Current affairs 11 July 2023

India, Tanzania begin trade settlements in local currencies.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar informed that India and Tanzania have started trade settlements in local currencies.
This new initiative will help in promoting commerce between the two countries.
India-Tanzania bilateral trade has seen very strong growth and stood at USD 6.4 billion in 2022-23.
Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, and Canara Bank have operations in Tanzania.
About 18 countries have already opened special vostro accounts with Indian banks.

Law officer Deepika Deshwal has become the first and the youngest Indian girl to deliver an address at the United Nations headquarters in New York City.
She was invited by the United Nations for the third time to deliver a speech on women's rights and human rights.
Deshwal has already etched her name in the Guinness Book of World Records for her selfless public service during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Deshwal had earlier delivered two speeches at the UN focussing on human rights and women's rights.
Her speeches garnered wholesome praise from delegates representing over 150 countries. The august environs of the UN echoed with applause as her powerful words resonated with everyone in attendance.

Ayushman Bharat-Health and Wellness Centres (AB-HWCs) programme of India has grown to more than 1.60 lakh centres and registered a footfall of over 178.87 crore (as of June end).
The government will add more services including screening, prevention, control, etc. by August-end.
The essential list of medicines and diagnostics has been expanded to make available 171 medicines at Primary HWCs and 105 at Secondary Health Care-HWC and 63 diagnostics at PHC-HWC.

National Housing Bank (NHB) has operationalized the Urban Infrastructure Development Fund (UIDF) with an initial corpus of Rs 10,000 crore.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her 2023-24 Budget speech announced the setting up of the UIDF through the use of priority sector lending shortfall for the creation of urban infrastructure in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
The interest rate on UIDF loans has been kept at Bank Rate minus 1.5%, i.e., 5.25% (at present).

China recently launched it’s first open-source desktop operating system (OS) named as OpenKylin 1.0 to reduce its dependency on US technology and to create China’s independent software system.
The launch of OpenKylin, an open-source desktop system marked the country’s latest effort in developing homegrown software which reduces reliance on Western Technologies.
The OpenKylin system has been developed with the contribution from various companies and organizations.
The system, called OpenKylin, has been designed as a rival to the ubiquitous Windows and MacOS systems.
Previous versions of the software had already been deployed on the computers of some government departments.