News in Short

• Bihar’s newly-appointed education minister Mewalal Choudhary resigned just three days after taking oath amid corruption charges in appointments as VC of Bihar Agricultural University.
• With this, Mewalal created a sort of record of being the “shortest serving minister” as he remained the education minister for less than two hours after assuming the charge of the post.
• A one-member inquiry committee, set up by the then governor-cum-chancellor of universities, Ram Nath Kovind had charged Mewalal with committing large scale bungling, favouritism, interpolation, manipulation, addition and subtraction in academic points of the candidates, changing the remarks, and violating the provision of statute in selection of assistant professors-cum-junior scientists.

• Moody’s Investors Service has revised its GDP projection for India in 2020-21 to a 10.6% contraction compared to a 11.5% drop it had estimated.
• The rating agency has also marginally elevated its forecast for 2021-22 GDP growth from 10.6% to 10.8%.
• Estimates from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy show that unemployment remains high, although both urban and rural unemployment rates have recovered from peaks in April and May during the nationwide lockdown.
• Moody’s termed the Centre’s November 12 package of stimulus measures ‘credit positive’.
• The latest measures aim to increase the competitiveness of India's manufacturing sector and create jobs, while supporting infrastructure investment, credit availability and stressed sectors.

• The Health Ministry has approved a new category for selection and nomination of candidates from ‘Wards of COVID Warriors’ under Central pool MBBS/BDS seats for the academic year 2020-21.
• The selection of candidates will be made by the Medical Council Committee (MCC) through online application on the basis of the rank obtained in NEET-2020 conducted by National Testing Agency.
• COVID warriors are all public healthcare providers including community health workers, who may have to be in direct contact and care of COVID-19 patients and who may be at risk of being impacted by this.

• Scottish author Douglas Stuart was named as the winner of Man Booker prize for 2020 for his debut novel Shuggie Bain.
• The novel, set in the Thatcherite Glasgow of the 1980s, follows the life of Agnes Bain, who is descending into despair and struggling with alcohol after the breakdown of her marriage.
• All but one of her children have been driven away by her deterioration, and that child, Shuggie, struggles to help Agnes while suffering huge personal problems of his own.
• The Man Booker Prize is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original novel written in the English language and published in the United Kingdom.

• Google has unveiled a new tool called Tree Canopy Lab that can help cities plant more trees. Tree Canopy Lab will use aerial imagery to map out the green cover of a city and use AI to suggest where more trees need to be planted.
• Tree Canopy Lab can help bring the temperature down in vulnerable areas by identifying pockets where tree cover can be increased. Tree Canopy Lab is an initiative by Google Sustainability and will pilot in Los Angeles.
• Tree Canopy Lab incorporates aerial imaging and Google's AI to figure out the locations with trees. Google uses planes to collect aerial imagery from around the world for Google Maps and Google Earth.