Hindu Notes from General Studies-02

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Checks reveal 8% error rate in VVPATs

News

• The error rate of the Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) machines supplied by the Election Commission of India is found to be around 8%.

Beyond News

• Assessment by the Telangana State election authority has revealed the error rate of VVPATs to be 8.08% while the error rate of control units is pegged at 2.02%.
• The ballot units are relatively better placed with error rate estimated at less than 1% (0.92%).
• The error rate of the election equipment was assessed after the first-level checks done on 99.69% of the machines received by the State. Machines in which errors are detected are being sent back to the Commission seeking replacement. The State was sanctioned 52,100 ballot units, 41,000 control units and 44,000 VVPATs and first-level checks have been completed for almost all the machines.
• The Election Commission has announced second instalment of 1,100 more VVPATs to the State for the ensuing elections in the first week of December.

FDA asks 113 outlets on online delivery services to shut shop

News

• In a first, the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) has issued stop-business notices to 113 food outlets that catered to customers through online delivery platforms.

Beyond News

• The outlets were operating without registration and licence, in extremely unhygienic conditions. The FDA has also served notices to food delivery platforms for sourcing food from such outlets.
• The FDA surveyed 347 food outlets from September 21 to October 1. Of the 113 outlets that were found to be functioning without licences, 85 were linked to Swiggy, 50 to Zomato, three to Foodpanda and two to UberEats.
• As per rules, any food providers with turnover below ₹12 lakh must have registration and those with a turnover above Rs 12 lakh must have licence from FDA.
• The Food Safety and Standard Authority of India (FSSAI) had directed the food aggregators to delist outlets running without registration .

Centre sets ‘minimum river flows’ for the Ganga

News

• In a first, the Union government has mandated the minimum quantity of water or ecological flow as it’s called in scientific circles that various stretches of the Ganga must necessarily have all through the year.

Beyond News

• The new norms would require hydropower projects located along the river to modify their operations so as to ensure they are in compliance.
• In a gazette notification made public, the National Mission for Clean Ganga has laid down the flow specifications. The upper stretches of the Ganga from its origins in the glaciers and until Haridwar would have to maintain: 20% of the monthly average flow of the preceding 10-days between November and March, which is the dry season; 25% of the average during the ‘lean season’ of October, April and May; and 30% of monthly average during the monsoon months of June-September.
• Power projects that don’t meet these norms as yet would be given three years to comply and “mini and micro projects” would be exempt from these requirements.
• The Central Water Commission would be the designated authority to collect relevant data and submit flow monitoring-cum-compliance reports on a quarterly basis to the NMCG, according to the notification.
• The government, however, hasn’t disclosed the existing ecological flows at these stretches while setting the minimum levels, an omission that an expert involved in the framing of these rules attributed to “strategic reasons”.

Hindu Notes from General Studies-03

100% organic Sikkim shortlisted for FAO s Future Policy Award

News

• Sikkim’s achievement in becoming the world’s first totally organic agriculture State in India has won it a place on the shortlist of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s (FAO) Future Policy Award.
• The FAO said that the award would celebrate policies that create enabling environments for sustainable agriculture.

Scientists create most detailed map of brain s memory bank

News

• In a bid to better understand the brain region linked to Alzheimer’s disease, scientists in the U.S. have created what they believe to be the most detailed atlas yet of the brain’s memory bank the hippocampus.

Findings

• Created using fluorescent tracers and 3D animation, the map shows structures, nerve connections and functions of the hippocampus in vivid detail.
• With a better map, we can see each region and how it functions. A better map is a resource scientists can use to better understand the hippocampus and how its degeneration leads to diseases.
• The human hippocampus sits at the base of the brain and it’s shaped like a seahorse. It stores memories, helps regulate emotions and guides navigation by spatial processing.
• It is the first part of the brain impaired by Alzheimer’s and hippocampus degeneration can cause epilepsy and other diseases.

High pollution, poor ventilation are making people vulnerable to H1NI

News

• High pollution and lack of good ventilation are making citizens susceptible to the H1N1, say doctors.

Beyond News

• As this is an airborne infection, citizens are more vulnerable to the virus due to high levels of pollution and population density, and poor ventilation in homes and offices.
• People living in the city are staying in buildings with poor ventilation for the most part of the day. Hence, the risk is higher.
• Doctors have urged citizens not to panic. The mortality rate is less than one percent when it comes to H1N1, say health professionals in Bengaluru.
• For its part, civic officials are urging citizens to maintain basic cleanliness in public spaces.
• As per data available with the Department of Health and Family Welfare, between 2009 and October 7, 2018, as many as 13,075 H1N1 positive cases have been recorded across the State.

FATF team not happy with Pakistan’s efforts to combat terror financing: report

News

• Not impressed with Pakistan’s efforts to combat terror financing, a delegation of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has asked it to do more to strengthen its legal framework if it wants to avoid being blacklisted by the Paris-based anti-money laundering watchdog, according to a media report .

Beyond News

• Currently placed on the FATF’S ‘grey list’, Pakistan has been scrambling in recent months to avoid being added to a list of countries deemed non-compliant with anti-money laundering and terrorist financing regulations by the FATF, a measure that officials here fear could further hurt its economy.
• According to sources, the delegation feared that the setup installed for scrutinising the activities of non-profit organisations, brokerage houses, exchange companies and donations of corporate entities – registered under the companies act – was not robust enough.
• The sources said that the APG believed that even in areas where the legal framework appeared vigorous, the implementation mechanism was not geared to track down financial flows of the entities in question, because the agencies involved were not well-connected, according to the report.
• The purpose of the mutual evaluation visit is to assess the effectiveness of Pakistan’s Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) regime under FATF methodology.
• In June 2018, Pakistan made a high-level political commitment to work with the FATF and the APG to strengthen its AML/CFT regime and to address its strategic counter-terrorism financing-related deficiencies by implementing a 10-point action plan.
• The successful implementation of the plan and its verification by the APG is a prerequisite for the FATF to remove Pakistan from its grey list.
• Earlier in August, the APG – as part of the mutual evaluation -identified a series of deficiencies in Pakistan’s AML/CFT mechanisms. By the end of September next year, Pakistan must comply with the 10-point action plan it committed to with the FATF or else it will fall into the black list.
• The authorities are required to upgrade agencies and their human resource assets to be able to handle foreign requests to block terror financing and freeze illegal assets. The authorities are working on strengthening laws for extradition of those involved in terror financing and money laundering on requests from FATF-member countries.

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