Today’s Current Affairs: 9th May 2023 for UPSC IAS exams, State PSC exams, SSC CGL, State SSC, RRB, Railways, Banking Exam & IBPS, etc
Table of Contents
Women Officers In Territorial Army
Raksha Mantri recently approved posting of Women Officers of the Territorial Army along the Line of Control.
- It aims to commemorate its raising by the first Governor General C Rajagopalachari on this day in 1949.
- The Territorial Army (TA) was raised by the Britishers in 1920 through Indian Territorial Act of 1920 and it was organised into two wings namely – ‘The Auxiliary Force’ for Europeans & Anglo-Indians and ‘The Indian Territorial Force’ for Indian Volunteers.
- After Independence Territorial Army Act was passed in 1948 and the Territorial Army was formally inaugurated by the first Indian Governor General Shri C Rajagopalachari on 09 Oct 1949.
- The Territorial Army is part of Regular Army and its present role is to relieve the Regular Army from static duties and assist civil administration in dealing with natural calamities and maintenance of essential services in situations where life of the communities is affected or the Security of the Country is threatened and to provide units for Regulars Army as and when required.
- Any citizen between the age of 18-42 can be a part of the service.
- The pensionable age for a soldier below officer’s rank in the TA is the same as that of a regular soldier.
All India Radio : Known As Akashvani
The Centre, ordered that public broadcaster, previously known as All India Radio (AIR), be exclusively referred to as Akashvani in all broadcasts and programmes.
- All India Radio (AIR) is the radio vertical of Prasar Bharati.
- It’s motto is ‘Bahujan Hitaya : Bahujan Sukhaya’.
- It is one of the largest broadcasting organisations in the world in terms of the number of languages of broadcast and the spectrum of socioeconomic and cultural diversity.
- AIR’s home service comprises 470 Broadcasting centres located across the country, covering nearly 92% of the country’s area and 99.19 % of the total population.
- AIR originates programming in 23 languages and 179 dialects.
Shanghai Organisation Corporation (SCO) : Dialogue Partners
SCO added Kuwait, UAE, Myanmar and Maldives as dialogue partners.
- The SCO is a permanent intergovernmental international organization.
- It’s a Eurasian political, economic and military organization aiming to maintain peace, security and stability in the region.
- It was created in 2001.
- The SCO Charter was signed in 2002 and entered into force in 2003.
- The SCO’s official languages are Russian and Chinese.
- Prior to the creation of SCO in 2001, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan were members of the Shanghai Five.
- India and Pakistan became members in 2017.
River-Cities Alliance:
National Mission For Clean Ganga Organizes River-Cities Alliance Global Seminar.
- River Cities Alliance (RCA) was launched in 2021.
- It is organized by National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG) in association with the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA).
- It is a joint initiative of the Department of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation under the Ministry of Jal Shakti (MoJS) & the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).
- Objective is to provide a platform for officials of member cities and international stakeholders to discuss and learn good practices for managing urban rivers.
- Vision is to connect river cities and focus on sustainable river-centric development.
- Beginning with 30 member cities in November 2021, the Alliance has expanded to 109 river cities across India and one international member city from Denmark.
- It is a dedicated platform for river cities across India to discuss & exchange information for sustainable management of urban rivers.
- It includes cities from both the Ganga basin and non-Ganga basin states.(UPSC CSE: Linking Rivers)
- The RCA Global Seminar witnessed participation from Embassies/High Commissions of select countries along with funding agencies like the World Bank, ADB, JICA & KfW.
Arab League:
The Arab League recently welcomed back Syria’s government, ending a more than decade-long suspension.
- Arab League, also called League of Arab States (LAS) is a regional organization of Arab states in the Middle East and parts of Africa.
- It was formed in Cairo on 22 March 1945.The founding member states were Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.
- Headquarters: Cairo, Egypt.
- Objective is to strengthen ties among member states, coordinate their policies and direct them towards a common good.
- Currently it has 22 members including Palestine, which the League regards as an independent state.
- Syria’s participation has been suspended since November 2011, as a consequence of government repression during the Syrian Civil War.
- The highest body of the league is the Council, composed of representatives of member states, usually foreign ministers, their representatives or permanent delegates.
World Thalassaemia Day 2023:
World Thalassaemia Day is celebrated on May 8, every year.
- Thalassaemia is the name for a group of inherited conditions that affect a substance in the blood called haemoglobin.
- People with thalassaemia produce either no or too little haemoglobin, which is used by red blood cells to carry oxygen around the body.
- Thalassemia can cause anaemia, leaving you fatigued.
- It mainly affects people of Mediterranean, south Asian, southeast Asian and Middle Eastern origin.
- It is caused by faulty genes that affect the production of haemoglobin.
- A child can only be born with thalassaemia if they inherit these faulty genes from both parents.
- It’s also possible to be a “carrier” of thalassaemia, also known as having the thalassaemia trait.
National Center For Good Governance:
The National Centre for Good Governance (NCGG) recently completed its flagship capacity building programme (CBP) for the 58th batch of civil servants of Bangladesh.
- National Center for Good Governance (NCGG) was set up in 2014 by the Government of India as an apex–level autonomous institution under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions.
- It has been set up to assist in bringing about governance reforms through studies.
- The Centre traces its origin to the National Institute of Administrative Research (NIAR), which was set up in 1995 by the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA), the Government of India’s topmost training institute for civil services. NIAR was subsequently rechristened and subsumed into NCGG.
- NCGG deals with a gamut of governance issues from local, state to national levels, across all sectors.
- The Centre is mandated to work in the areas of governance, policy reforms, capacity building and training of civil servants and technocrats of India and other developing countries.
- It provides a platform for sharing existing knowledge and proactively seeking out and developing ideas for their implementation in the government, both at the National & International levels.
- NCGG has been extensively working in areas such as primary and elementary education, decentralized planning at district and block levels, capacity building of Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs), participatory models of learning and action, rural development, cooperatives, and public sector management, etc.
- NCGG is governed by a Governing Body, under the Chairmanship of the Cabinet Secretary.
Tungnath Temple : Monument Of National Importance
The central government recently issued a notification declaring the ancient temple of Tungnath as a monument of national importance.
- Tungnath Temple is located in Rudraprayag District, Uttarakhand.
- It is the highest Shiva temple in the world nestled at an altitude of 3680 meters.
- It is one of the Panch Kedars and is believed to have belonged to an ancient era almost 1000 years old.
- It was built in the North Indian style of architecture and has a dozen shrines of other Gods surrounding the temple.
- Panch Kedar is a group of five sacred shrines of Lord Shiva located in the Garhwal Himalayas, Uttarakhand.
- The five temples are the Kedarnath Temple , the Tungnath Temple, the Rudranath Temple, the Madhyamaheshwar Temple or Madmaheshwar and the Kalpeshwar Temple.
MiG-21 Aircraft : Crashed
A MiG-21 fighter aircraft of the Indian Air Force (IAF) crashed recently in Rajasthan.
- The MiG-21 is India’s longest-serving fighter plane. It was designed by the Mikoyan-Gurevich Design Bureau (OKB) of the erstwhile Soviet Union.
- India got its first single-engine MiG-21 in 1963, and progressively inducted 874 variants of the Soviet-origin supersonic fighters.
- The plane has seen several updates and modifications since then.
- The MiG-21 Bison is an upgraded version of the MiG-21bis which had been first inducted into service in 1976.
- The MiG-21 FL, which was an older version of the aircraft and which joined service in 1963, had been phased out of IAF in 2013.
- The IAF received the first upgraded MiG-21 Bison in 2001 and the last of these upgraded fighters was received in 2008.
