Why in news?

• National Deworming Day is observed on February 10, to make people aware of the importance of deworming, particularly for children from 1 to 19 years of age, who are the most vulnerable.
• The National Deworming Day campaign is held in schools and in villages through Anganwadi centres, which are tasked with providing basic healthcare facilities in rural areas.
• Albendazole is a deworming medicine that is provided in tablet and syrup form as per the age and body weight of the child.
• About 241 million children in India between 1 and 14 years of age are at risk of infections from Soil-Transmitted Helminths (STH) and resulting anaemia and other health issues.

Why in news?

• Senior bureaucrat  Kishore has been appointed as Chairman, Staff Selection Commission (SSC).
• According to an order issued by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment of Kishore to the post in the rank and pay of Secretary to Government of India by temporarily upgrading the post and keeping the Recruitment Rules of the post in abeyance.
• Presently, he is serving as Special Secretary, Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

Why in news?

• Starlink has lost dozens of satellites that were caught in a geomagnetic storm a day after they were launched.

Space internet working

• Broadband from space (BFS) is a high-speed wireless communication to bring internet traffic to a consumer’s home/office via a satellite network in space.
• Satellite broadband data speeds can go beyond 300 Mbps, but initial peak speeds likely 100 Mbps.
• Working-A satellite network involves geostationary or low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites.
• The heart of a satellite network operation is an earth station gateway located in a particular region that links satellite network to the Net.

About Starlink project

• Starlink is the name of a satellite network developed by the private spaceflight company SpaceX to provide low latency, low-cost internet to remote locations.
• SpaceX eventually hopes to have as many as 42,000 satellites in this so-called megaconstellation.
• The first 60 Starlink satellites launched in 2019 and were placed in Low Earth Orbit at an altitude of 340 miles (550 kilometers), so that it is easy to get pulled down to Earth by atmospheric drag by avoiding space junk.
• The current version of each Starlink satellite weighs 573 lbs (260 kilograms).
• As of early January 2022, SpaceX had launched more than 1,900 Starlink satellites overall.
• SpaceX plans to refresh the Starlink megaconstellation every five years with newer technology.

Geomagnetic storm

• A geomagnetic storm is a major disturbance in Earth’s magnetosphere that occurs when there is a very efficient exchange of energy from the solar wind into the space environment surrounding the planet.
• The disturbance that drives the magnetic storm may be a solar coronal mass ejection (CME) or a co-rotating interaction region (CIR), a high-speed stream of solar wind originating from a coronal hole.
• The frequency of geomagnetic storms increases and decreases with the sunspot cycle.
• In the current event, the passing of the latter part of the storm, with its high density core, possessed speeds higher than what was recorded during the storm’s arrival.
• This has caused the loss of 40 satellites in a single solar event that has been described as “unheard of” and “huge”.
• There are models capable of predicting a storm’s time of arrival and its speed but the storm’s structure or orientation cannot be predicted still.

Why in news?

• NITI Aayog has announced the five most improved aspirational districts in the Agriculture and Water Resources sector for December 2021. Malkangiri in Odisha tops the list.
• It is followed by Chhatarpur in Madhya Pradesh and Baramulla in Jammu and Kashmir. Ramgarh in Jharkhand and Begusarai in Bihar also feature in the list. This is as per NITI Aayog’s Delta Rankings.

About Aspirational District Programme

• 115 districts from across 28 states have been chosen. They constitute about 20% of the population of India and cover about 8,600-gram Panchayats.
• The progress under the programme is tracked through the data collected on a real-time basis. A dashboard has been created by the NITI Ayog to track the real-time progress. This, in turn, enhances accountability and transparency.
• Statistics have been collected on 49 indicators on 5 core dimensions (education, financial inclusion, agriculture and water resources, skill development and basic infrastructure) in order to provide an initial benchmark for the programme.
• The focus, under the programme, is on the socio-economic outputs.
• The programme is a positive shift towards cooperative federalism, as the districts and the states have a greater voice in their development.
• The broad strategy of the programme follows 3Cs: Convergence, Collaboration, Competition

Why in news?

• The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) is implementing Jiva (life) alongside its network of non-governmental organisations and other stakeholders in rural areas to revitalise ‘life’ around agriculture.
• It is a natural farming program under NABARD’s ongoing watershed and Wadi (tribal development projects) programs in 11 states.
• To be implemented under Wadi programmes. It consists of five geographical regions. These areas are environmentally fragile and rain-fed areas.
• NABARD will collaborate with Australia-based Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) for simple soil water monitoring techniques and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) for scientific validation of natural farming activities for research support.

Why in news?

• The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) headed by Reserve Bank of India (RBI)Governor Shaktikanta Das kept the repo rate unchanged at 4 per cent for the 10th consecutive time while maintaining an ‘accommodative stance’ as long as necessary.
• The reverse repo rate will continue to be 35 per cent. The central bank had last revised the policy rate on May 22, 2020, in an off-policy cycle to perk up demand by cutting the interest rate to a historic low.
• The Marginal Standing Facility (MSF) rate and bank rates remain unchanged:
• Policy Repo Rate: 4.00%
• Reverse Repo Rate: 3.35%
• Marginal Standing Facility Rate: 4.25%
• Bank Rate: 4.25%
• CRR: 4%
• SLR: 18.00%
• RBI Monetary Policy Highlights & Key Decisions:
• The MPC decided to continue with the accommodative stance.
• RBI has projected the real GDP growth for 2022-23 at 7.8 per cent.
• For the current fiscal year, RBI projected real GDP growth of 2 per cent and expects that it will take the economy above the pre-pandemic level.
• For the current fiscal year, RBI retained its retail inflation projection at 3 per cent.
• MPC has been given the mandate to maintain annual inflation at 4 per cent until March 31, 2026, with an upper tolerance of 6 per cent and lower tolerance of 2 per cent.

Monetary policy instruments

• Repo Rate: It is the (fixed) interest rate at which banks can borrow overnight liquidity from the Reserve Bank of India against the collateral of government and other approved securities under the liquidity adjustment facility (LAF).
• Reverse Repo Rate: It is the (fixed) interest rate at which the Reserve Bank of India can absorb liquidity from banks on an overnight basis, against the collateral of eligible government securities under the LAF.
• Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF):The LAF has overnight as well as term repo auctions under it. The term repo helps in the development of the inter-bank term money market. This market sets the benchmarks for the pricing of loans and deposits. This helps in improving the transmission of monetary policy. As per the evolving market conditions, the Reserve Bank of India also conducts variable interest rate reverse repo auctions.
• Marginal Standing Facility (MSF):MSF is a provision that enables the scheduled commercial banks to borrow an additional amount of overnight money from the Reserve Bank of India. Bank can do this by dipping into their Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR) portfolio up to a limit at a penal rate of interest. This helps the banks to sustain the unanticipated liquidity shocks faced by them.

Why in news?

• India’s first commercial-scale biomass-based hydrogen plant will come up at the Khandwa district of Madhya Pradesh.
• Every day this plant will produce one tonne of hydrogen, from 30 tonnes of biomass feedstock.
• The plant is being put up by a joint venture of Watomo Energies Ltd and Biezel Green Energy with an investment of Rs 24 crore.
• The company owns the technology for a ‘thermally accelerated anerobic digestion (TAD) reactor’ that can produce hydrogen, methane and biochar from biomass.
• Biezel Green will own 50 per cent in the yet-to-be-named joint venture; the other 50 per cent will come from interested farmers.

Why in News

• The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mandi, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the District Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) for the installation of landslide monitoring and early warning systems at some places in the district.
• The Landslide Monitoring and Early Warning System device has been developed by Dr. Varun Dutt, Associate Professor in the School of Computing and Electrical Engineering, and Dr K.V. Uday, Assistant Professor, School of Engineering, IIT Mandi.
• The Landslide Monitoring System developed by IIT Mandi provides soil movement alerts via hooters and blinkers mounted on the road and dispatched remotely via text message. Also, the system sends rainfall alerts if more than 5 mm of rain is forecast.
• Landslides are currently predicted 10 minutes before they actually occur by monitoring changes in soil movement.

Why in news?

• Actor-athlete Praveen Kumar Sobti, best known for playing Bheem in the TV series “Mahabharat” and for winning an Asian Games gold medal, passed away.
• He represented the country across various athletic events in hammer and discus throw and even won four medals at the Asian Games, including two gold medals in 1966 and 1970.
• Praveen Kumar Sobti also won a silver medal in Hammer Throw during the 1966 Commonwealth Games.
• The athlete gained popularity after he began his acting career and was featured as Bheem in BR Chopra’s classic “Mahabharat” in 1988.

Why in news?

• Sanjay Malhotra has been named as Secretary in the Department of Financial Services in the Ministry of Finance.
• He has succeeded Debashish Panda, who completed his term as DFS Secretary on January 31, 2022.
• He is a 1990 batch IAS officer of the Rajasthan cadre.
• Before this, Sanjay Malhotra was Chairman and Managing Director of REC Ltd.