KERALA
Kerala’s second biomedical waste treatment facility at Ernakulam
Yet another common biomedical waste treatment facility (CBWTF) has become operational in the state from Monday. The new facility under the Kerala Enviro Infrastructure Ltd (KEIL) has been set up at Ambalamedu in Ernakulam with a capacity of treating 16 tonnes of biomedical waste per day.
At present, IMA’s IMAGE, a common biomedical waste treatment facility in Palakkad, is the only one in the state which has been exclusively handling all the biomedical wastes. In view of the pande,ic situation, IMAGE had stretched its capacity and added new equipment to treat the entire waste coming from Covid care centres. IMAGE has 16,922 government and private healthcare establishments as its clientele.
INTERNATIONAL
SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Launched 60 Starlink Satellites
Sixty Starlink Internet Satellites were recently launched by SpaceX. The Falcon 9 rocket was used to launch the satellites. It was launched from the Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
The SpaceX corporation has already completed twelve launches in 2021. Its own Starlink satellites have been launched in the bulk of those missions.
SpaceX has been granted permission to launch up to 30,000 satellites.
SpaceX plans to create a constellation of 12,000 satellites as part of the Starlink project.
The project’s main goal is to provide space-based internet services at a reasonable cost.
There are currently over four billion people on the world who do not have access to the internet. This is mostly due to inept internet delivery methods.
The majority of countries use fibre optic cables or cellular networks to deliver internet. These techniques are extremely difficult to implement in areas with difficult terrain where towers or cables are not feasible.
Satellite signals, on the other hand, can quickly clear these obstacles.
NATO Military Exercises launched
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization recently launched a joint military exercise in Albania, called ” DEFENDER-Europe 21″. Thousands of military personnel from the United States participated in the exercise.
The DEFENDER-Europe Exercise is an annual US-led transnational exercise. It is defensive in nature. It focuses on containing aggression.
NATIONAL
Converting Nitrogen Plants to Oxygen Plants
In light of the need for medical oxygen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian government investigated the feasibility of converting existing nitrogen plants to produce oxygen.
Potential industries for converting existing nitrogen plants to produce oxygen have been established.
Carbon Molecular Sieve (CMS) is used in nitrogen plants, while Zeolite Molecular Sieve (ZMS) is used for oxygen production.
Therefore, replace CMS with ZMS and make some other changes, such as oxygen analyzer, control panel system, flow valve, etc. The existing nitrogen-making equipment can be modified to produce oxygen.
A nitrogen plant that has been updated to provide oxygen may be relocated to a nearby hospital.
Review on Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana
It was established by the government in 2015 to provide non-corporate, non-farm small/micro-enterprises with loans of up to Rs. 10 lakh.
MUDRA stands for Micro Units Development & Refinance Agency Ltd., and it is a government-run financial institution.
MUDRA offers financing to non-corporate small businesses through a network of last-mile financial institutions, including Banks, Non-Banking Financial Companies (NBFCs) and Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs).
MUDRA does not make direct loans to micro-entrepreneurs or individuals.
According to the stage of growth and funding needs of the beneficiary micro unit, MUDRA has developed three products: ‘Shishu,’ ‘Kishore,’ and ‘Tarun.’
Shishu: Covering loans up to Rs. 50,000.
Kishore: Covering loans above Rs. 50,000 and up to Rs. 5 lakh.
Tarun: Covering loans above Rs. 5 lakh and up to Rs. 10 lakh.
Production Linked Incentive scheme (PLI) for IT Hardware
Recently, the Production Linked Incentive Scheme (PLI) for IT Hardware was announced.
The PLI Scheme provides participating companies with a four-year incentive ranging from 4% to 2% / 1% on net incremental sales (over the base year of FY 2019-20) of products in target segments that are produced in India (FY 2021-22 to FY 2024-25).
The proposed Scheme’s target IT hardware segments are laptops, tablets, all-in-one personal computers (PCs), and servers.
The scheme implements production-related incentives in order to boost domestic manufacturing and encourage significant investments in the IT Hardware supply chain.