Author: Seba Fathima

On Friday, the Health Minister of Kerala, Veena George, introduced the pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV). The vaccine will provide immunity to children from meningitis and pneumonia caused by Streptococcus pneumonia bacteria. The free-vaccination drive was launched under the Universal Immunization Programme (UIP).  Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) Pneumonia is one of the significant causes of death among children below the age of five. Around one lakh infants die in the country due to pneumonia infection. Pneumonia is hard to treat, and the treatment is expensive. PCV aims to provide immunity to kids from the streptococcus bacteria and will protect young children from meningitis,…

Promising support to the agitating farmers on the borders of the national capital, Kerala observed a near-total shutdown on September 27. All political parties and trade unions of Kerala supported the Bharat Bandh, except for the BJP. The BJP government had implemented the contentious farm bill at the Centre. The shutdown was peaceful and almost complete in the state. The SKM called the Bharat Bandh The Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), the umbrella organization of more than 40 farmer unions, had announced the Bandh to strengthen and expand the farmers’ agitation, which began in November last year. The protesting farmers want…

The schools in Maharashtra will resume in-person classes for standard 5th to 12th in rural areas and 8th to 12th in urban areas from November 4, announced the state Education Minister. The remaining classes, including pre-schools and kindergartens, will remain shut, as the government anticipate opening schools in a phased manner.   Since the pandemic’s beginning, the government shut the schools in the state in March of last year as the country went into a national lockdown. The student community had then shifted to an online mode of learning. Since then, the students of more than 19,000 secondary and higher secondary…

Germany’s centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) claims victory in the preliminary results of the Bundestag elections. Angela Markel to step down after 16 years The party, led by its Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz defeated the conservative party of the outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel. Social Democrats claim 25.9 per cent of votes in Germany In the elections where the conservative party saw their worst ever performance, the SPD gained 25. 9 per cent votes, according to the country’s Federal Returning Officer. Merkel’s CDU-CSU alliance trailed behind with 24.1 per cent votes. The Greens secured 14.8 per cent and finished third. The FDP won 11.5 per cent. Will form a pragmatic government for…

On Friday, the Supreme Court stayed the proceedings of a petition challenging the validity of the Centre’s decision to grant 10 per cent reservations in admission and jobs for the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) in the Kerala High Court. The order came after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, sought a stay on the proceedings before the Kerala High Court.  The Case Should Be Transferred and Clubbed with Similar Cases Pending Before the Supreme Court Nujaim PK filed the PIL challenging the validity of the 103rd Constitution Amendment Act, 2019. The Ernakulam bench of the HC, on November 5 2020, had approved considering his…

Reserve Bank of India Deputy Governor M Rajeshwar Rao highlighted the importance of mainstreaming green finance on Monday. Addressing the CAFRAL virtual conference on Green and Sustainable Finance, he said we need to devise methods to incorporate environmental impact into commercial lending decisions, as climate crisis would affect the economy in the long run. Green finance refers to economic initiatives that fit into the sustainable development framework by delivering environmental benefits. RBI Governor also added that the financial sector must simultaneously balance credit expansion, economic growth, and social development to make the system “more resilient in the face of the…

Kerala will reopen its schools starting from November 1 for classes 1-7 (primary section), 10 and 12. This decision to reopen schools in the state quickly came after a Covid-19 review committee meeting chaired by the state’s chief minister on Saturday. The committee has also announced that the rest of the physical classes will resume from November 15. The decision gives schools another one and a half months to prepare the educational institutions for offline classes after 500 days of closure due to the pandemic. According to chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the decision came after health experts advised the state…

A federal advisory panel of outside experts to the US Food and Drug Administration rejected Joe Biden’s plan to offer booster shots of Pfizer vaccines to all vaccinated adults above 16. After hours of discussion, the Food and Drug Administration panel came to this conclusion on the grounds of insufficient data on the safety of extra doses. Instead, they voted 16-0 to provide booster shots to the US population above 65 and at high risk of severe Covid-19. The panel, which included infectious disease experts, doctors, and officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes…

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman informed the press about the Union Cabinet’s approval to set up a “bad bank” to clean up bad loans in the Economy on Thursday. Two government-monitored entities, National Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd (NARCL) and India Debt Resolution Company Ltd (IDRCL) will be constituted to free up stressed assets and resolve the “twin balance sheet” problem in the Indian financial sector. National Asset Reconstruction Compant Ltd to takeover and sell NPAs worth 2 lakh crores National Asset Reconstruction Company Ltd, dubbed loosely as the “bad bank”, is the first of its kind in the country. It will acquire toxic loan assets…

This Tuesday, Tata Steel commissioned its first Carbon Capture and Utilization (CCU) plant at its Jamshedpur Works’ site. Established with the help of Carbon Clean, the Five-tonnes-per day (TPD) plant will extract carbon dioxide directly from the blast furnace gas to re-use it on site. Tata Steel has become the first steel company in India to adopt a CCU facility that will aid the country in its path towards decarbonization. T V Narendran, the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Tata Steel inaugurated the plant. The company has adopted a two-pronged approach, including Carbon Direct Avoidance (CDA) and CO2…