News in Short

• National Youth Day is celebrated every year on January 12 to recognise and honour the teachings of Swami Vivekananda.
• Swami Vivekananda was born on January 12, 1863 at Kolkata. National Youth Day is celebrated across the nation at schools and colleges. However, this year, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and most educational institutions being shut, the celebrations will be different.
• Swami Vivekananda accorded great importance to youth power towards nation-building and universal brotherhood. Swami Ji considered education to be a continuous process in which all aspects of life, such as physical, intellectual, emotional, mortal, and spiritual should be imbibed.

• The three new laws at the heart of massive farmer protests near Delhi will not be implemented for now, as the Supreme Court put on hold the laws enacted in September.
• The top court also said a committee of agricultural experts would be formed to take over negotiations with farmers to end the crisis.
• The government had told the court that the laws were not hurriedly made, that they were the result of two decades of deliberations.
• The top court also issued notice to farmers' unions on a Delhi Police plea to stop a tractor rally during the January 26 Republic Day parade.

• Globally-renowned astrophysicist and mathematician S M Chitre, who was a contemporary of the legendary Stephen Hawking passed away brie. He was 84.
• A graduate from Elphinstone College and Peterhouse College, Cambridge, Chitre played a major role in the development of India’s first space observatory Astrosat, which was launched by ISRO in 2015.
• A recipient of Padma Bhushan, he retired as a senior professor from TIFR in 2001. He served on the boards of Nehru Centre trust and J N Tata trust for several years.
• He was a former president of the Astronomical Society of India, and a member of multiple committees in recent decades that shaped India’s science policy.

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the central government will bear the expenses of vaccinating nearly three crore healthcare and frontline workers in the first round.
• Mr Modi said that over 30 crore citizens will get the jabs in the next few months in India against only 2.5 crore people who have received them in over 50 countries in around a month so far.
• The two already approved made-in-India COVID-19 vaccines are more cost-effective than any other in the world and have been developed as per the country's needs.
• The prime minister also sought to dispel concerns expressed by some opposition leaders and experts over the approval given to Covaxin without the availability of efficacy data.
• India's drug regulator has given nod to Covishield and Covaxin for the emergency use authorisation.

• Climate change, insecticides, herbicides, light pollution, invasive species, and changes in agriculture and land use are causing Earth to lose probably 1% to 2% of its insects each year.
• The problem is called the insect apocalypse. Scientists have trouble grasping its enormity and complexity.
• Insect decline is comparable to climate change 30 years ago because the methods to assess the extent, the rate of loss were difficult.
• Making matters worse is that in many cases, people hate bugs, even though they pollinate the world’s foods, are crucial to the food chain, and get rid of waste.
• Honeybees have been in dramatic decline because of disease, parasites, insecticides, herbicides, and lack of food.