Today's Current Affairs - 18th October 2022

INTERNATIONAL

Sweden's parliament elects PM backed for first time by far right

• Sweden’s parliament elected Moderates leader Ulf Kristersson as the country’s new prime minister. A total of 176 members of the Riksdag voted in favor of Kristersson, while 173 members voted against him.
• The Sweden Democrats were the big winners in the closely fought September 11 general election. They emerged as the second-largest party with a record 20.5 percent of votes, trailing only the Social Democrats, who have dominated Swedish politics since the 1930s. The right-wing bloc now has 176 seats in parliament, to their left-wing rivals’ 173. Kristersson’s four-party alliance unveiled a 62-page roadmap heavily influenced by the far-right agenda. It promises major crackdowns on crime and immigration and the construction of new nuclear reactors.
• Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Akesson told parliament that while his party would have preferred to be in government and holding cabinet posts, the policies the coalition pursued were most important. “It is what the government does that is important, not what the government looks like,” he said.
• The socialists are in power in only four of the fifteen European Union (EU) member state governments (Germany, Great Britain, Greece, and Sweden).

 NATIONAL

India registered defence exports worth Rs 8,000 cr in six months of FY 2022-23

• India registered defence exports worth Rs 8,000 crore in six months of the current financial year and aims to achieve the annual export target of Rs 35,000 crore by 2025, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said. He was speaking at the curtain raiser event of DefExpo, scheduled to be held from October 18 to 22, in Gandhinagar.
• Singh said India’s defence sector registered exports worth Rs 30,000 crore after 2014 when the Narendra Modi government came to power at the Centre. He said India is progressing speedily on the path to achieving global standards of design, development and manufacturing at the international level.
• “Before 2014, we used to achieve (defence) exports of Rs 900-1,300 crore. After all these years, we have achieved exports worth more than Rs 30,000 crore to date. We can add another Rs 8,000-9,000 crore of the export target (this year),” Singh said. “We target to achieve (annual defence) exports worth Rs 35,000 crore by the end of FY 2025. We have achieved exports worth Rs 8,000 crore in six months (of FY 2022-23),” Singh said.

SCIENCE & TEHNOLOGY

CERT-In and Power-CSIRTs jointly conduct Cyber Security Exercise “PowerEX-2022”

• 193 invited Power Sector Utilities to participate in the Cyber Security Exercise “PowerEX” that was successfully designed and carried out by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN) and Power-CSIRTs. On the exercise day, the CERT-In team collaborated with the Power-CSIRT authorities’ Exercise Planner Team as Exercise Coordinators.
• “Recognize, Analyze & Respond to Cyber Incidents in IT & OT Systems” was the exercise’s stated goal.
• The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology of the Government of India houses the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-IN or ICERT). It is the central organisation for handling risks to cyber security like phishing and hacking. It strengthens the Indian Internet domain’s security-related defence.

 APPOINTMENS & RESIGNATIONS

DY Chandrachud appointed 50th Chief Justice of India, to take oath on Nov 9

• President Droupadi Murmu has appointed Dr Justice DY Chandrachud as the new Chief Justice of India. He will succeed the present Chief Justice of India Justice Uday Umesh Lalit. Justice Chandrachud’s appointment will come into effect from the 9th of next month. Justice DY Chandrachud would be the 50th Chief Justice of India. While Justice Lalit has a tenure of 74 days, Justice Chandrachud will serve as the CJI for two years. Justice Chandrachud will demit office on November 10, 2024.
• Born in 1959, Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chandrachud earned his LLB from Delhi University. After earning the coveted Inlaks Scholarship, he went on to study at Harvard University. He earned his Masters in Law (LLM) and Doctorate in Juridical Sciences at Harvard (SJD).
• His father Justice Yeshwant Vishnu Chandrachud was the 16th Chief Justice of India, serving from February 22, 1978, till July 11, 1985. He was appointed to the Supreme Court of India on August 28, 1972. He was the longest-serving Chief Justice in India’s history, having served for 7 years and 4 months.

 IMPORTANT DAYS

World Trauma Day 2022 2022: 17^th October

• Every year, October 17 is celebrated as World Trauma Day. The day is observed with a view to prevent the increasing rate of accidents and injuries causing death and disability across the world. The day was created in New Delhi, India, in 2011. This was a result of the high number of deaths caused by road accidents in the country, an estimate of over 400 people lost their lives each day to it. Road Traffic Accident (RTA) is the leading cause of trauma across the world.
• On World Trauma Day, people the world over come together to commemorate those that have died or become injured due to violence and trauma or accidents. Furthermore, the day emphasizes the importance of prevention and how everyone can contribute to making the world a safer place.

 SUMMIT'S & MOU's

UNDP partners Arya.ag, FWWB India to strengthen value chain in agriculture, allied sectors

• Project Excel is being implemented in the Gujarati districts of Jamnagar and Dwaraka Devbhumi by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in collaboration with the integrated grain commerce platform Arya.ag and Friends of Women’s World Banking India (FWWB India). It aims to increase the incomes of 10,000 farmer households through the promotion of small businesses, intervention in the agri-value chain, and skill development in the agricultural industry.
• By December 2023, the collaboration for Project Excel hopes to have assembled a team of community resource people who will support, encourage, and coach local business owners.
• A team of sourcing managers will be assembled as part of the project to undertake value chain interventions and create credit and market links through collectivization.
• ag will work to create farmer collectives for efficient post-harvest management and create the producer group’s agriculture value chain.

 AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Sri-Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka bags Booker Prize 2022 for his magnum opus ‘The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida’

• Sri Lankan author, Shehan Karunatilaka has won Britain’s Booker Prize 2022 for fiction for his work “The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida”, about a journalist murdered amid the country’s sectarian strife. The judges praised the “ambition of its scope, and the hilarious audacity of its narrative techniques”. Karunatilaka’s second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida comes more than a decade after his debut, Chinaman, which was published in 2011.
• Neil MacGregor, chair of the judges for this year’s prize, said the novel was chosen because “it’s a book that takes the reader on a rollercoaster journey through life and death right to what the author describes as the dark heart of the world”.
• Karunatilaka, 47, is the second Sri Lankan to win the award, following Michael Ondaatje’s victory in 1992 for “The English Patient”. Aside from the £50,000 ($56,000) prize, winning the Booker can provide a career-changing boost in sales and public profile.

 RANKING

415 Million Lifted Out Of Poverty In Last 15 Years In India: UN Report

• The number of people living below the poverty line in India decreased by 415 million between 2005-06 and 2019-21, according to a new Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) released jointly by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at the University of Oxford.
• The index has stated that India still has the world’s highest number of poor at 228.9 million, followed by Nigeria (96.7 million projected in 2020). The report found that across 111 countries which were assessed using the most recent comparable data available, 1.2 billion people (19.1 per cent) live in acute poverty and almost half of these people (593 million) are children under the age of 18 years. The developing region with the largest number of poor people is Sub-Saharan Africa (nearly 579 million), followed by South Asia (385 million), the report highlighted.
• The MPI highlighted that the Covid-19 pandemic had set the global progress in reducing poverty back by 3–10 years. “Despite progress, India’s population remains vulnerable to the mounting effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and to rising food and energy prices. Integrated policies tackling the ongoing nutritional and energy crises should be a priority,” the report said.

 BANKING AND ECONOMY

India’s forex reserves rise by USD 204 million to USD 532.868 billion

• The Reserve Bank reported an increase in the value of gold assets caused India’s foreign exchange reserves to climb by USD 204 million to USD 532.868 billion for the week ended October 7. The total reserves decreased by USD 4.854 billion to USD 532.664 billion during the previous reporting week.
• The aggregate foreign reserves decreased to USD 532.664 billion from USD 4.854 billion the previous week ending September 30.
• The foreign reserves have been declining for several weeks as the central bank uses its funds to protect the rupee against pressures mostly brought on by international events.
• In the week ending October 7, Foreign Currency Assets (FCAs), a significant portion of total reserves, decreased by USD 1.311 billion to USD 471.496 billion, according to the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Weekly Statistical Supplement.
• The FCAs, which are expressed in dollar terms, take into account the impact of appreciation or depreciation of non-US currencies held in foreign exchange reserves, such as the euro, pound, and yen.

India can attract $475 billion in FDI in five years, says CII-EY report

• India has promising growth prospects for foreign direct investment (FDI) and has the potential to draw $475 billion in FDI flows over the next five years, according to a CII-EY report. Despite the effects of the pandemic and geopolitical developments, foreign direct investment (FDI) in India has steadily increased over the past ten years, reaching $84.8 billion in FY 2021–22.
• 71% of multinational corporations (MNCs) with operations in India view it as a key market for their international expansion. Prospects for the long run and the short term are what are fueling the optimism.
• According to the report titled “Vision – Developed India: Opportunities and Expectations of MNCs,” the majority of MNCs believe that the Indian economy will perform significantly better in the next three to five years.
• India’s potential is fueled by a number of factors, including the country’s ranking as one of the largest and fastest-growing economies in the world, strong consumer patterns, digitization, and an expanding services industry.