Current Affairs for BANK, IBPS Exams - 28 January 2022

::National::

Lok Sabha secretariat launches app for ease of use, access to proceedings

The Lok Sabha secretariat has launched a new app, Digital Sansad, that will make it easier for people to follow proceedings in Parliament, and also their own lawmakers. In addition, it will also help members of parliament access services such as checking personal updates like status of their notices, House bulletins, etc. As MPs are barred from using laptops inside the House, the app comes handy for parliamentary information for MPs during a debate in the House. In future, the MPs can log in for attendance, give questions for the Question Hour or submit notices for debates or adjournment motions.
The Digital Sansad app is available in both android and IOS platform and carries nearly all major content of the interlinked portal of Indian Parliament. A senior official claimed that the Digital Sansad is one of the few apps of a parliament internationally that offer a 360-degree view of legislative activities as well as services for members. It is a brainchild of Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla who has sought to make parliamentary proceedings more accessible to people.
In addition to proceedings in the current House, people will also be able to access archival data related to all Lok Sabhas . They will be able to access speeches, debates, etc.
“It is the task of a committed legislature to keep its constituents apprised of its routine proceedings. This objective has required the Parliament to keep its communication channels up-to-date with the rapidly changing technological landscape. In keeping with this view, the Parliament too started to expand its digital footprint. Parliament’s official ’Digital Sansad App’ is an initiative in that direction,” added a top functionary who asked not to be named.
The App, planned by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, will help people get all Parliamentary updates. “It becomes easier for citizens to access general information on MPs, on budget speeches since 1947, House discussions from 12th Lok Sabha to 17th Lok Sabha. The App will also contain the live telecast of Sansad proceedings, the major news of the day, etc. Apart from a virtual tour of the Parliament, the 2022 Budget session too can be watched live on the App,” said the functionary.
The latest effort fits in with a larger digital plan which has seen a reduction in use of papers in Parliament . “Now members give notices mostly online. We have been able to cut down paper usage in parliament up to 98%. Important documents including the upcoming budget papers’ physical copies will be restricted and they can be accessed online,” said a top functionary.

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::International::

US Supreme Court to get its first Black woman judge, says Joe Biden

President Joe Biden said he will nominate a Black woman to the US Supreme Court for the first time in history, filling the vacancy left by retiring Justice Stephen Breyer.
"I've made no decision except (the) person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity," Biden said in an address from the White House.
"And that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court."
Biden, speaking at a podium alongside Breyer, also indicated that he would seek a speedy nomination process, promising to name his candidate by the end of February.
The exit of Breyer, who is 83, gives Biden a likely smooth opportunity to name a replacement to the lifelong seat on the Supreme Court while his Democratic Party retains control of the Senate.
The Supreme Court is currently split between six conservatives and three liberals. Biden will now be able to nominate another liberal-leaning jurist to the court, maintaining the balance.
Breyer had been under pressure from liberals to leave in time for Biden to get his nominee through the Senate before November's midterm elections, when Republicans are in a strong position to win majorities in Congress and would then control the approval process.
As president, Donald Trump had the rare opportunity to put no fewer than three new justices on the court, fundamentally shifting its political leaning for potentially years to come.
Biden's one pick so far will have nowhere near that level of impact. However, the Democrat will be glad of a successful confirmation process, delivering a much needed morale boost to his party ahead of the midterms.
As an immediate reminder of the tensions that Supreme Court confirmations often provoke, Republican senior Senator Mitch McConnell warned Biden "not to outsource this important decision to the radical left."
Of the 115 justices who served on the Supreme Court, only five have been women, including three today -- Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett. Only two have been Black men, one of whom is current Justice Clarence Thomas.
Breyer is the oldest justice on the court and was nominated in 1994 by then Democratic president Bill Clinton.
Praising Breyer, Biden highlighted his bipartisan spirit, saying he "patiently sought common ground" and was "a model public servant in a time of great division in this country."

::Economy::

Future Enterprises to sell 25% stake in insurance JV biz for ₹1,252 crore

Future Enterprises Ltd on Thursday announced the sale of 25% stake in Future Generali India Insurance Co. Ltd, its general insurance joint venture, to partner Generali Participations Netherlands N.V. In a stock exchange filing, Future said it will get a cash consideration of ₹1,252.96 crore from the sale, “plus an additional consideration that is linked to the date of closing of the transaction”.
Currently, Future holds 51% stake in the joint venture, while Generali owns 49%. Once the transaction is concluded, Generali will take control of the business with a 74% stake, the maximum a foreign entity can hold in an Indian insurer.
The sale will provide Future group much-needed capital as its operating entities such as Future Retail Ltd face the possibility of being tagged loan defaulters. Future Retail has moved the Supreme Court to prevent its lenders from declaring the company a non-performing asset for missing loan payments. On Thursday, the top court agreed to hear the petition.
Generali has also acquired an option to buy out Future’s remaining stake, directly or through a nominee, at an agreed valuation subject to applicable regulatory approvals, the Future statement said. Foreign direct investment (FDI) in insurance in India was 49% till March 2021, when it was raised to 74%. “Increasing Generali’s stake in our Indian Life and P&C (property and casualty) insurance businesses represents a further step ahead in our growth journey in this high potential market. With an expected double-digit annual growth rate, India’s insurance market offers considerable opportunities, and we look forward to deepening our presence in this geography,” said Jaime Anchústegui Melgarejo, chief executive officer, international, Generali Group.
Future’s sale of its stake in the insurance venture also comes amid a heated battle between Future and Amazon over the sale of Future group’s retail assets to Reliance Retail.

Google proposes Topics API to replace tracking cookies as FLoC is abandoned

Google is making changes, again, to how it approaches the need for a more private browsing experience for web users. At the same time, it is developing tools that’ll help advertisers show relevant advertisements based on web browsing activity while not revealing details of specific websites a user may have visited.
The Topics API, what Google calls a proposal, comes as a replacement for the FLoC (or the Federated Learning of Cohorts technology), which was propped up last year.
The need for a new method for online advertising, while it being more private and less intrusive in terms of sharing your web browsing history, is urgent because Google wants to disable third-party tracking cookies in the Chrome web browser by 2023. Topics API, which is an evolution within the Privacy Sandbox initiative, proposes to club interests for targeted advertising in genre-esque buckets.
There will be 350 such topics available at the start, including travel, sports, auto and vehicles, music and more. Expect many more to be added consequently.
“Because Topics is powered by the browser, it provides you with a more recognisable way to see and control how your data is shared, compared to tracking mechanisms like third-party cookies. And, by providing websites with your topics of interest, online businesses have an option that doesn’t involve covert tracking techniques, like browser fingerprinting, in order to continue serving relevant ads,” says Vinay Goel, product director, privacy sandbox, Chrome, in an official post.
Cookies do the opposite – they track you across websites and share those details. What this means is that if you’ve been visiting websites that have been assigned the topic “Books & Literature”, you may see advertisements of an online book store in your part of the world. It may be a coincidence if it’s the same one you regularly visit and buy from.

::Science and tech::

Astronomers find ‘spooky’ object in the Milky Way unlike anything seen before

Australian researchers have discovered a strange spinning object in the Milky Way they say is unlike anything astronomers have ever seen.
The object, first spotted by a university student working on his undergraduate thesis, releases a huge burst of radio energy three times every hour.
The pulse comes "every 18.18 minutes, like clockwork," said astrophysicist Natasha Hurley-Walker, who led the investigation after the student's discovery, using a telescope in the Western Australian outback known as the Murchison Widefield Array.
While there are other objects in the universe that switch on and off -- such as pulsars -- Hurley-Walker said 18.18 minutes is a frequency that has never been observed before.
Finding this object was "kind of spooky for an astronomer," she said, "because there's nothing known in the sky that does that."
The research team is now working to understand what they have found.
"If you do all of the mathematics, you find that they shouldn't have enough power to produce these kind of radio waves every 20 minutes," Hurley-Walker said.
"It just shouldn't be possible."
The object may be something researchers have theorised could exist but have never seen called an "ultra-long period magnetar".
It could also be a white dwarf, a remnant of a collapsed star.
"But that's quite unusual as well. We only know of one white dwarf pulsar, and nothing as great as this," Hurley-Walker said.
On the question of whether the powerful, consistent radio signal from space could have been sent by some other life form, Hurley-Walker conceded: "I was concerned that it was aliens."
But the research team was able to observe the signal across a wide range of frequencies.
"That means it must be a natural process, this is not an artificial signal," Hurley-Walker said.
The next step for the researchers is to look for more of these strange objects across the universe.

::Sport::

Manu Bhaker, Abhishek Verma among eight from Tokyo omitted

A new-look Indian shooting team will compete in the season’s first ISSF World Cup in Cairo from February 26. Only five of the 13 rifle and pistol shooters from the Tokyo Olympics have made the squad announced by the National Rifle Association of India (NRAI).
The 24-member squad was selected on the basis of performance in the national shooting championships. With the national trials scheduled this month cancelled because of Covid-19, the selection committee accounted for the qualification scores along with the final ranking points of the national championships. A preparatory camp will be held at the Karni Singh shooting range in New Delhi from February 9.
Pistol shooters Manu Bhaker and Abhishek Verma, rifle shooters Apurvi Chandela, Elavaneil Valarivan and Anjum Moudgil were among the big names from Tokyo who were not included. The five Olympics shooters who have kept their places are: Saurabh Chaudhary (10m air pistol), Divyansh Singh Panwar (10m air rifle), Rahi Sarnobat (25m sports pistol), Aishwarya Pratap Tomar and veteran Sanjeev Rajput (both 50m rifle 3 positions).
“The selection trials had to be cancelled but the coaches recommended that we should send a team to Cairo because the World Championships will also be held at the same venue and it was important to start the season,” said rifle coach Deepali Deshpande, who will travel with the team.
Some of the medallists from the 2021 ISSF Junior World Championships in Peru have been included. “We have to see how they perform in a top international event. It will help us to assess as we prepare the team for Asian Games and World Championships,” said Deshpande.