The Daily Brief – 12th October 2019

The 38^th India Carpet Expo will be organised from 11^th to 14^th October, 2019 by the Carpet Export Promotion Council (CEPC) to promote cultural heritage and weaving skills of hand-made Indian carpets. Started in 2001, the expo is organised twice a year, once in Delhi and once in Varanasi. In the financial year 2018-19, the carpet producing belt exported around 1,765 million USD worth carpets.

Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal will represent India at the 9^th Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Intersessional Ministerial Meeting that is scheduled to be held in Bangkok, Thailand. Formally launched in November 2012, the RCEP is a proposed free-trade agreement (FTA) between the ten member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its six free-trade agreement (FTA) partners – India, China, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea.

India, China and Pakistan have agreed to establish a regional climate centre, under the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) that will provide forecasting services and climate analysis. It aims to better the forecast of the impact of climate change on the Hindu Kush Mountains. Considered as the third pole, the Hindu-Kush-Himalayan (HKH) region is the world’s largest store of snow and ice outside the polar region.

The Union Cabinet approved a one-time payment of Rs. 5.5 lakh as a resettlement package for the 5,300 displaced families, which had come from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and initially settled outside Jammu and Kashmir but later relocated to the state. It will be provided under the Rehabilitation Package approved by the Union Cabinet in November 2016 for the Displaced Families from Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) and Chhamb Niabat area under the PM’s Development Package 2015 for J&K.

Polish author Olga Tokarczuk won the Nobel Prize in Literature 2018 for her narrative imagination that represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life. The Nobel Prize in Literature 2019 has been awarded to Peter Handke of Austria for his influential work that explores the specificity of human experience. The first Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded in 1901 to Sully Prudhomme of France.

Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare Harsh Vardhan inaugurated the 13^th Conference of Central Council of Health and Family Welfare to build a consensus on national health priorities i.e. Universal Health Coverage (UHC) through Ayushman Bharat, eliminating TB and other priority agendas such as strengthening medical infrastructure.

The first ever India International Cooperatives Trade Fair (IICTF) will be held from 11^th to 13^th October, 2019 in New Delhi to provide a single platform to the farmers, artisans and other members of the cooperatives directly to the global trade arena. Steered by the National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC), the Fair is being conducted with the support of one international organization (NEDAC), three Ministries, four State Governments and several apex level Indian cooperative organizations.

Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare launched the Surakshit Matritva Aashwasan (SUMAN) scheme that provides free medicine to pregnant women at the 13^th Conference of the Central Council of Health and Family Welfare. It is aimed at reducing the Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) and Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) in the country. India’s maternal mortality rate has declined from 254 deaths per 1 lakh births in 2004-2006 to 130 deaths per 1 lakh births in 2014-2016.