World Economic Situation and Prospects Report
- The report is a jointly published by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).
- This year report marks the 70th anniversary of the publication.
- It is the flagship report on the state of global economy.
- The report highlights that, global economic growth reached 3 per cent in 2017, the highest growth rate since 2011.
- It states that, India is set to see the growth accelerating to 7.2% in 2018-19 and 7.4% in 2019-20, up from the 6.7% in 2017-18.
UN-DESA
- UN-DESA is based at UN Headquarters in New York.
- It is an entity of the UN Secretariat responsible for economic, social and environmental issues.
- It promotes international cooperation in the pursuit of sustainable development.
- It helps countries individually and regionally to formulate and implement national development strategies.
- Its in-depth policy analysis has helped resolve many of the world’s most pressing socio-economic issues.
- It publishes “Sustainable Development Goals Report 2017”, which is the annual assessment of global and regional progress towards the Goals.
UNCTAD
- It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland and part of the UN Secretariat.
- It is a part of the United Nations Development Group (UNDG).
- It was formed specifically to handle the problems of developing countries dealing with trade, investment and development issues.
- Other reports published by UNCTAD – Trade and Development Report, World Investment Report, The Least Developed Countries Report, Information and Economy Report, Technology and Innovation Report and Commodities and Development Report.
Laqshya Initiative
- Government of India has recently launched Laqshya - Labour Room Quality Improvement Initiative.
- Its objective is to reduce preventable maternal and new-born mortality, morbidity and stillbirths by improving the quality of care provided in the labour room.
- It will be implemented in Government Medical Colleges besides District Hospitals, and Sub- District Hospitals and Community Health Centres.
- The initiative plans to conduct quality certification of labour rooms and also incentivize facilities achieving the targets outlined.
First NIC-CERT
- National Informatics Centre (NIC) provides nationwide common ICT infrastructure consisting of national and state “Data Centres” to support e-Governance services to the citizen.
- National Knowledge Network (NKN) has been set up to connect institutions/organizations carrying out R&D, Higher Education and Governance with speed of the order of multi Gigabits per second.
- Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) is under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
- It has been designated to serve as the national agency to collect, analyse and disseminate information on cyber incidents.
- Country’s first NIC-CERT has been recently setup that will monitor, detect and prevent cyber attacks on government networks
- It uses various tools to gather intelligence to identify vulnerabilities and possible exploits thereby predicting cyber incidents.
Ranganadi Hydroelectric Dam
- It is the Run-of-the-River (ROR) dam constructed on Ranganadi River in Arunachal Pradesh.
- ROR is a type of hydroelectric generation plant whereby little or no water storage is provided.
- Substantial flooding of the upper part of the river is not required for run-of-river projects as a large reservoir is not required.
- It does not require the formation of a reservoir thus eliminating the methane and carbon dioxide emissions.
- The Emissions are generally caused by the decomposition of organic matter in the reservoir of a conventional hydro-electric dam.
Methanol blending with Petrol
- It is a liquid chemical which is made from the destructive distillation (pyrolysis) of wood and is chiefly synthesized from carbon monoxide and hydrogen.
- Its principal uses are in organic synthesis, as a fuel, solvent, and antifreeze.
- It is also used to produce biodiesel via transesterification reaction.
- Government will soon announce a policy which calls for 15 per cent blending of methanol in petrol to make it cheaper and also reduce pollution.
Source: The Hindu, PIB
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