Kidambi bags historic silver in BWF World Championships

Vice President Venkaiah Naidu on Sunday urged all stakeholders, including the private sector, to come forward and supplement the government’s work in the field of adult education and skills training. Stressing the need to make every adult literate, he also highlighted the need to focus on digital literacy and financial literacy among the masses. Addressing the gathering after presenting the prestigious Nehru and Tagore Literacy Awards in New Delhi, the Vice President said that it was disappointing that despite making great progress in various fields like IT and digitization, India still has the largest number of illiterate persons in the world. Calling for urgent steps to address this challenge, he said, the literacy drive should become a people’s movement. He said, every educated youth in villages and colonies should come forward and teach at least one person from their localities or communities. He termed it as their PSR - Personal Social Responsibility. He added that ‘Each one-teach one’ should not merely remain a slogan, rather it should become a motivating force for the youth.

-Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Minister Piyush Goyal on Sunday inaugurated the Packaged Drinking Water Test Facility at National Test House, Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh. Addressing the Board of Directors, Goyal lauded the National Test House for taking a leap of technology to usher in quality assessment and assurance. Stressing on Prime Minister’s principle of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas, Sabka Prayas, Mr Goyal said, we should test the goods in such a way that they carry Zero Defect and testing shall be acceptable worldwide.

-The government has allocated 10 thousand 180 crore rupees to Rajasthan in the current financial year under Jal Jeevan Mission. Ministry of Jal Shakti has said that it is a four-fold increase from two thousand 522 crore rupees allocated in the last financial year. The Ministry said that the central government is providing all-out support to States to make provision of tap water supply to every rural household of the country by 2024. It added, there is no dearth of funds for the implementation of the Jal Jeevan Mission. The Ministry said, more than 5 crore 44 lakh rural households in the country have been provided tap water connections in the last 27 months. As of date, more than 8 crore 67 lakh rural households have tap water supply in their homes.

-In Maharashtra, indigenously developed 'CoviDelta kit' a Pune-based diagnostic centre has become the first ICMR approved test kit that detects all current variants of COVID-19 and flags for presumptive Delta and Omicron variants in a single test. Dr. Nikhil Phadke, Founder and Chief Science Officer at GenePath Diagnostics informed that this kit is capable of detecting all important Covid-19 variants described across the world to date including the currently dominant Delta and Omicron variants. He stated that this made-in-India kit is fast and cost-effective and has been approved by ICMR with 100% sensitivity and specificity.He informed that the it was due to the kit that the presence of the first Omicron case in Pune city could be flagged and consequently confirmed by all concerned government consortiums. He added that several government and private organizations in India and internationally are now evaluating the use of this kit as part of their diagnostic and surveillance efforts. According to Dr Phadke one of the most important highlights of this test kit is its ability to reliably differentiate all current Delta lineages and all Omicron lineages.

-In Badminton, Kidambi Srikanth bagged a historic silver medal after losing to Loh Kean Yew of Singapore 15-21, 20-22 in the Men’s singles final of BWF World Championships at Huelva in Spain on Sunday evening.  Srikanth is the first Indian to finish runners-up. Former World Number one, Srikanth earlier, etched his name in the history books after becoming the first Indian men's badminton player to reach the singles final of a World Championships. In a historic all-Indian semifinal, Srikanth defeated compatriot Lakshya Sen 17-21, 21-14, 21-17 last night in a thrilling contest that lasted an hour and nine minutes. Lakshya finished with the bronze medal.This is the first time that India got two medals in the men’s singles in the same edition of the Badminton World championships. Before this, India got two bronze medals in the Men’s singles at the Badminton world championships with Prakash Padukone in 1983 and B Sai Praneeth in 2019.