THE ERICSSON MOBILITY REPORT 2020 & MORE ( CURRENT AFFIARS 4 DEC 2020 )

 THE ERICSSON MOBILITY REPORT 2020

India, which has the highest average monthly mobile data traffic per smartphone, is expected to surpass 350 million 5G subscriptions by 2026, accounting for 27% of all mobile subscriptions in the country, according to a report by Swedish telecom equipment maker Ericsson.

About:

• As per the ‘The Ericsson Mobility Report 2020,’ four out of every ten mobile subscriptions in 2026 will be 5G globally with 5G subscriptions forecast to reach 3.5 billion.
  
  
• In the India region, LTE (long-term evolution technology) subscriptions are forecast to increase from 710 million in 2020 to 820 million in 2026” by which time 3G will be phased out.
  
  
• In India, the reliance of people on mobile networks to stay connected as well as work from home during the pandemic has resulted in average traffic per smartphone user rising from 13.5 GB a month in 2019 to 15.7 GB in 2020, the highest globally.

INTERFAITH MARRIAGE

An Adult individual’s right to marry a person of his or her choice is a fundamental right that cannot be denied on the basis of caste or religion by anybody, according to an observation made by Karnataka High Court recently.

About:

• The ruling came even as the Karnataka government followed other BJP-ruled states in claiming the need for a special law to stop inter-religious marriages, especially those involving women from majority communities with men from minority communities.
  
  
• A division bench of the Allahabad High Court recently ruled in the case of a Muslim-Hindu couple Salamat Ansari and Priyanka Khanwar alias Alia that the “right to live with a person of his/her choice irrespective of religion professed by them, is intrinsic to right to life and personal liberty”.

NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE TEST

Honey marketed by prominent Indian brands failed a key test of purity, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has claimed, citing an investigation it conducted.

About:

• Current regulations specify around 18 parameters that honey must comply with for producers to label it ‘pure honey’.
  
  
• Most brands passed muster but when subjected to one test, called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) that was done at a lab in Germany, only three brands passed: Saffola, Markfed Sohna and Nature’s Nectar. There were often multiple samples tested for each brand.

INDIAN PEACOCK SOFTSHELL TURTLE

Indian peacock softshell turtle, a turtle of a vulnerable species was rescued from a fish market in Assam’s Silchar.

About:

• The Indian peacock softshell turtle [Nilssonia hurum] is a species of turtle found in South Asia.
  
  
• it is listed on the IUCN Red list as vulnerable species.
  
  
• It is a schedule I species in the Indian Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and is accorded the highest protection.
  

MUNI BONDS

Bonds issued by the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) were listed on the BSE, raising Rs 200 crore for Uttar Pradesh's capital.

About:

• UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said Ghaziabad will be the next to issue a municipal issue and it will be followed by Pragyaraj, Varanasi, Agra and Kanpur.
  
  
• Lucknow is the ninth city in the country to raise capital through municipal bonds.
  
  
• Until now, a cumulative amount of Rs 3,600 crore has been raised via muni bonds in the country. The money raised using such bonds is typically used for infra projects such as roads, water and housing.
  
  
• In 2015, market regulator SEBI had issued the framework for raising capital by way of muni bonds.
  
  
• Among the key eligibility criteria for issuing these bonds is that the local body shouldn’t have negative net worth in any of the three preceding financial years and shouldn’t have defaulted on payments in the last one year.

ARTPARK

An AI & Robotics Technologies Park (ARTPARK) set up in Bengaluru will promote technology innovations in AI (Artificial Intelligence) & Robotics leading to societal impact by executing ambitious mission mode R&D projects.

About:

• ARTPARK, is a unique not-for-profit foundation established by Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru with support from AI Foundry in a public-private model.
  
  
• With seed funding of Rs. 170 Cr ($22mn) from Department of Science & Technology(DST), Govt. of India, under the National Mission on Inter-disciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS), it will bring about collaborative consortium of partners from industry, academia and government bodies.
  
  
• ARTPARK will develop DataSetu - that will enable confidentiality and privacy-preserving framework to share data and run analytics spurring the data-sharing ecosystem and create a data marketplace, boosting AI applications and solutions.

FC KOHLI

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has expressed deep grief over the demise of Shri FC Kohli.

About:

• Faqir Chand Kohli (1924 – 2020) was an Indian industrialist.
  
  
• He was the founder and the first CEO of Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest software services company.
  
  
• He had been a president of the Indian Information Technology (IT) services advocacy body NASSCOM.
  
  
• He is referred to as the "Father of the Indian IT Industry", for his contributions to the establishment and growth of the Indian IT industry.
  
  
• He was a recipient of the Padma Bhushan.