RAJASTHAN
- Rajasthan defers closure of Gang Canal for repair
- The Rajasthan Government has deferred the closure of the Gang Canal for carrying out repair works due to the lack of funds.
- The move also ensures the supply of tonnes of fresh vegetables that were transported from Sriganganagar to Abohar and Fazilka.
- Notably, the closure proposal could not be processed before the model code of conduct came into force for the ensuing Lok Sabha poll.
- Also known as the Bikaner Canal, it is fed from the Sutlej near Ferozepur, close to the Indo-Pak border, and passes through Faridkot, Muktsar and Abohar in Fazilka district.
INTERNATIONAL
- India, Australia to hold a joint exercise on maritime security from 2 April
- India and Australia are set to further deepen defence and strategic relationship with the third edition of the biennial, bilateral exercise AUSINDEX 19 from April 2 to April 16 at Vishakhapatnam.
- The upcoming exercise will focus on anti-submarine warfare and will see Australia’s largest defence force deployment in India.
- This exercise is part of the strong and growing Australia-India strategic partnership.
- More than 1,000 Australian defence force personnel comprising Navy, Army and Air force assets will work together with their Indian counterparts in military training activities
AUSINDEX 2019
- From the Australian side, HMAS Canberra (landing helicopter dock), Auxiliary Oiler Replenishment vessel, two frigates, HMAS Newcastle and HMAS Parramatta and P81 and P8 maritime patrol aircraft,will be involved in the exercise. A Kilo-class submarine, land-based Hawk aircraft that will provide the air attack element for the exercise, a Kamorta class anti-submarine vessel, besides a stealth destroyer will lead the Indian deployment for the exercise.
- The exercise will feature the deployment of Australian personnel on Indian ships and vice versa. The area of the exercise will be within 200 miles of Vishakhapatnam.
NATIONAL
- MPI 2018 report says Indias povert rate has reduced drastically
- According to theMulti-dimensional Poverty Index 2018 report, the four poorest states namely Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh were still home to 196 million MPI poor people, which was over half of all the MPI poor people in India.
- The Multi-dimensional Poverty Index 2018 report prepared by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiativemakes the following observations about India: India has reduced its poverty rate drastically from 55% to 28% in 10 years, with 271 million people moving out of poverty between 2005-06 and 2015-16.
- Jharkhandhad shown the greatest improvement, followed by Arunachal Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and Nagaland. Kerala, one of the least poor regions in 2006, reduced its MPI by around 92%.
- At 15,256ft, Himachal’s Tashigang is world’s highest polling station
- The Tashigang polling station in Himachal Pradeshfalls in Buddhist-dominated Lahaul-Spiti, one of the 17 assembly segments that form the Mandi Lok Sabha seat, the second largest constituency in India.
- Situated at about 29 km from the India-China border, the polling station covers two villages— Tashigang and Gete.
- As per the revised electoral rolls, the two villages have 48 voters, of which 30 are men and 18 women.
- Earlier the tiny settlement of Hikkim in the same district located at an altitude of about 14,400 feetwas the highest polling station in the country.
- Demat share transfer to be effective from 1st April
- Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) said that the transfer of shares of listed companies can be done only in dematerialised form from April 1but investors are not barred from holding shares in the physical form. In December 2018, the capital markets watchdog extended the deadline for transfer of shares of listed companies only indematerialised (demat) form to April 1. Now, it has been decided not to extend the deadline.
- The decision that the transfer of shares has to be compulsorily in demat form was taken way back in March 2018. SEBI also said that the measure would come into effect from April 1, 2019.
- Nobel Prize recipient Amartya Sen awarded with Oxford University’s Bodley award
- The 85-year-old winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, was awarded with the prestigious Bodley Medal, the highest honour granted by the University of Oxford’s world-famous Bodleian Libraries, for his contribution in literature, culture, science and communication.
- This year’s other winner of the Bodley Medal is Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro.
- Past winners of the honour include physicist Stephen Hawking, novelist Hilary Mantel and inventor of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee.
- The Nobel Prize of computing – “Turing Award”, won by 3 Pioneers in Artificial Intelligence
- The 2018 Turing Award, known as the “Nobel Prize of computing,” has been given to Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, and Yann LeCun— sometimes called the ‘godfathers of AI’, for their work developing the AI subfield of deep learning.
- The trio believed in the potential of AI and brought to the world the innovations such as neural networks, self-driving cars,facial recognition, CNN and much more.
Gk bit – Turing Award
- Initiated in 1966, this annual award is named after British mathematician Alan M. Turing, whose work laid the foundation for computer science and artificial intelligence.
- It honors the individual for contributing major technical importance in the computer field.
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