Hindu Notes from General Studies-01

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Assam begins deleting foreigners from NRC list.

News

• District officials in Assam have begun work to delete the names of ‘declared foreigners’ whose names had been included in the complete draft of the updated National Register of Citizens (NRC) that was published on July 30.

Beyond News

• In central Assam’s Morigaon district, officials have identified some 200 people declared foreigners by various Foreigners’ Tribunals or facing cases related to their doubtful citizenship.
• Assam has 100 such tribunals where people of suspect nationality are required to prove they are Indians.
• These 200 belong to 39 families scattered across the district. Some of them are declared foreigners while some others are suspected illegal immigrants with cases pending.
• The police in central Assam’s Hojai district too have filed charge-sheets against 91 people who had submitted fake documents while applying for NRC.
• The civil administration had filed 24 cases against such people when the NRC first draft was being published. There papers were found to be forged.
• NRC Assam’s State Coordinator Prateek Hajela had on July 2 submitted before the Supreme Court that some 1.5 lakh would be deleted from the first draft due to various anomalies. The first draft, published on December 31, 2017, had the names of 1.9 crore of a total 3.29 applicants.

The 1.5 lakh included 65,694 cases of “family tree mismatch” while 48,456 cases were of married women who had submitted doubtful panchayat certificates. Another 19,783 were left out because of data entry errors.

Record high greenhouse gas emissions in 2017: Report

News

• Greenhouse gas emissions climbed to all-time highs in 2017, a year in which climate change caused scorching temperatures worldwide and ice to melt at record levels in the Arctic, according to a report.

Beyond News

• The annual global average carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration at Earth’s surface last year was 405 parts per million, 2.2 ppm more than in 2016 and the “highest in the modern atmospheric measurement record”, the report said.
• Some gases have the ability to absorb infrared radiation and trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. These gases are known as greenhouse gases. A few greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane and fluorinated gases.
• When sunlight reaches our planet, some of the heat is captured on the surface, while the rest is radiated back into space.
• It is very important for the Earth to have the right amount of greenhouses gases in its atmosphere; otherwise it would be very cold or very hot, making the planet uninhabitable.
• For example, as we burn more fossil fuels, a larger amount of carbon dioxide and methane gets emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere. These gases form a thick blanket in the atmosphere and traps a large amount of heat. This results in the Earth’s temperature to rise and leads to global warming.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

WHO thumbs up for Swachh Bharat’s rural component

News

• It is estimated that the Swachh Bharat Mission Gramin (SBM-G) will result in preventing more than three lakh deaths due to diarrhoea and protein-energy malnutrition between 2014-October 2019, notes a World Health Organisation (WHO) report released.

Beyond News

• The progress report on potential health impact from increased sanitation coverage through the SBM-G, conducted by the WHO for the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, said India’s rural sanitation coverage escalated to 89.07% till August 2.
• The report notes that under the SBM-G, 19 States and Union Territories were declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) and 7.9 crore toilets were built, while 421 districts were declared ODF. Also, more than 4.9 lakh villages in the country were declared ODF.
• The WHO study showed that before the initiation of SBM-G, unsafe sanitation caused 199 million cases of diarrhoea annually and that by 2019, the initiative aims to achieve 100% sanitation coverage.

The report further estimated that 14 million Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) can be avoided between 2014 and 2019. WHO estimation of health impacts is based on comparative risk assessment (CRA) methods.

Sushma Swaraj meets Kazakhstan counterpart, discusses ways to deepen cooperation

News

• External Affairs Minister held a comprehensive discussion with her  Kazakhstan counterpart Kairat Abdrakhmanov on deepening cooperation in areas like trade, energy and defence and security.

Beyond News

• External Affairs Minister is on a three-nation tour to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan as part of India’s efforts to boost strategic partnership with the resource-rich nations.
• The two leaders held a comprehensive discussion on deepening cooperation in trade and investment, defence and security, energy, Information and Communications Technology, pharma, capacity building and culture.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

Beware the SMS on I-T refunds!

News

• Cyber-crime agencies are investigating a new pan-India, cyber crime racket, involving a fraudulent message purportedly from the Income-Tax Department.

Beyond News

• Officials said the seemingly innocuous message has the potential to trigger a host of cyber-crimes, including data theft and banking frauds.
• According to cyber-crime officials, the racket was first discovered roughly a month ago, as the first deadline for filing IT returns was nearing, when people started getting text messages, supposedly from the IT department. The message tells the targets that their “income tax refund” has been approved and includes a random bank account number, and ends by saying that if the account number mentioned is incorrect, the target should visit the link in the message and “update their bank account details”.
• Just entering these details opens up a wide range of possibilities for fraudsters. The fraudsters get the target’s login ID and password for the I-T department website, through which they can divert the I-T refund to their own accounts, with the targets’ knowledge. They can also change the target’s cell phone number in the I-T department’s records, so that they do not receive text message notifications about the changes, officials said.
• Using the same details, fraudsters can call up unsuspecting citizens posing as I-T officials and cheat them out of money by convincing them that there have been ‘irregularities’ in their I-T returns and they need to pay fines. This scam does not even need to be perpetrated by the original scamsters. They can simply sell the data in bulk to gangs involved in such activities, which happens quite often on the dark net.
• Last year, a similar scam was busted by the Thane police, where Indians accused were cheating citizens of the U.S. by posing as officials of the Internal Revenue Service.

Supersonic interceptor missile successfully test fired

News

• India successfully test fired an indigenously-developed supersonic interceptor missile from a test range off the Odisha coast to validate “some improved features”, defence sources said.

Beyond News

• The state-of-the-art missile was test fired from a canister, engaging a simulated target at low altitude, the sources said.
• The interceptor, an advanced air defence missile which is yet to get a formal name, was positioned at launchpad-4 of the Integrated Test Range on Dr Abdul Kalam Island and roared on its trajectory to hit the target mid-air on sea surface, the sources said.
• Developed as part of efforts to have a multi-layer ballistic missile defence system, it is capable of destroying incoming hostile ballistic missiles.

Drones in agri, urban development, policing

News

• Karnataka has joined the ranks of States using Unmanned Aerial System (UAS), or drones, in governance. The State launched a pilot project to use drones in agriculture, urban development and policing.

Beyond News

• Demonstrative application projects using drones would be taken up in Kasaba hobli of Haveri district to conduct a survey of the extent of crops, their health status and yield in 200 square kilometres. The operations would be carried out in three months during the crop life-cycle in the present kharif season.
• In Bantwal town of Dakshina Kannada district, a survey of 60 sq. km. would be carried out through drones to prepare a detailed base map to provide inputs for evolving a master plan for the town.
• The third application of drones would be in policing in Bengaluru.
• Karnataka Science & Technology Promotion Society (KSTePS) will implement the pilot projects in co-ordination with the other departments concerned.
• Agriculture Minister said the government is particularly interested in using drones for a Statewide survey of crops and land-holding to get accurate data.

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