by President of India, Draupadi Murmu.

• herSTART is an initiative implemented by the Gujarat University Startup and Entrepreneurship Council (GUSEC).
• It is supported by the state government of Gujarat, the Central Government and the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF).
• The Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) recognized it as key driving initiative of the Gujarat Startup Ecosystem in the States Startup Rankings Framework Report of 2022.
• The purpose of herSTART is to aid women-led startups to scale up.
• It will connect women-led startups with private and government platforms.
• It provides free online resources and training modules to aspiring women entrepreneurs in addition to a digital community and digital publication showcasing their success stories.
• It includes the herSTART Incubator (a startup incubator focusing specifically on women entrepreneurs and innovators) as well as herSTART Accelerator (a round-the-year accelerator programme for high-impact women-led startups).
• As part of herSTART, online and offline modes of engagements have been organized for over 15,000 women entrepreneurs.

Nansen Award:

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently received the Nansen Refugee Award.

• Ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel received the UNHCR Nansen Award for providing asylum for refugees while in office.
• While Merkel was the Chancellor in 2015 and 2016, Germany welcomed more than 1.2 million refugees and asylum seekers, especially from Syria.
• The UNHCR recognized Merkel’s determination to protect asylum seekers, helping them to survive and rebuild after facing war.
• The Nansen Award committee also honoured four regional winners.
• These include a refugee support cacao cooperative in Costa Rica in the Americas, a volunteer refugee firefighting group in Mauritia in West Africa, humanitarian organization Meikse Myanmar that helps internally displaced people in Asia and the Pacific and an Iraqi gynaecologist known for providing medical and psychological aid to Yazidi girls and women in North Africa and Middle East.
• The Nansen Awards will be bestowed to Merkel and other winners at a ceremony that will be organized in Geneva, Switzerland on October 10, 2022.
• While Merkel will receive a cash prize of 150,000 USD, the regional winners will each receive 50,000 USD.
• The Nansen Award is conferred every year by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to an individual, group or organization in recognition of their contribution towards aiding refugees, stateless or displaced people.

World Space Week 2022:

World Space Week is observed from October 4 to 10 every year.

• World Space Week is observed to create awareness about space activities, inspire next generation to contribute to those activities and promote international cooperation in space outreach and education.
• “Space and Sustainability” is the theme for this year’s World Space Week.
• Its aim is to achieve sustainability in and from space.
• It focuses on how sustainability in space relates to how humanity uses space, especially the orbital area around the Earth.
• Space explorations and remote Earth observations play a major role in assessing climate change, identification of pollution on land and sea and supporting agricultural activities.
• Of the 169 targets under the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 65 of them are directly achieved through Earth observation satellites and related technologies.
• Achieving these goals is impossible in the absence of these technologies.
• World Space Week was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 6, 1999 to commemorate the contributions of space science and technology towards human development.
• It is the largest space sector-related event in the world.
• It is coordinated by the UN in collaboration with the World Space Week Association (WSWA) to provide a unique outreach and education in space sector.
• The week commemorates the launch of first manmade Earth satellite, Sputnik-1 on October 4, 1957 and the signing of the Outer Space Treaty on October 10, 1967.

International Year Of Millets (IYOM)-2023:

A MOU was signed between the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare and the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Limited to promote Millets towards celebration of the International Year of Millets 2023.

Key areas:

• Facilitating advisory support: To manufacturers/processors of millet-based products to develop value-added millet-based commodities
• On-boarding of start-ups: Inclusive of start-ups empanelled with Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR)
• Formation of FPOs: Specifically for developing a range of millet-based products
• Promote and market millet-based products: Through the network of NAFED Bazaar Stores and other institutions linked with NAFED
• Installation of Millet based Vending Machines: At various locations across Delhi-NCR
• Dispensing millet-based products: That shall assist in establishing the focus on millet-based commodities.

Scheduled Tribe (ST) Status For The Pahari Community:

Union Home Minister Amit Shah has announced Scheduled Tribe (ST) status for the Pahari community in Jammu and Kashmir.

• He said that Justice GD Sharma Commission has recommended reservation for Paharis, Gujjars and Bakerwals and after completion of the administrative process, these communities will get reservation benefits.
• The Pahari community is a linguistic group mainly residing in the Pir Panjal valley.
• They constitute of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs and make up around 10-11 per cent of the population in Jammu and Kashmir.
• Their mother tongue, Pahari, is an offshoot of Pothwari language with varying dialects and their own unique culture.
• They usually reside in rural areas and are majorly involved in agricultural and cattle activities.
• The criteria presently followed for specification of a community as a Scheduled Tribe are : (i) indications of primitive traits, (ii) distinctive culture, (iii) geographical isolation, (iv) shyness of contact with the community at large, and (v) backwardness. However, these criteria are not spelt out in the Constitution.
• Article 342 prescribes the procedure to be followed in the matter of specification of Scheduled Tribes.
• Under Clause (1) of Article 342, the President may, with respect to any State or Union Territory, and where it is a State, after consultation with the Governor thereof, notify tribes or tribal communities or parts of these as Scheduled Tribes.
• This confers on the tribe, or part of it, a Constitutional status invoking the safeguards provided for in the Constitution, to these communities in their respective states/UTs.
• Clause (2) of the Article 342 empowers the Parliament to pass a law to include in or exclude from the List of Scheduled Tribes, any tribe or tribal community or parts of these.
• The List of Scheduled Tribes is State/UT specific and a community declared as a Scheduled Tribe in a state need not be so in another state/UT.

Nobel Prize In Physics:

Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger have jointly won the Nobel Prize in Physics “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”.

• Two of the laureates—John Clauser and Alain Aspect—worked on firming up the concept of quantum entanglement and developing more complex experiments that demonstrated this phenomenon, especially creating, processing and measuring what are called Bell pairs.
• The third laureate, Anton Zeilinger, has been chosen for his innovative use of entanglement and Bell pairs both in research and application such as quantum cryptography.
• Quantum information science has a broad range of potential implications in areas such as secure information transfer, quantum computing and sensing technology.
• One of the most mature applications of quantum technology is quantum cryptography, which takes advantage of the fact that changes made to one particle in an entangled system affect the other.

Quantum entanglement

• It is a phenomenon by which a pair of particles, say photons, are allowed to exist in a shared state where they have complementary properties, such that by measuring the properties of one particle, you automatically know the properties of the other particle.
• This is true regardless of how far apart the two particles are transported.

Global News Forum 2022:

Union Minister of State Dr L Murugan delivers keynote address at Global News Forum 2022.

• Global News Forum 2022 is the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU)’s flagship three days annual NEWS event hosting around 80 foreign participants from the field of Media & Journalism from different broadcasting organizations.
• The topic of the Global News Forum ‘Truth and Trust at times of Crisis’.

Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU):

• ABU was established in 1964 as a non-profit, non- governmental, non-political, professional association with mandate to assist the development of broadcasting organisations in the region currently Headquartered at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
• ABU promotes the collective interests of television and radio broadcasters as well as key industry players and also facilitate regional and international media cooperation for members.
• It has over 253 members in over 67 countries in Pacific region, Asia (South east, North, South, Central), Middle East, Europe, North Africa and North America, reaching a potential audience of about 2 billion people.
• Doordarshan (DD) & All India Radio (AIR) both are Full Members of ABU. All India Radio was a founding member of the ABU in the year 1964 while Doordarshan joined ABU in the year 1976.