National
7th Ganga Utsav 2023
⇒ The 7th edition of Ganga Utsav was organized by National Mission for Clean Ganga in New Delhi on 04 November 2023.
- It was inaugurated by Secretary, Department of Water Resources, River Development & Ganga Rejuvenation, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Ms. Debashree Mukherjee.
33rd edition of Namami Gange Magazine:
» The event also marked the release of 33rd edition of Namami Gange Magazine, the new Chacha Chaudhary series and the Voyage of Ganga Booklet, based on Ganga Pustak Parikrama in collaboration with NBT.
2nd Ganga Pustak Parikrama:
» The 2nd edition of Ganga Pustak Parikrama was also flagged off by Ms. Debashree Mukherjee, and Mr. G. Asok Kumar.
- Ganga Pustak Parikrama commenced its 3-month long journey from Gangotri on 7 November 2023.
- It passed through all cities and towns on the banks of River Ganga – Uttarkashi, Rishikesh, Haridwar, Bijnor, Meerut, Aligarh, Farrukhabad, Kanpur, Prayagraj, Mirzapur, Varanasi, Chhapra, Patna, Begusarai, Sultanganj, Bhagalpur, Sahibganj, Baharampur, Kolkata, and Haldia.
- The journey of Ganga Pustak Parikrama was ended at Gangasagar on 11 January 2024.
Background:
- NMCG has been celebrating Ganga Utsav since 2017 every year on 4th November, the day on which river Ganga was declared the National River of India in the year 2008.
- Ganga was declared as the National River of India, which led to the establishment of the National Ganga Day.
Krishi 24/7, the first-ever AI-powered solution for automated agricultural news monitoring and analysis
⇒ Secretary (A&FW) Shri Manoj Ahuja launched the Krishi 24/7 initiative in November 2023, the first-ever AI-powered solution for automated agricultural news monitoring and analysis.
Developed by:
Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare (DA&FW) in collaboration with Wadhwani Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Wadhwani AI) developed Krishi 24/7, with support from Google.org.
Key Points:
- Krishi 24/7 will aid DA&FW to identify relevant news, generate timely alerts, and take prompt action to protect farmers’ interests and promote sustainable agricultural growth through improved decision-making.
- The introduction of Krishi 24/7 addresses the need for an efficient mechanism to identify and manage agricultural news articles of interest to aid timely decision-making.
- The tool scans news articles in multiple languages and translates them into English.
- It extracts essential information from news articles, such as headline, crop name, event type, date, location, severity, summary, and source link, ensuring that the ministry receives timely updates on relevant events published on the web.
COLORS joins forces with the Ministry of Women and Child Development to support the ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ initiative
⇒ COLORS, India’s leading Hindi GEC, announced its collaboration with the Ministry of Women and Child Development’s ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ initiative, to address the issue of girl child abandonment, through the launch of its new fiction show Doree on 05 November 2023.
Key Points:
- Television as a medium has played a huge role in holding a mirror to society and led to many women becoming agents of change.
- With an aim to bring societal change and address the gender bias against girl child, through this association COLORS aims to raise awareness about the social evil of girl child abandonment.
- In addition to launching a primetime show on the subject, as part of this association, COLORS will promote the 24-hour emergency toll free Child helpline number (1098) for those seeking assistance for any abandoned girl child across the nation.
- ‘Doree’ began airing on Colors from November 6, 2023, with an aim to generate popular conversation and thereby raise awareness on the issue of girl child abandonment.
About:
- The Ministry for Women and Child Development works towards holistic development of women and children.
- ‘COLORS’ is Viacom18’s flagship brand in the entertainment space in India. A combination of ‘emotions’ and ‘variety’, COLORS, launched on 21st July 2008, offers an entire spectrum of emotions to its viewers.
International
2nd World Local Production Forum (WLPF) 2023
⇒ The Indian delegation led by Shri Bhagwant Khuba, Union Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilizers participated in the Second World Local Production Forum (WLPF) held in Hague, Netherlands on 07 November 2023.
Shri Khuba said in his address that this meeting provides a crucial opportunity to share experiences, challenges and successes in the development and manufacturing of diagnostic countermeasures. He said that we must collaborate further to identify innovative approaches that will enable sustainable and equitable access to these critical tools.
- During his visit, Mr Khuba also met the Minister of Public Health of Surinam Dr. Amar N Ramadhin and discussed about quality health care.
- He also visited Eindhoven to take part in Kannada Rajyotsava 2023 Celebrations of Shrigandha Holland Kannada Balaga.
MoU:
India and Netherlands have signed a Memorandum of Intent (MoI) to cooperate on medical product regulation and enhance the quality of medical products and healthcare services for both countries at Hague, Netherlands.
- The MoI was signed during a meeting of Shri Bhagwant Khuba, Union Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilizers with Mr. Ernst Kuipers Minister of Health, Welfare and Sports of the Kingdom of Netherlands.
» The meeting was a great opportunity for India to interact with other countries as well as multilateral organizations to boost resilience in global supply chains of pharmaceuticals and showcase important contribution made by India in this space in the pharma sector.
2nd World Local Production Forum (WLPF) 2023:
» The 2nd World Local Production Forum (WLPF) took place in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, from 6 to 8 November, 2023.
- The Kingdom of the Netherlands was the host country for the 2nd WLPF, and the forum held in the World Forum The Hague.
Key Points:
- The 2nd WLPF invited high level participation from diverse sectors, such as government, international organizations, finance institutions, private sector, civil societies, and academia.
- The aim of the 2nd WLPF was to provide a global platform to discuss key challenges in promoting local production and technology transfer.
- It also explored opportunities and mechanisms to tackle the bottlenecks and promoted sustainable local production capacity to improve access to quality, safe and effective health products and technologies.
- The focus of this forum was to leverage regional and global partnerships for local production and technology transfer for timely and equitable access worldwide.
About WLPF:
- The World Local Production Forum: Enhancing access to medicines and other health technologies (WLPF) is a platform created at the initiative of WHO with the aim of increasing access to medicines and other health technologies.
- This forum provides Member States and the global community with a regular platform to shape strategies, galvanize collective action, and foster partnerships on sustainable local production to improve timely and equitable access to quality assured health products.
- The Local Production and Assistance (LPA) Unit serves as the WLPF Secretariat.
- WHO launched the World Local Production Forum: Enhancing access to medicines and other health technologies (WLPF) initiative in 2021.
- The first WLPF was held virtually on 21-25 June 2021 with the participation of high-level delegates from over 100 Member States.