NASA wants companies to collect samples of moon dirt for its lunar base plans
NASA’s plans to rope in companies to collect samples of moon dirt for its lunar base plans and hand them over have been in the pipeline for quite some time. NASA’s goal is to complete the retrieval and transfer of ownership before 2024, the year the agency is aiming...
Prime Minister of Japan, Yoshihide Suga, is a self-made powerful adviser
On September 16, 2020, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan, 71, won election to office in Parliament, where his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) commands a comfortable majority. Suga replaced former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who resigned for health reasons....
Indian economy to contract 9 per cent in the fiscal year April 2020-21
The Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB), on September 15, 2020, projected the Indian economy to contract 9 per cent in the current fiscal year ending March 31, 2021 as rising Covid-19 cases will keep private spending and investment lower for longer. India’s...
Parliamentary Standing Committee Recommends LTCG Tax Abolition on Startup Investments
In September 2020, the Parliamentary standing committee headed by Jayant Sinha, the committee’s chairperson and also the former minister of state for finance, recommended the abolition of long-term capital gains (LTCG) for at least two years on startup investments...
Winter-grade Diesel
The Union Home Minister on November 7, 2019, launched the first Winter-grade Diesel Sales Centre for Ladakh region with a view to solve the problems of people related to the use of diesel fuel during winter season as diesel reaches freezing point every year during...
Emergence and Development of Telemedicine
Telemedicine can be defined as evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of patients from a distance using telecommunications technology. This could be possible due to a striking evolution in the last decade and has now become an increasingly important part of the...
How Time Flows
Time as known flows only in one direction, i.e., forward, The question is whether it is possible to reverse the arrow of time. There are some thought provoking views on the matter. View of Physicists Physicists are of the view that the laws of elementary particle...
India Planning for a Decadal Forecast System
India is planning a ‘decadal forecast’ system along the lines of the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office to ensure better predictability in the climate time scale. The Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) made this announcement at the sidelines of the 6th...
Elephant’s Long-lost Relatives Found
It was reported in February 2020 that researchers found a premolar tooth of about 6 cm width and 7 cm length at Kutch, Gujarat which belonged to an extinct ancient elephant called Deinotherium indicum. The finding increases our understanding of the variations in...
Law Enforcement Agents Kill Antifa Supporter in US
Michael Forest Reinoehl, 48, who was an Antifa supporter and a suspect in the fatal shooting of a right-wing activist, Aaron J. Danielson, part of a pro-Trump caravan in Portland, Oregon, was killed by law enforcement agents on September 3, 2020. President Donald...
New Motor Vehicle Act and 10 per cent Reduction in Road Accidents
Introduction On March 19, 2020, the Union Transport Minister informed the Lok Sabha about 10 per cent reduction in accidental deaths since the implementation of the new Motor Vehicle Act, 2019. In this regard, the ministry released the ‘Integrated Road Accident...
India Revises FDI Policy to Curb Chinese Takeover of Indian Firms
In a major policy move to control growing Chinese investments in India, the government, in April 2020, notified new rules, that are aimed at restricting opportunistic takeovers of Indian companies in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, as per the press release from the...
Amendment in Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897
As per media reports, dated April 22, 2020, the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 was amended with the promulgation of the Epidemic Diseases (Amendment) ordinance, 2020. The aim of the Act is to contain the spread of epidemic diseases. The amendment in the Act, brought in...
Dekho Apna Desh Initiative of Tourism Ministry
In order to promote the domestic tourism, the Ministry of Tourism, on April 14, 2020, launched a webinar series—Dekho Apna Desh—in an effort to boost local and national economy. The tourism sector in India is highly affected as there are no movements either...
Tacitus Trap
The Covid-19 crisis has turned the world public opinion against China in ways that were unimaginable a few months ago. China is being widely held responsible for a cover-up and a delay in the global response to the virus. Country after country is rethinking its...
Bullwhip Effects
Almost anything that is bought in a store is trucked, or shipped in from some other part of the country or flown in from abroad. It is made from parts that come from somewhere else. That’s why, even before the coronavirus outbreak officially hit, and the demand began...
Algorithm Economy
The concept of algorithm economy is based on the algorithms that lead to sophisticated application designs. Algorithms have utility in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and such other processes in which software advances beyond its original programming with...
Randomised Controlled Trial
Introduction The term ‘randomised controlled trial’ (RCT) came to be used in the economic parlance due to the works of Economics Nobel laureates—Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Michael Kremer (Harvard University), who were...
A New Coalition of Nine Nations
India has formed a coalition of nine countries—India, S. Africa, Bolivia, Cuba, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Ecuador, Tunisia, and Malawi—in order to place special provisions for developing countries and tackle high farm subsidies in developed countries. Another reason cited for...
India Losing the African Rice Market
Cheaper rice from China and Thailand has begun eating into India’s traditional markets in Africa. An increase in minimum support price (MSP) for paddy, strengthening the rupee against the dollar has turned the India rice expensive and hurt the shipments of non-basmati...