Current affairs 12 May 2023

India among top 5 countries where babies are born pre-term: UN Report.

According to a report, released by the UN, an estimated 13.4 million babies were born pre-term in 2020, with 45% of them being born in just five countries, including India, Pakistan, Nigeria, China, and Ethiopia.
Report title: Born Too Soon: Decade of Action on Pre-term Birth
It is jointly produced by the WHO, UNICEF, and Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH).
The global pre-term birth rate increased to 9.9% in 2020, compared to 9.8% in 2010.

IBM in collaboration with NASA unveiled a new geospatial foundation model designed to convert satellite data into high-resolution maps of floods, fires, and other landscape changes to reveal the planet’s past and hint at its future.
The model watsonx.ai geospatial offering is an artificial intelligence (AI) technology developed by IBM.
The goal of the NASA and IBM collaboration is to provide an easier way for researchers to analyse and draw insights from large NASA datasets related to Earth processes.
This collaboration is part of NASA’s Open-Source Science Initiative (OSSI), a commitment to building an inclusive, transparent, and collaborative open science community over the next decade.

Union Ministry of WCD has launched a campaign named Poshan Bhi Padhai Bhi for strengthening Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE).
This unique initiative is aimed at ensuring that India has a high-quality preschool network.
ECCE is a significant component of Mission Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0 and is envisaged under the NEP.
The work will be taken by Anganwadis across the country for providing nutrition as well as better education to children.

Punjab has become the first state in India to implement the right to walk by making it mandatory for all road-owning agencies to provide footpaths and cycle tracks in all future expansions of roads and construction.
Reason: Every month more than 10 pedestrians/ bicycle riders are killed in road accidents due to encroachment on pedestrian footpaths.
Road-owning agencies include NHAI, the public works department, local bodies, and urban development departments.

India Post, Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), and Tripta Technologies signed an MoU for the Bharat eMart portal.
This portal will provide the facility of pick-up of consignments from the premises of traders and ensure delivery at the doorsteps of the consignees across the country.
In the recent past, India Post has entered into similar agreements with GeM, Regional Centers of Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India Limited (TRIFED).