The Daily Brief – 4th August 2019

The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), in partnership with the lab of Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC), Leh, is going to set up a Pashmina testing centre in the Leh region of Jammu and Kashmir to check the quality of pashmina collected. Pashmina is a fine type of Kashmiri wool, also known as ‘cashmere’ in the West.

The Parliament passed the Repealing and Amending Bill, 2019 that seeks to repeal certain enactments and to amend certain other enactments. It provides for repealing 58 old laws, which have no relevance today. It also seeks to make minor amendments to the Income Tax Act, 1961 and the Indian Institutes of Management Act, 2017.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar attended the 10^th Mekong Ganga Cooperation (MGC) Ministerial Meeting held in Bangkok, during which a new MGC Plan of Action 2019-2022 was adopted. Launched in 2000, the Mekong Ganga Cooperation (MGC) is a sub-regional cooperation organisation comprising India and five ASEAN countries – Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

A research paper titled ‘Interrogating Indus inscription to unravel their mechanism of meaning conveyance’, claimed that a majority of Indus Valley inscriptions were written logographically (by using word signs) and not by using phonograms (speech sounds units). It could serve as a the basis in future for deciphering the Indus Valley script.

World Breastfeeding Week (WBW) is observed globally from 1^st to 7^th August 2019 with the theme ‘Empower Parents, Enable Breastfeeding’. The focus of this year is on protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding. The WBW was first inaugurated in 1991 and was first celebrated in 1992 by the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA).

President Ram Nath Kovind has been awarded the National Order of Merit, the highest award of Guinea, by the President of Guinea for his exceptional contribution to the advancement of overall relations and development of mutual cooperation between India and Guinea. President Kovind had announced a new Line of Credit of US$ 170 million for the Water Supply Project of Conakry city.

The Parliament passed the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority of India, AERA (Amendment) Bill, 2019 that seeks to amend the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority of India Act, 2008 that defines a major airport as one with annual passenger traffic over 15 lakh, or any other airports, as notified by the Central Government. The bill increases the threshold of annual passenger traffic for major airports to over 35 lakh passengers.