10 PM Current Affairs Quiz: February 28, 2020

The Indian government on Wednesday announced it will hold RAISE 2020- ‘Responsible AI for Social Empowerment 2020’ summit in New Delhi between April 11 and April 12. The RAISE 2020 summit will also host a “Startup Pitchfest.” The summit will be aimed at bringing together people to exchange ideas on the use of Artificial Intelligence for “social empowerment, inclusion and transformation” in industries such as education, smart mobility, agriculture, and healthcare among others.

Union Minister of Food Processing Industries, launched the– Market Intelligence and Early Warning System (MIEWS) Web Portal. Addressing the media during the event, the Minister said that the MIEWS Dashboard and Portal is a ‘first-of-its-kind’ platform for ‘real time monitoring’ of prices of tomato, onion and potato (TOP) and for simultaneously generating alerts for intervention under the terms of the Operation Greens (OG) scheme. The portal would disseminate all relevant information related to TOP crops such as Prices and Arrivals, Area, Yield and Production, Imports and Exports, Crop Calendars, Crop Agronomy, etc in an easy to use visual format.

The Indian Air Force (IAF) and Royal Air Force (RAF) of UK jointly commenced the fifth edition of Ex Indradhanush at Air Force Station Hindan on 24 Feb 2020. The focus of this edition of the exercise is ‘Base Defence and Force Protection’. This theme is of significance considering the recent threats to military establishments from terror elements. Ex Indradhanush provides a platform for the IAF and RAF to share and jointly validate strategies and tactics to counter terror threats to their installations. The RAF team comprises of 36 specialised combatants of the RAF Regiment while the IAF will comprise of 42 combatants of the GARUD Force. Both teams will execute missions based on jointly worked out plans and scenarios. Both sides would also exercise specialised weapons, equipment and vehicles and validate joint employability. Special missions would encompass Airfield Seizure, Base Defence and anti-terror operations in Urban built up zones. These exercises would include para drops from C-130J aircraft, tactical insertions by Mi-17 V5 helicopters and use of various airborne sensors.

It’s now more than a year since NASA’s InSight lander mission touched down on Mars on November 26, 2018. InSight is the first mission dedicated to looking deep beneath the Martian surface. Among its science tools are a seismometer for detecting quakes, sensors for gauging wind and air pressure, a magnetometer, and a heat flow probe designed to take the planet’s temperature. The InSight mission is part of NASA’s Discovery Program. It is being supported by a number of European partners, which include France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA).

ICoSDiTAUS-2020, the two-day International Conference on Standardisation of Diagnosis and Terminologies in Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha Systems of Medicine concluded in New Delhi today with adopting the ‘New Delhi Declaration on Collection and Classification of Traditional Medicine (TM) Diagnostic Data.’ The sixteen countries which came together for the cause of traditional medicine at this conference are Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Serbia, Curacao, Cuba, Myanmar, Equatorial Guinea, Qatar, Ghana, Bhutan, Uzbekistan, India, Switzerland, Iran, Jamaica, and Japan. ICoSDiTAUS-2020 is the biggest ever international event dedicated to standardisation of Diagnosis and Terminologies of Traditional Medicine in terms of the broad level of participation covering virtually all the continents. The inaugural address of Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO South East Asia Regional Office (SEARO) on 25 February set the tone for the conference and underlined the power of TM systems and their significance in addressing the public health challenges of the 21 century. Samira Asma, Assistant Director General, WHO, joined in through video conference and emphasised the potential of strategic use of data and evidence to advance TM systems into public health. Rajesh Kotecha, Secretary, AYUSH, in his talk in the inaugural session explained the extent of the contribution being made in traditional medicine systems in India in the effort to achieve universal health coverage.