IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-02

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Pakistan army rejects India’s claim of destroying terror camps in PoK

News

• The Pakistan military has rejected as “false” the Indian Army’s assertion that it targeted at least three terror camps in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK).
• Indian Army Chief General Bipin Rawat said that six to 10 Pakistan Army personnel were killed and three terror camps destroyed in a retaliatory action by the Indian Army opposite the Tangdhar and Keran sectors in Jammu and Kashmir.

Centre all set to revamp British era Indian Penal Code

News

• The Home Ministry is all set to overhaul the Indian Penal Code (IPC) designed by the British. A senior government official said rebooting the code introduced by the British in 1860 was necessary as it is primarily based on the spirit of “master and servant.”

Revamp British era Indian Penal Code

• Recently the Ministry wrote to all States and Union Territories seeking suggestions to amend various sections of the IPC.
• Two committees comprising legal luminaries have also been constituted by the Ministry.
• The idea behind the overhaul is that the master-servant concept envisaged in IPC should change. After it was framed, the IPC has never been amended in totality. Some additions and deletions have been made.
• In 2016, the Home Ministry had proposed insertion of two stricter anti-racial discrimination provisions in the IPC. The two amendments Section 153A and Section 509A “to deal with racially motivated crimes” received lukewarm response from the States.

New laws to make health insurance user-friendly

News

• In order to make health insurance available to all, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) recently introduced certain new laws in order to make health insurance more user-friendly.

Health insurance available to all

• A committee report that restricts exclusions under a health insurance policy has been introduced which are completely customer-friendly. Specifically, IRDAI issued a draft to introduce a standard health insurance plan for all with a basic sum insured of ₹50,000 to ₹10 lakh, as per the requirement of the customer.
• The minimum age of entry for buying the policy will be 18 years and the maximum age will be 65 years. The plan will be indemnity-based with lifelong renewability option.
• IRDAI also mandated that the standard health insurance plan will also provide coverage for expenses incurred on alternative treatment such as AYUSH, which includes homeopathy, ayurveda, siddha or unani. The expenses, though, will completely be subject to fixed and standard sub-limits on the sum insured.
• With the aim of making mental healthcare available to all, IRDAI has directed insurers to include mental illnesses to be included in all regular health insurance policies. IRDAI made it quite clear that insurers cannot deny coverage to policyholders who have used opioids or anti-depressants in the past.
• Also, insurers cannot deny coverage to people with a proven history of clinical depression, personality or neurodegenerative disorders, sociopathy and psychopathy.
• Further, all health conditions and illnesses acquired after the issuance of policy, apart from those not covered under the policy contract (like infertility and maternity), will now be covered under the policy. There are numerous major ailments that cannot be permanently excluded.
• Some of the important and major diseases that must be added to the list include Alzheimer’s, Parkinsons, AIDS/HIV and morbid obesity.

Liver transplant registry off to a good start

News

• India’s first voluntary liver transplant registry that started on August 15 has picked up pace.
• In a span of a little over two months, it has received data of 74 transplants carried out by 11 hospitals across six States.

Aim: to collate national data of the procedures and their outcomes.

Liver transplant registry

• Nearly 2,000 liver transplants are carried out in the country annually, highest in the world, yet there is no India-specific data. This leaves doctors to take help from the evolved U.S. and the U.K. registries.
• In the U.S. and the U.K., it is mandatory to report all transplants and the outcomes. But that’s not happening here which is why there is lack of Indian data.
• The members of the LTSI had four month-long consultative discussions on various important aspects like patient confidentiality, data sharing techniques, designing a user-friendly interface, etc.
• A beta version was first tested before starting the registry. Medical experts say India has a 90% survival rate in liver transplants, but it may vary from hospital to hospital and doctor to doctor.
• In the West, organ transplants are highly regulated and permissions are given to hospitals and doctors based on the outcomes, rate of mortality, morbidity etc.

Jammu & Kashmir issue: India slams Pakistan at UN

• India has slammed Pakistan for raising the issue of Jammu and Kashmir at a forum of the United Nations (UN), saying the country employs “empty rhetoric” to serve its “distorted agenda” and continues to engage in spreading unsubstantiated allegations.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-03

Over 380 Ladakhi-origin police personnel to be transferred from J&K to Ladakh

News

• Over 380 police personnel belonging to Ladakh and working in different places in Kashmir and Jammu regions will soon be transferred to Ladakh and posted under the administrative control of the new Union Territory.

Union Territory

• The new Union Territory of Ladakh will come into existence on October 31.
• The Ministry of Home Affairs has given the nod for the transfer of police personnel working in different wings of the Jammu and Kashmir Police.
• The police personnel will work with the Ladakh UT Police, which will be under the direct control of the MHA.
• The police personnel from the rank of constable to inspector will also get the pay and perks available to police personnel of other UTs like Chandigarh and Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
• Police and law and order in the UT of Ladakh will be under the direct control of the Lieutenant Governor, through whom the central government will administer the high altitude region.
• According to The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act 2019, Ladakh will not have a Legislative Assembly.
• The Act says cadres of IAS and IPS for the existing state of Jammu and Kashmir, on and from the appointed day (October 31), shall continue to function on existing cadres.
• In future, the all India service officers to be posted to UTs of Jammu and Kashmir or Ladakh shall be from the Arunachal, Goa, Mizoram, Union Territory cadre, more popularly known as UT cadre.

40 cyber police stations, six cyber labs in Tamil Nadu soon

News

• The State will soon have 40 cyber-crime police stations and six cyber labs to tackle the increasing number of crimes.

Cyber-crime police stations

• The dedicated cyber stations and labs will be equipped with tools to retrieve data, including deleted ones, from mobile phones, SIM cards, laptops and hard disks, software for hacking and surveillance of computer systems.
• Apart from handling cyber-crime cases, the new cyber infrastructure will aid the police to collect digital evidence necessary to crack regular crime cases.
• In many crime cases, the investigators have to track mobile phone records, retrieve call data and information from the suspect or victim’s computer to zero in on the accused.
• The government has sanctioned ₹28.97 crore for setting up the stations and labs. Six labs, one each in Chennai, Coimabtore and Madurai, will come up. The remaining three will be set up in Tiruvannamalai, Villupuram and Vellore.
• According to a report, Indian netizens face regular cyber attacks with almost one in three users in the country encountering them in the first quarter of the current fiscal 2019–20.
• The study also detected that the South Indian metros, including Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, have witnessed more cyber attacks than Tier1 cities in other parts of the country.
• According to the report, amongst Tier1 cities, Chennai recorded the highest percentile of cyber attacks with 48% in the first quarter.

 Collective animal behaviour began half-a-billion years ago

News

• Fossils of tiny, horseshoe-shaped creatures that inched along the ocean floor in single-line formations some 480 million years ago reveal the earliest known collective animal behaviour, researchers have found.

Trilobites

• The remains of now-extinct creatures called trilobites were almost perfectly preserved in the Moroccan desert near the town of Zagora.
• Like all arthropods a phylum that includes insects, centipedes, spiders and crustaceans trilobites had a segmented body and an exoskeleton.
• The fossil find shows a dozen of the coin-sized animals in a row all facing in the same direction, separated only by the length of two tapered spines trailing in an inverted “U” and touching the animal next in line.

Delhi’s air quality drops to ‘poor’ with change in wind direction

News:

• The national capital’s air quality turned “poor” as wind direction changed to northwesterly, increasing the contribution of smoke from stubble burning in neighboring States to the pollution in the city.

Air quality

• Westerly and northwesterly winds bring dust from western regions and smoke caused by burning of crop residue in the neighboring Punjab and Haryana to Delhi-NCR.
• Pollution levels in Delhi shot up by around 100 points at air quality index (AQI), the Central Pollution Control Board data showed.
• Higher the AQI of an area, the higher the pollution level.
• An AQI between 0 and 50 is considered ‘good’, 51 and 100 ‘satisfactory’, 101 and 200 ‘moderate’, 201 and 300 ‘poor’, 301 and 400 ‘very poor’, and 401 and 500 ‘severe’
• According to CPCB data, more than 3,000 stubble burning incidents have occurred in Punjab and Haryana since the harvesting of paddy crop started around September 25. During the corresponding period last year, the count was around 2,600.
• The period between October 15 and November 15 is considered critical as maximum number of stubble burning incidents take place in this span in Punjab and adjoining States and is one of the main reasons for the alarming spike in pollution in Delhi-NCR.
• Despite a ban on stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana, farmers continue to defy it amid lack of financial incentives.
• State governments are providing 50 to 80% subsidy to farmers and cooperative societies to buy modern farm equipment for in-situ management of paddy straw and running a massive awareness campaign against stubble burning.
• The Delhi government has on several occasions attributed the dip in the air quality to rampant stubble burning in neighboring States.

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