17-06-21 Daily-Kerala-KPSC Current Affairs

Finance Minister K.N. Balagopal has said that the State will oppose the Centres move to bring natural gas and molasses used for captive consumption under the Goods and Service Tax (GST) regime.

The Finance Minister denied any move to raise the retirement age of employees and teachers. It is one way to stabilise the financial position of the State that is facing acute crisis. We have no plan to increase the retirement age. The government is looking into the report of the committee on statutory pension.

The government is for collecting the tax arrears and taking stern steps against those evading tax. Many are willingly giving Money for charity, but are reluctant to pay taxes to the government, he said. The government would seek the cooperation of traders and the business community in improving tax collection, he said.

The Centre on Monday told theSupreme Courtthat its notification of May 28 delegating powers to collectors of some of districts to grant to members of the minority community from Afghanistan,Pakistanand Bangladesh was not related to the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and that such exercise had been done earlier too since 2006.

By the notification, the Centre has delegated power to grant citizenship in such cases to the collectors of 13 more districts Morbi, Rajkot, Patan and Vadodara in Gujarat; Jalore, Udaipur, Pali, Barmer and Sirohi in Rajasthan; Durg and Balodabazar in Chhattisgarh; Faridabad in Haryana; and Jalandhar inPunjaband to the Home secretaries ofHaryanaand Punjab. Now, district collectors of 29 districts and home secretaries of 9 states can exercise such powers.

A Chinese spacecraft “Shenzhou XII” with three crew members docked with China’s new space station module Tianhe 1. This follows the launch of the Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft, which delivered critical supplies to the space station.

Highlights:

About six hours after taking off from the Jiuquan launch centre in the Gobi Desert, the Shenzhou-12 spacecraft connected with the Tianhe space station module.

The three-man crew will spend three months on the Tianhe module, which will orbit the Earth at 340km to 380km altitude.

This is the first of two manned space missions scheduled for this year, as part of a intense launch schedule aimed at completing the Chinese space station by 2022.

The three astronauts are the first to live in the main living module, where they will conduct experiments, test equipment, perform maintenance, and prepare the station for the arrival of two laboratory modules next year.

The World Health Organization (WHO) highlighted the risk that children working in informal processing face as a result of discarded electronic devices, or E-Waste, in its report Children and Digital Dumpsites. It is the world’s first WHO report on electronic waste and child health.

Approximately 12.9 million Women work in the informal waste sector, exposing them to toxic e-waste (such as nickel, lead, and mercury) and putting themselves and their unborn children at risk.

Children are especially vulnerable to the toxic chemicals found in e waste because of their smaller size, less developed organs, and rapid rate of Growth and development.