Talking about the prevailing situation of Bird Flu in different parts of the country, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, the government has formalized a roadmap, which needs to be followed at an earliest. He said, District Magistrates will also have a major role to play to check the spread of the disease. Mr Modi said, those states, where no case of Bird Flu has been reported, should be on a constant vigil.

Union Government has said that Avian Influenza has so far been confirmed in 10 states of the country. The ten states include Kerala, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Briefing reporters in New Delhi, Animal Husbandry and Dairying Minister Giriraj Singh said that even after writing to the states three times, they did not taken proactive measures to contain the spread of the disease. He said, if the states had taken timely action, the spread of Avian Influenza could have been contained.

The country’s COVID-19 recovery rate has reached to 96.49 per cent. More than 18 thousand COVID patients recovered during the last 24 hours. The total number of recoveries has gone up to over one crore one lakh. Health Ministry said, the COVID-19 recovery rate of India is amongst highest in the world. The actual caseload currently comprises only 2.07 per cent of the total positive cases. Presently, the total number of active cases in the country is around two lakh 16 thousand.
 
During the past 24 hours, 12 thousand 584 new cases were reported taking the total number of positive cases in the country to over one crore four lakh. The Ministry said, currently, India’s Case Fatality Rate is at 1.44 per cent, which is one of the lowest globally. During the last 24 hours, 167 deaths were reported taking the toll to one lakh 51 thousand 327.
 
According to Indian Council of Medical Research, more than eight lakh 97 thousand tests were conducted during the last 24 hours. The total number of samples tested so far has reached 18 crore 26 lakh.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that the New National Education Policy focuses on development of better individuals and from better individuals to a better country. He said, this policy gives priority to our youth’s understanding, their decisions and beliefs. Addressing the valedictory function of the Second National Youth Parliament Festival today through video conferencing, Mr Modi said, the new National Education Policy is a step towards nation-building and the Government is building an eco-system which will give better opportunities to the youth.
 
Speaking about Swami Vivekananda, Mr Modi said, Swami Ji always stressed equally on physical and mental strength and spoke about muscles of iron and nerves of steel. He said, inspired from the teachings of Swami Vivekananda, government is specially focusing on the mental and physical fitness of Indian youth.
 
The Prime Minister said, it was Swami ji who said that the fearless, frank, clean-hearted, courageous and aspirational youth is the foundation on which the future of the nation is built. He believed so much on youth and on the youth power.
 
Mr Modi said, time passed, the country became independent, but we still see Swamiji’s influence today. What Swami ji spoke about spirituality, nationalism and nation building, his thoughts about serving people and serving the world flow within people with the same intensity.
 
The Prime Minister said, Swami Vivekananda has given us another precious gift and it is a gift to build individuals, to build institutions. He said, people come under the influence of Swami ji and build institutions. He said, people then come out from these institutions, follow Swami ji’s path and add new people too.
 
The Prime Minister said, our freedom fighters were influenced by Swami Vivekananda and his works have always been effective in instilling nationalism in the youth.
 
Mr Modi said, earlier there was a perception in the country that if a young man turned to politics, people used to say that the child is getting spoiled. He said, people believed that everything can change but politics cannot. The Prime Minister said, but today honest people are also getting a chance in politics. Honesty and performance is becoming the first mandatory condition of today’s politics.
 
Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank and Youth Affairs and Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju also addressed on the occasion.
 
Three national winners of the Festival also expressed their views during the event.

51st International Film Festival of India (IFFI) has announced a line-up of programmes that will be showcased on the OTT platform.  The festival will be held in Goa from 16th to 24th January. Taking into account the Corona pandemic, IFFI is holding its first ever hybrid film festival.
 
This year, IFFI will organize a few of its events on the OTT platform for its audience. It includes Retrospective films like Live Flesh, Bad Education and Volver of Spanish Filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar and the Square and Force Majeure of Swedish Film Director Ruben Östlund. Besides, the festival will have Master classes and In-conversation Sessions at OTT Platform.
 
Bangladesh will be this edition’s Country in Focus. The Country in Focus is a special segment that recognizes the cinematic excellence and contributions of the country. This section at the 51st IFFI will showcase four films – Jibondhuli by Tanvir Mokammel, Meghmallar by Zahidur Rahim Anjan, Under Construction by Rubaiyat Hossain and Sincerely Yours, Dhaka by 11 individual directors, including Nuhash Humayun, Syed Ahmed Shawki, Rahat Rahman Joy, MD Robiul Alam, and Golam Kibria Farooki, Mir Mukarram Hossain, Tanvir Ahsan, Mahmudul Islam, Abdullah Al Noor, Krishnendu Chattopadhyay and Syed Saleh Ahmed Sobhan.

Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has issued a notification to facilitate the issuance of International Driving Permit (IDP) for Indian citizens whose IDP has expired while they are abroad. There was no mechanism for its renewal while citizens were abroad and their IDP expired.
 
After this amendment, Indian citizens can apply for renewal through Indian Embassies and Missions abroad, from where these applications will move to the VAHAN portal in India, to be considered by the concerned Road Transport Officers (RTOs).
 
The International Driving Permit will be couriered to the citizen at his or her address abroad by the respective RTOs. The Ministry said that the notification also removes the conditions of a Medical Certificate and a valid visa at the time of making the request for the IDP in India. The idea is that a citizen who has a valid driving licence should not have a requirement for another medical certificate.
 
Further, there are countries where the Visa is issued on arrival or Visa is issued at the last moment and in such cases, VISA is not available when applying for the IDP in India before travel.  Therefore, IDP application can now be made without VISA.

The aerial ground survey for Delhi – Varanasi High Speed Rail Corridor began from Greater Noida yesterday. Railway Ministry said, a helicopter fitted with state of art Aerial LiDAR and imagery sensors took the first flight and captured the data related to ground survey. The Ministry said, LiDAR technology provides all the ground details and data in 3 to 4 months wherein this process normally takes 10 to 12 months.
 
The ground survey is a crucial activity for any linear infrastructure project as the survey provides accurate details of areas around the alignment. This technique uses a combination of Laser data, GPS data, flight parameters and actual photographs to give accurate survey data.

The country’s COVID-19 recovery rate has reached 96.43 per cent as more than 16 thousand COVID patients recovered during the last 24 hours. The total number of recoveries has gone up to over one crore 92 thousand.
 
Health Ministry said, the actual caseload currently comprises only 2.13 per cent of the total positive cases. Presently, the total number of active cases in the country is around two lakh 22 thousand.
 
During the past 24 hours, 16 thousand 311 new cases were reported taking the total number of positive cases in the country to over one crore four lakh 66 thousand. The Ministry said, currently, India’s Case Fatality Rate is at 1.44 per cent, which is one of the lowest globally. During the last 24 hours, 161 deaths were reported taking the toll to one lakh 51 thousand 160.
 
According to Indian Council of Medical Research, more than six lakh 59 thousand tests were conducted during the last 24 hours. The total number of samples tested so far has crossed 18 crore 17 lakh.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will interact with the Chief Ministers of all states today evening through video conferencing. During the interaction, the COVID-19 situation and the vaccination rollout will be discussed.

Emergency Use Authorisation or Accelerated Approval has been granted by the National Regulator, Drugs Controller General of India for two vaccines Covishield and Covaxin which have established safety and immunogenicity. On Saturday, the Prime Minister chaired a high-level meeting to review the COVID-19 status in the country.

The roll-out of COVID-19 vaccine will provide priority to the healthcare workers and the frontline workers who are estimated to be around 3 crore followed by those above 50 years of age and the under-50 population groups with co-morbidities numbering around 27 crore. The Co-WIN Vaccine Delivery Management System will provide real time information of vaccine stocks, their storage temperature and individualized tracking of beneficiaries of the COVID-19 vaccine.

The platform will assist the program managers across all levels through automated session allocation for pre-registered beneficiaries, their verification and for generating a digital certificate upon successful completion of the vaccine schedule. More than 79 lakh beneficiaries have already been registered on the platform.

More than 61,000 programme managers, 2 lakh vaccinators and 3.7 lakh other vaccination team members have been trained so far as part of trainings at States, Districts and Block levels. Three phases of dry runs have been conducted across the country.

Before we begin, let’s give credit to the researcher behind many of these ideas. Brian Wansink is a professor at Cornell University and he has completed a variety of studies on how your environment shapes your eating decisions. Many of the ideas below come from his popular book, Mindless Eating.

1. Use smaller plates. Bigger plates mean bigger portions. And that means you eat more. According to a study conducted by Wansink and his research team, if you made a simple change and served your dinner on 10-inch plates instead of a 12-inch plate, you would eat 22% less food over the course of the next year.

On a related note, if you’re thinking “I’ll just put less food on my plate” … it’s not that simple. The picture below explains why. When you eat a small portion off of a large plate, your mind feels unsatisfied. Meanwhile, the same portion will feel more filling when eaten off of a small plate. The circles in the image below are the same size, but your brain (and stomach) doesn’t view them that way.

2. Make water more readily available. Most of us mindlessly take a swig of soda or a sip of coffee as we do other tasks. Try this instead: buy a large bottle water and set it somewhere close to you throughout your day. You’ll find that if it’s sitting next to you, you’ll often opt for water instead and avoid less healthy drink options naturally.

3. Want to drink less alcohol or soda? Use tall, slender glasses instead of short, fat ones. In other words, taller drinks look bigger to our eyes than round, horizontal mugs do. And because height makes things look bigger than width, you’ll actually drink less from taller glasses. In fact, you will typically drink about 20% less from a tall, slender glass than you would from a short, fat glass.

4. Use plates that have a high contrast color with your food. When the color of your plate matches the color of your food, you naturally serve yourself more because your brain has trouble distinguishing the portion size from the plate. Because of this, dark green and dark blue make great plate colors because they contrast with light foods like pasta and potatoes (which means you’re likely to serve less of them), but don’t contrast very much with leafy greens and vegetables (which means you’re likely to put more of them on your plate).

5. Display healthy foods in a prominent place. For example, you could place a bowl of fruits or nuts near the front door or somewhere else that you pass by before you leave the house. When you’re hungry and in a rush, you are more likely to grab the first thing you see.

6. Wrap unhealthy foods in tin foil. Wrap healthy foods in plastic wrap. The old saying, “out of sight, out of mind” turns out to have some truth to it. Eating isn’t just a physical event, but also an emotional one. Your mind often determines what it wants to eat based on what your eyes see. Thus, if you hide unhealthy foods by wrapping them up or tucking them away in less prominent places, then you are less likely to eat them.

7. Keep healthy foods in larger packages and containers, and unhealthy foods in smaller ones. Big boxes and containers tend to catch your eye more, take up space in your kitchen and pantry, and otherwise get in your way. As a result, you’re more likely to notice them and eat them. Meanwhile, smaller items can hide in your kitchen for months. (Just take a look at what you have lying around right now. It’s probably small cans and containers.)

Bonus tip: if you buy a large box of something unhealthy, you can re-package it into smaller Ziploc bags or containers, which should make it less likely that you’ll binge and eat a lot at once.

8. Serve meals by using the “half plate” rule. You can design your eating environment as well. When you serve yourself dinner, start by making half of your plate fruits or vegetables. Then, fill the rest of the dish based on that constraint.

9. Use the “Outer Ring” strategy to buy healthier foods. The concept is simple: when you go grocery shopping, don’t walk down the aisles. Only shop on the outer perimeter of the store. This is usually where the healthy food lives: fruits, vegetables, lean meats, fish, eggs, and nuts. If you only shop on the outer ring, then you’re more likely to buy healthy foods. And that, of course, means you’re more likely to eat healthy foods when you get home.

10. And for the tenth strategy, let’s apply these concepts to some other areas of life…

Applying Environment Design to the Rest of Your Life

When you really break down each of these strategies, you’ll see that each one is a small tweak that puts more steps between you and the bad behaviors and fewer steps between you and the good behaviors.

For example…

• Wrapping unhealthy foods in tin foil adds another step. You have to see the dish, then open it to see what is inside, then decide to eat it. (Rather than just spotting some leftovers in plastic wrap and grabbing them.)
• Using small plates adds another step between you and eating more. If you want more, you have to go back for seconds and fill up again.

You can take this same approach to almost anything in life. If you want to make a bad behavior more difficult, then increase the number of steps between you and the behavior.

Meanwhile, if you want to make a good behavior easier, reduce the steps between you and behaviour. For example, if you want to make it easier to go for a run then lay out your shoes and running gear the night before you exercise. One less step between you and your workout.