Current Affairs 27th July 2019

Current Affairs 27th July 2019 - Important Points

• ‘Chandra Shekhar– The Last Icon of Ideological Politics’ book released  at - Balayogi Auditorium
• CARE4U application for elderly people established by -  IIT Kharagpur team
• Creation of buffer stock for 40 lakh MT of sugar for 1 year approved by - Government

Current Affairs 27th July 2019 - Details

‘Chandra Shekhar– The Last Icon of Ideological Politics’ book released  at - Balayogi Auditorium

PM Narendra Modi released the book named ‘Chandra Shekhar–The Last Icon of Ideological Politics’ at a programme organised at Balayogi Auditorium, Parliament Library Building. The first copy of book was presented to Venkaiah Naidu, Vice President of India.

The book accounts the political journey of former PM of India Chandra Shekhar. It has been written by Shri Harivansh, Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha & Ravi Dutt Bajpai.

More about Chandra Shekhar

• He was 8th PM of India & worked in office from 10th November 1990 till 21st June 1991. He is first Indian PM who has never detained any Government office.
• He undertook a countrywide marathon walk in 1983, from Kanyakumari in South to Rajghat in New Delhi covering a distance of around 4260 kms in more than six months.
• Rajghat is a memorial dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi.
• During his days, he was popularly known as Young Turk for his conviction, courage & integrity in fight against vested interests.

CARE4U application for elderly people established by -  IIT Kharagpur team

• It is an android application that will link caregiver to elderly people.
• By using the network-based fall detection algorithm, in CARE4U application installed on phone of elderly, can detect where elderly has fallen down.
• If there is a fall, application automatically calls caregiver & emergency services along with
  delivering precise location of elderly people.
  Features of CARE4U Application
• Application can also notice emotions as whenever elderly uses the application, the phone takes
  his/her picture & a mood index is calculated.
• This index senses whether people are sad or not & inevitably updates caregiver with time stamp.
• Thus, caregiver can check what mood sr citizen has been through in day.
• To make mood index feature more effective, Indian Institute of Technology team has developed a
  cognitive intelligent chatbot for elderly people to engage with.
• For instance, chatbot can commend a motivational quote/an old song when the people are sad.
• Best thing about application is that except for chatbot, all other machine learning models work on
  mobile itself that means no cloud service is desired. This suggests that even if there is no internet
  connection, all other features including fall detection, emotion detection will operate.
  Medicine Reminder
  It also has a record of medical histories, allergies’ knowledge, an Emergency button, real time
  location tracking & also has Medicine Reminder feature to prompt both elderly and caregiver that it is time for elderly person to take medicine.

Creation of buffer stock for 40 lakh MT of sugar for 1 year approved by - Government

Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has sanctioned creation of a buffer stock of 40 Lakh Metric Tonnes of sugar. This buffer stock would be formed for 1 year starting from 1st August 2019 to 31st July 2020. The decision of approving a buffer stock is to preserve demand-supply balance &  to stabilise sugar prices.
Key Highlights

• Government will spend an approximated Rupees 1674 crore for formation of a buffer stock of 40 Lakh Metric Tonnes.
• However, based on market price & obtainability of sugar, this may be studied by Department of Food & Public Distribution under Union Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food &  Public Distribution any time for withdrawal/amendment.
• Reimbursement issued under scheme would be met on a 3 months basis to sugar mills.
• It would be sprightly credited into farmers’ account on behalf of mills against cane price dues. In case of any pending balance, it would be credited to mill’s account.
  Benefits:
  The decisions will lead to-
  Lessening in sugar inventories
  Upgrading in liquidity positions of sugar mills
  Stabilization in sugar prices by improving price sentiments in domestic sugar market. This will
  further ease timely clearance of cane price dues of farmers.
  Profits for sugar mills in all sugarcane producing States, by way of clearing sugarcane price dues
  of sugar mills.