Current Affairs - Sep 26, 2018

Financial Inclusion Index

Department of Financial Services under the Ministry of Finance has launched the Financial Inclusion Index.
The index has taken into account three factors viz. access to financial services, usage of financial services and quality of financial services.
The index will be a measure of access and usage of various financial products and services.
The services include savings, remittances, credit, insurance and pension products.
It enables fulfillment of G20 Financial Inclusion Indicators requirements.

A recent study that ranks countries for their levels of spending on human capital - education and health care has been published in Lancet.
The study was conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the request of the World Bank.
India ranks 158th in the list behind Sudan and ahead of Namibia, in 1990 it was at 162.
Finland topped the score while Turkey showed highest jump, USA at 27, China 44, Pakistan 164, Srilanka 102.

Supreme Court has recently set up a panel headed by retired SC Judge Amitava Roy Panel to look in to prison reforms and decongest crowded jails.
The panel will examine way and means to prevent violence against inmates, get the required legal aid and rehabilitate them.
It will also examine the feasibility of setting up more open prisons.
It will examine the functioning of undertrial review committees, availability of legal aid and advice, grant of remission, parole, and furlough.

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) are developing a new gamma ray telescope in near the High Altitude Gamma Ray (HAGAR) array at Hanle in Ladakh.
It will be the second such telescope to be available globally after the first one is in La Palma in Canary Islands set up jointly by Switzerland and Germany in 2011.
HAGAR houses the Indian Astronomical Observatory operated by Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru.

WAYU is a device to clean polluted air in high traffic areas with lots of nearby buildings restricting air flow causing street canyon effect.
The device sucks polluted air and cleans it using activated carbon.
National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur-based laboratory's of CSIR has developed it.

Ministry of Home Affairs has recently notified new rules amalgamating police forces in six Union Territories.
The rules effectively mean that officers who are not direct IPS recruits could be posted in any of the six UTs and will be at the disposal of the Ministry.
It would include personnel currently employed in the Delhi Police, A&N Islands Police, Lakshadweep Police, Daman & Diu Police, Dadra and Nagar Haveli Police and Chandigarh Police.
The Rules will come into effect upon the promotion or direct recruitment of Inspectors to the post of ACP.
It is being viewed as the first step towards the creation of a central police cadre allowing for the posting of police personnel across the country irrespective of the force they are initially inducted into.

Brazilian scientists have recently identified four young asteroids (less than 7 million years old) orbiting between Mars and Jupiter along with other 700 asteroids in the same main asteroid belt.
It is an interactive web interface that allows a person to report on hornbills anywhere in India. It was launched by Scientists from Nature Conservation Foundation and Conservation India. Hornbills play essential roles in forest ecosystems as dispersers of seeds of forest plants.