{"id":5237,"date":"2019-12-22T12:16:45","date_gmt":"2019-12-22T06:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/?p=5237"},"modified":"2019-12-22T12:16:45","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T06:46:45","slug":"daily-current-affairs-prelims-36","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/daily-current-affairs-prelims-36\/","title":{"rendered":"Daily Current Affairs: Prelims"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Silver Line project<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Why in news?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Ministry of Railways has granted in-principle approval for the \u2018Silver Line\u2019 project.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>News summary<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The \u2018Silver Line\u2019 project is a proposal of the Kerala government that aims to connect major districts and towns with semi high-speed trains that will run on their own tracks.<\/li>\n<li>it involves laying the third and fourth railway lines from Kasaragod in the north to Kochuveli (Thiruvananthapuram) in the south for the movement of semi high-speed trains.<\/li>\n<li>The project aims to cut the travel time between the two corners from 12 hours to less than four hours. The project is scheduled to be commissioned by 2024.<\/li>\n<li>The Kerala Rail Development Corporation (K-Rail), a joint venture between the Ministry of Railways and the Kerala government will execute the project.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Operation Twist<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Why in news?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to conduct simultaneous purchase and sale of government securities under Open Market Operations (OMO) for \u20b910,000 crores each on December 23, 2019.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>News summary<\/strong><br \/>\n\u2022 It is the first time the RBI will conduct a special open market operation (OMO) of this kind, similar to the \u2018Operation Twist\u2019 carried out in the United States near the start of the decade.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The RBI said it will buy 100 billion rupees\u2019 ($1.4 billion) worth of the current benchmark 10-year bond while selling four bonds maturing in 2020 for an equivalent amount.<\/li>\n<li>RBI has decided to conduct the special OMO after reviewing the liquidity &amp; market situation and assessing financial conditions. Bond yields have been rising since the RBI unexpectedly left its key repo rate unchanged earlier this month.<\/li>\n<li>Analysts believe this \u2018Operation Twist\u2019 is aimed at bringing longer term yields lower.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Centre of Excellence for Next Generation Transportation Systems<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Why in news?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The National Rail Transport Institute (NRTI) has signed an MoU with the University of Birmingham to set up its first Centre of Excellence for Next Generation Transportation Systems.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Key highlights:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>This Centre will be involved in promoting development of the Rail and Transportation sector in India which include training programmes for in-service professionals and undertaking joint research projects in areas such as signalling, communication, asset maintenance etc.<\/li>\n<li>Indian Railways is a founding partner of this centre.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gay conversion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Why in news?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The German Cabinet approved a draft Bill banning \u201cconversion therapies\u201d designed to force heterosexuality on homosexuals.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>News summary<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The so-called Gay Conversion \u201ctherapy\u201d, employs psychotherapeutic methods, including giving electric shocks, to force homosexual people to turn heterosexual.<\/li>\n<li>These practises have often caused \u201csevere physical and psychological damage\u201d.<\/li>\n<li>The idea of conversion therapies is linked to the one that sees homosexuality as a mental disorder. This is a view that mental health professionals reject. Since Homosexuality is not an illness, so the word \u2018therapy\u2019 is misleading.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Silver Line project Why in news? The Ministry of Railways has granted in-principle approval for the \u2018Silver Line\u2019 project. News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4358,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[392],"class_list":["post-5237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-affairs","tag-union-public-service-commission-upsc"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5238,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5237\/revisions\/5238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}