Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams - 17 June 2022

::National::

Broad-based education needs to be imparted in madrasas, says Kerala governor Arif Mohammed Khan

Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan advocated broad-based education in madrasas and said “right education” needs to be given while “indoctrination” of children should not be allowed.
Khan also asserted that he belongs to only one community and that is “Indian”.
Prime Minister NarendraModi will be remembered not only in the country but in the whole world for enacting a law against instant triple talaq, he said.
With the implementation of the law, the divorce rate in the Muslim society has come down by more than 91 per cent, he claimed.
Speaking about the importance of education at the TV9 Global Summit here, he pointed out that India is a signatory to the UN Declaration of Human Rights and it is the “basic right of a child that till the age of 14 he or she cannot be given special education and has to be given a broad-based education.”
When the right to education was made a fundamental right, only one organisation that opposed it was the Muslim Personal Law Board, even though religion asks people to mandatorily acquire education, Khan said.
“I figured out that their opposition was that if people get free education in eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha, then their catchment area would go dry,” he said.
In an apparent reference to AIMIM MP ImtiazJaleel, who recently demanded that suspended BJP leader Nupur Sharma be hanged for her comments on Prophet Mohammad, the Kerala governor said, “We have rule of the law but those claiming to be representatives of people give the call for hanging a person.”

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::International::

US FDA authorises 1st Covid-19 vaccine shots for infants, preschoolers

US regulators authorised the first Covid-19 shots for infants and preschoolers, paving the way for vaccinations to begin next week.
The Food and Drug Administration’s action follows its advisory panel’s unanimous recommendation for the shots from Moderna and Pfizer. That means US kids under 5 — roughly 18 million youngsters — are eligible for the shots, about one and a half years after the vaccines first became available in the US for adults, who have been hit the hardest during the pandemic.
There’s one step left: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends how to use vaccines. Its independent advisers began debating the two-dose Moderna and the three-dose Pfizer vaccines on Friday and will make its recommendation Saturday. A final signoff would come from CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky.
At a Senate hearing, Walensky said her staff was working over the Juneteenth federal holiday weekend “because we understand the urgency of this for American parents”.
For weeks, the Biden administration has been preparing to roll out the vaccines for little kids, with states, tribes, community health centres and pharmacies pre-ordering millions of doses. FDA’s emergency use authorization allows manufacturers to begin shipping vaccine across the country. Vaccinations could begin early next week.
US President Joe Biden on Friday hailed the approval of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines against Covid-19 for younger children as a “huge relief”.

::Economy::

GST panel to submit interim report on exempted items, may prune list

A group of ministers (GoM), tasked by Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council to look into rate rationalisation, could not form a view on changes in GST rates and slabs.
However, it is likely to submit an interim report to the Council on pruning the list of items that at present do not attract the levy.
In a virtual meeting on Friday, the ministerial panel headed by Karnataka Chief Minister BasavarajBommai is learnt to have deliberated upon GST exemptions, rate rejig and correcting the inverted duty structure on value chains, among other matters.
“We reiterated our views on slab mergers and rationalising rate on certain products, however no conclusion has been taken," said two of the panel members.
In the meantime, the panel will try submit an interim report to the Council before the scheduled date, they said.
The Council meeting is slated to be held on June 28 and 29 in Srinagar.
Business Standard had reported on June 6 that the ministerial panel, will meet ahead of the Council meeting, may defer its rate rejig agenda by a few months.
“The Council will most likely take up the suggestions of GoM on exempting goods and removing anomalies arising from taxing raw material higher than finished goods, a government official said.
As many as 149 categories of goods and 87 services exempt from GST.
Earlier, the GoM was to consider raising the lowest threshold slab under GST to 7 or 8 per cent, from the current 5 per cent, besides changing other tax categories.
Along with merging the current four slabs into three.
Currently, GST is a four-tier structure attracting tax rates of 5, 12, 18, and 28 per cent.

Active mobile subscribers fall in April after five mths, 7.5 mn users lost

The number of active mobile phone users declined by 7.5 million in April on a month on month basis, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India data.
The fall in active subscribers was the first after four consecutive months of growth, Emkay Research said in its report. The fall in active subscribers was due to contraction in Airtel and Vodafone Idea’s base by 3.1 million and 3.8 million respectively while Reliance Jio’s active subscriber number remained flat in April.
Total active subscribers stood at over 1.01 billion at the end of April.
Analysts at Jefferies said this is only the second time in ten years that all operators recorded a fall in active subscribers. “The first time this happened was in April 2020 amid Covid-19 lockdown. A continuation of this trend could indicate SIM consolidation amidst rising tariffs,” they said. JM Financial, too, said that the fall of 3.1 million active subscribers at Airtel could be due to the continued churn in lower ARPU, or average revenue per user.
Since April is a peak month for travel, customers who are out of station will not get captured in VLR data, he explained.
Overall, the total wireless subscriber count rose by 600,000 to 1.14 billion with Jio adding the most number of customers in April. Vodafone Idea continued to see a fall in customers.

::Science and tech::

Ancient DNA solves mystery over origin of medieval Black Death

Ancient DNA from bubonic plague victims buried in cemeteries on the old Silk Road trade route in Central Asia has helped solve an enduring mystery, pinpointing an area in northern Kyrgyzstan as the launching point for the Black Death that killed tens of millions of people in the mid-14th century.
Researchers said they retrieved ancient DNA traces of the Yersinia pestis plague bacterium from the teeth of three women buried in a medieval Nestorian Christian community in the Chu Valley near Lake IssykKul in the foothills of the Tian Shan mountains who perished in 1338-1339. The earliest deaths documented elsewhere in the pandemic were in 1346.
Reconstructing the pathogen's genome showed that this strain not only gave rise to the one that caused the Black Death that mauled Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa but also to most plague strains existing today.
"Our finding that the Black Death originated in Central Asia in the 1330s puts centuries-old debates to rest," said historian Philip Slavin of the University of Stirling in Scotland, co-author of the study published in the journal Nature.

::Sports::

Coco Gauff beats Karolina Pliskova in Berlin for first grass semifinal

Coco Gauff reached the semifinals on grass for the first time after beating Karolina Pliskova 7-5, 6-4 at the Berlin Open on Friday to set up a match with OnsJabeur.
Already in uncharted territory in her first quarterfinal on grass, the 18-year-old French Open finalist had to fight back from 2-0 down at the start of each set against an opponent who was the Wimbledon runner-up last year.
Gauff said she needed some time to find her rhythm, and found the answer by mixing up her shots to include more slices.
"It was really tough to be honest. I had to come up with a couple different game styles that I normally don’t use, but sometimes it’s like that," she said.
Pliskova missed out on what would have been her first final since August. The Czech player missed the first two months of this season when she broke her arm in an accident while training in the gym.