Current Affairs 2024 – Daily, Weekly, Monthly And Yearly PDF
Day of the Year
Indian Independence Day
- The roots of India’s quest for freedom go all the way back to the British East India Company’s establishment in the early 17th century. The company first started as a trading venture. But the company gradually expanded its influence, leading to the British Empire’s dominance over the Indian subcontinent.
- After the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the British had firmly entrenched themselves. This time marked the beginning of almost 200 years of colonial rule. The first significant revolt against the British occurred in 1857. That era is called today the Revolt of 1857 or the First War of Independence.
Latest Updates
Captain killed in gunfight with militants in Doda
- An Army Captain was killed in an anti-terror operation in the dense forests of the Shivgarh-Akar range of Doda in Jammu on Wednesday.
- A group of militants were encircled and engaged in a gunfight on Tuesday evening, triggering a fierce encounter. One of them was killed in the operation.
- Officials said Captain Deepak Singh sustained bullet injuries when he was leading a patrol towards the hiding militants on Tuesday night and kept “engaging militants in a firefight twice in the night”.
News Capsule
Three more Ramsar wetland sites now in India, taking total to 85
- The Environment Ministry on Wednesday said three more wetlands in India had been designated Ramsar sites. This brings the total number of such sites in India to 85. The new sites are the Nanjarayan and Kazhuveli bird sanctuaries in Tamil Nadu and the Tawa reservoir in Madhya Pradesh.
- “As the nation gears up to celebrate its Independence Day, thrilled to share that we have added three Ramsar sites to our network. This takes our tally to 85 Ramsar sites, covering an area of 13,58,068 hectares in India,” Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav posted on the social media platform X.
- India is one of the “contracting parties” to the Ramsar Convention, signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971. It became a signatory in 1982. From 1982 to 2013, a total of 26 sites were added to the list of Ramsar sites in the country.
Corner office still eluding a large number of women: Ministry report
- The representation of women in corporate decision-making roles remains inadequate with only 34,879 women holding senior management positions in 2023 as against 1,86,946 men, says the report “Women and men in India, 2023” by the Statistics and Programme Implementation Ministry. A total of 7,62,712 women were on the Boards of Directors as against 19,75,487 men, it adds.
- In other managerial positions in corporate firms, there were 7,38,949 women as against 18,60,348 men, the data sourced from the Corporate Affairs Ministry for the report show.
- Though the number of women in senior management positions has increased from 23,685 in 2017 to 34,879 in 2023, the corresponding increase for men from 1,50,387 to 18,69,46 has been higher.
Phase 3 clinical trial opens for indigenous dengue vaccine
- The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Panacea Biotec Ltd. on Wednesday announced the initiation of the first Phase 3 clinical trial for a dengue vaccine in India.
- The trial will evaluate the efficacy of India’s indigenous tetravalent dengue vaccine, DengiAll, developed by Panacea Biotec. The first participant in this trial was vaccinated on Wednesday at the Pandit Bhagwat Dayal Sharma Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Rohtak.
- The tetravalent dengue vaccine strain (TV003/TV005), originally developed by the National Institutes of Health, U.S., has shown promising results in preclinical and clinical trials worldwide.
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Exports slip to 8-month low in July, deficit widens 23.7%
- Breaking a three-month streak of positive growth, India’s goods exports contracted 1.5% in July to $33.98 billion, the lowest in eight months, even as the import bill rose 7.5% to $57.5 billion, widening the trade deficit by a sharp 23.7% in the month to $23.5 billion.
- Sequentially, exports dropped 3.5% from June, while imports grew 2.3%, leading to an almost 12% spike in the merchandise trade deficit over the previous month’s $21 billion gap. While the decline in exports was led by petroleum products, whose outbound shipments’ value slumped 22.2% from last July to $5.2 billion, the import bill spike was aided by a 17.4% rise in oil imports that hit $13.8 billion, thanks partly to higher prices.
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India to host third Voice of Global South virtual meet
- India will host the third Voice of Global South Summit in the virtual format on August 17 with a view to pitch for a sustainable future for developing countries.
- The summit is expected to act as a platform to expand discussions held in the previous meets on a range of complex challenges such as conflicts, food and energy security crises, and climate change — all of which affect the Global South.
- The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said that the theme of the summit will be “An Empowered Global South for a Sustainable Future”.
Illusory blip The decline in inflation offers no respite for households
India’s retail prices rose 3.54% in July, the slowest pace in almost five years, easing sharply from 5.1% in June. Food inflation, that has been high for about three years now, slid to a 13-month low of 5.4%. This is also the first time since August 2019 that inflation as per the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has aligned with the Reserve Bank of India’s median inflation target of 4%. Last week, the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) decided to maintain status quo on interest rates for the ninth consecutive time as it awaits a durable decline in the inflation rate. July’s pleasant inflation numbers will not trigger a rethink, as the MPC has in fact, hiked its projection for this quarter’s inflation average to 4.4% from 3.8%. So it expects price rise to rebound to well over 4% through August and September. There is good reason to see through July’s print as a purely statistical outcome of base effects from last July — when the CPI was up 7.4% and food was 11.5% dearer — rather than a tangible softening of persistent price pressures for households.
