Current Affairs 23rd July 2018

Current Affairs 23rd July 2018 - Important Points

• Student Police Cadet Program launched by - Government
• Advanced system of air quality ‘SAFAR’ inaugurated by - Environment Minister
• Sports Authority of India shortlists 734 youngsters for KHELO INDIA scholarship program on - 22nd July 2018
• NASA to launch Parker Solar Probe to touch the Sun , announced on - 20th July 2018

Current Affairs 23rd July 2018 - Details

Student Police Cadet Program launched by - Government

The Student Police Cadet (SPC) program was launched to implement nationwide by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh at a ceremony in Gurugram, Haryana on July 21st, 2018. While speaking on the occasion, Singh stated that he hoped that the SPC would lead to a silent revolution more than the years by focusing on character building  by imparting moral values to budding minds.

The Home Minister further expressed his concern that education these days stressed more on mere book reading with little attention being paid towards students character building, which shows negative effects on society in terms of increased crime. The Union Human Resources Minister Prakash Javadekar and the Chief Minister of Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar attended the inaugural ceremony.
Important Highlights

• The program will be focusing on students of class 8th and 9th and special care will be taken to ensure that it does not increase the workload of the students.
• The program will not be having any prescribed text book and nor will it be including any exam.
  Only one class is proposed in a month under its schedule.
• The program broadly seeks to cover two topics:

Crime prevention and control: This subject covers the topics on - community policing, fight against social evils, road safety,safety of women and children, fight against corruption and disaster management.

Values and ethics: The topics covered under this part include values and ethics, patience, attitude, empathy and sympathy,respect for elders, tolerance, team spirit and discipline.

• BPR&D with the support of NCERT has prepared a handbook to impart instructions.
• This program would be laying a bigger emphasis on field demonstrations and hands on learning of the police functioning through visits to women police stations, child protection homes including NGOs, traffic police and fire brigade stations.
• It will also be enabling learning through group discussions and audio-visual mediums.

Advanced system of air quality ‘SAFAR’ inaugurated by - Environment Minister

Union Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan unveiled a state-of-the-art Air Quality and Weather Forecast System– ‘SAFAR’ (System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting) at  Chandni Chowk on July 21st, 2018 in New Delhi.

Important Highlights

• The giant true colour LED display will be giving out real-time air quality index on 24x7 basis with colour coding along with 72-hour advance weather forecasting.
• On the basis of the air quality index on a particular day, health advisory and related precaution will be notified to prepare citizens in advance only.
• The new system would also be able to measure sun’s UV-Index and track ultrafine particles such as mercury, PM1 and black carbon in real time, which have a direct relevance to human health.
• Based on the UVI, skin advisories will be issued on display too.

More about SAFAR

• The Environment Ministry’s mission model project ‘SAFAR’ is being implemented in four cities of India – Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Ahmedabad as an operational service.
• The system will be an integral part of India’s first Air Quality Early Warning System operational in Delhi and will also be strengthening the existing air quality network of SAFAR, Delhi Pollution Control Committee and Central Pollution Control Board.

Sports Authority of India shortlists 734 youngsters for KHELO INDIA scholarship program on - 22nd July 2018

The SAI (Sports Authority of India) shortlisted 734 young players for a scholarship program under the KHELO INDIA Talent Identification Development Scheme on July 22nd, 2018.

The move came following the successful conduct of the Khelo India School Games.

• HPC finalised the names after due diligence.
• A Talent Identification Committee was also formed earlier, comprising Arjuna Awardees and Dronacharya Awardees, to shortlist and to propose beneficiaries names to the High Powered Committee.

More about KHELO INDIA scholarship program

• It is designed to take care of expenses of the players including development, training, boarding and lodging and tournament exposure apart from the expense allowance.
• The age verification and talent spotting of the selected players has been driven by the scientific and trusted method through Tanner Whitehouse 3 (TW3) method,  popular test to assess children's bone age.
• An annual stipend of Rs 1.2 lakhs will be given on a quarterly basis to the players to meet their out of pocket expenses and their treating injuries.
• This amount will be covering even smaller but very important expenses like local travel for themselves and their parents or family members.
• Support and skill trainings will be given at KHELO INDIA accredited Academies.
• A strong performance management system would be in place and henceforth performances will be rewarded.
• In case athletes are not fulfilling the criterion and coming up to the requisite standards, they may be pulled out from the academies.
• Athletes must report injury immediately so that timely rehabilitation can be offered to them.

NASA to launch Parker Solar Probe to touch the Sun , announced on - 20th July 2018

The US space agency NASA announced to launch the Parker Solar Probe, a robotic car-size spacecraft, to study the Sun and reveal multiple mysteries behind the star on July 20th, 2018. The spacecraft will going to be launched in August 2018 on the United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA. This planned seven-year mission will going to fly into the Sun's corona within 3.8 million miles (6.1 million km) from the solar surface which seven times closer than any other spacecraft.

More about Parker Solar Probe

• It is part of NASA’s Living with a Star Program to explore aspects of the Sun-Earth system that directly affects life and society.
• The spacecraft has been designed to endure wicked heat while zooming through the solar corona to study the outermost part of the stellar atmosphere giving rise to the solar wind.
• Parker Solar Probe will be flying down within 4 million miles of the sun's surface, facing heat and radiation like no spacecraft before it.
• It will also be providing new data on solar activity and will be helping scientists in forecasting major space-weather events that impact life on Earth.