IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-01

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Top 100 firms spent only 4% of CSR funds on women’s economic empowerment, says UNDP report

News

• Top 100 firms in the country spent a mere 4% of their total expenditure on corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities on women’s economic empowerment, according to a new report by United Nations Development Programme India prepared.

Women’s economic empowerment

• The study titled ‘Corporate Engagement in Women’s Economic Empowerment’ maps the efforts and initiatives of BSE 100 companies towards economic empowerment of women, identifies gaps and makes recommendations on how companies can work towards a more gender equitable India. The report has been prepared in partnership with a CSR consulting firm, Samhita.
• It shows that the top 100 companies reported a total expenditure of ₹423.84 crore on women’s empowerment and ₹250.62 crore on their economic empowerment out of the total ₹6,314.30 crore spent on CSR activities in financial year 2017-2018. The average median per company was ₹1.97 crore.
• The study notes that there is a scope for enhancing the focus on women’s economic empowerment as 72% of the BSE top 100 companies reported intervention in this area, implying there is an opportunity to tap into this widespread interest on the issue.
• But States such as Bihar, Jharkhand and Assam that need interventions on this issue the most due to a low female labour participation rate saw a huge dearth of CSR programming.
• Data shows that women comprised less than 10% of the permanent workforce of the majority of BSE 100 companies as manufacturing and automobile sectors, which are male dominated, are highly represented in this category.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-02

India starts sharing maritime data

News

• The Information Fusion Centre Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) set up last year has started functioning as an information sharing hub of maritime data and “cuing incident responses” to maritime security situations through a collaborative approach.

Maritime security

• The major centres with which regular exchange of maritime security information is being undertaken include Virtual Regional Maritime Traffic Centre (VRMTC), Maritime Security Centre – Horn of Africa(MSCHOA), Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery (ReCAAP), Information Fusion Centre-Singapore (IFC-SG), and International Maritime Bureau – Piracy Reporting Centre (IMB PRC).
• The centre is administering a website to undertake collation and dissemination of information on a daily basis and also hosts the Monthly Maritime Security Update (MMSU) highlighting analysis on incidents, warnings and advisories in IOR.
• The IFC-IOR was inaugurated in December 2018 within the premises of the Navy’s Information Management and Analysis Centre (IMAC) in Gurugram. The IMAC is the single point centre linking all the coastal radar chains to generate a seamless real-time picture of the nearly 7,500-km coastline.
• Several Indian Ocean littoral states have joined the coastal radar chain network. These include Maldives, Mauritius, Sri Lanka and Seychelles. Bangladesh is set to join the network and talks are on with Thailand as well.
• All countries which have signed white shipping information exchange agreements with India are IFC partners. The centre will host liaison officers from partner countries. Infrastructure to house them is currently being set up. Several countries had evinced interest in posting liaison officers.
• Presently, the exchange of information is being undertaken by virtual means, using telephone calls, faxes, emails and video conferencing over Internet.

Bescom to verify occupancy certificate of properties

News

• Bangalore city’s power utility has started cracking down on consumers without OCs (occupancy certificates). 
• Bangalore Electricity Supply Company (Bescom) has begun surveying properties to cross-check if properties that have applied for or have power supply have valid OCs.

Consumers without OCs

• The issue was raised by Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC), which said that even temporary connections without an OC would have to be checked.
• All buildings are supposed to have an OC. If a building does not have one, it is not eligible for power supply. There are also instances where people have taken temporary connection and not gone for a permanent one.
• Apart from weeding out power connections without the required documents and helping the BBMP call out unauthorised constructions, this exercise is also expected to help authorities identify properties constructed below electricity lines.
• The issue came into prominence following a spate of accidents in the city that in many cases occurred in properties that were too close to high-tension (HT) and low-tension (LT) lines.
• A multi-department survey to identify buildings that are too close to electricity lines following these accidents, some of which resulted in fatalities, identified thousands of such properties.

Capping the refugee intake

News

• Even as the number of refugees hit 26 million at the end of 2018 a historic post-war high the Trump administration has dramatically cut back on the number it is allowing into the U.S. The administration recently announced a proposal to cap admits in financial year 2020 (October 1, 2019-September 30, 2020) at 18,000, the lowest since the country’s Refugee Act of 1980 was passed.

Cap admits

• The administration has given local governments the right to refuse refugees for resettlement for the first time in history. The U.S. will admit refugees from priority categories this year rather than accepting them solely from pre-determined regions of the world.
• First, a quota of up to 5,000 places for those being persecuted for religious beliefs. Second, up to 4,000 places for Iraqis who have helped the U.S. Third, up to 1,500 spots are being reserved for nationals of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
• The remaining 7,500 of the 18.000 spots are being reserved for categories not covered above, including family reunification cases.
• There are just under 71 million displaced persons worldwide, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Forty-one million of these are internally displaced, 26 million are refugees, and some 3.5 million are asylum seekers.
• In 2018, some 67% of refugees came from Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia, and 80% of refugees live in countries that neighbour their countries of origin.
• Turkey has topped the list of host countries for refugees since 2014. Pakistan and Uganda have, at least in the last two years, come in at second and third place, respectively.
• The U.S. has, at least since the early 1980s, led the world in accepting refugees. Soon after Donald Trump assumed office in 2017, he temporarily suspended the resettlement of Syrian refugees along with banning individuals from seven Muslim majority countries from entering the U.S. on most visa categories.
• Refugee numbers dropped from 85,000 in 2016 to 53,700 in 2017, and the Pew Research Center reports that since 2017, the U.S. has admitted many more Christian refugees than Muslim refugees.

IASTODAY DAILY CAPSULES -General Studies-03

Cement industry could see large financial gains by switching to plastic fuel source.

News

• The cement industry can reduce its fuel costs by as much as 20% or more by using single-use plastics as an alternative fuel source.

Alternative fuel source

• The extremely high temperatures of the furnaces in cement plants allows the use of these alternative fuels because they get burned away without the release of any harmful contaminants or pollution.
• The cement industry could replace as much as 15-20% of its fossil fuel usage by using single-use plastics, depending on the grade of the plastic. This means that if it gets the plastic for free then the cement industry stands to reduce its cost by at least 15-20%.
• If it gets paid for disposing the plastic, then the gain to the cement industry stands to be even larger.

Chandrayaan 2: ISRO releases pictures of moon surface
News

• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has released the pictures of the moon surfaceclicked by the Orbiter High Resolution Camera (OHRC) mounted on the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter.

Pictures of the moon surface 

• The pictures were acquired by the Orbiter from a height of 100 km from the moon surface.
• The images cover parts of the Boguslawsky E Crater, measuring about 14 km in diameter and 3 km depth and surroundings which lie in the Southern Polar region of the moon.
• The image also shows boulders and small craters on the moon.
• The OHRC has a spatial resolution of 25 cm from a height of 100 km and a swath of 3 km and is key for lunar topographic studies of select regions.

Finance Minister to inaugurate national tax e-assessment centre

News

• Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will inaugurate the Income Tax Department’s National E-assessment Centre (NeAC), which will reduce face-to-face interaction between taxpayers and tax officials.

National E-assessment Centre

• The setting up of NeAC is a step for better taxpayer service, reduction of taxpayer grievances in line with the Prime Minister’s vision of ‘Digital India’ and promotion of ease of doing business.
• The new initiative shall impart greater efficiency, transparency and accountability in the assessment process. There would be no physical interface between the tax payers and the tax officers.
• It added that under the new system, taxpayers will receive notices on their registered e-mails as well as on registered accounts on the web portal.
• They will also receive real-time alerts by way of SMS on their registered mobile number, specifying the issues for which their cases have been selected for scrutiny.

India gets first tranche of Swiss account details under automatic exchange framework

News

• India has received first tranche of details about financial accounts of its residents in Swiss banks under a new automatic exchange of information framework between the two countries, marking a significant milestone in the fight against black money suspected to be stashed abroad.

First tranche of details

• India figures among 75 countries with which Switzerland’s Federal Tax Administration (FTA) has exchanged information on financial accounts within the framework of global standards on AEOI.
• This is the first time that India has received details from Switzerland under the AEOI framework, which provides for exchange of information on financial accounts that currently active as well as those accounts that were closed during 2018.

Supreme Court orders status quo in Aarey case till Oct 21; Maharashtra assures no trees will be felled

https://www.thehindu.com/incoming/a81335/article29614951.ece/ALTERNATES/FREE_660/aarey

News

• The Supreme Court recorded an assurance given by the State of Maharashtra that no more trees will be felled in the Aarey forest for a Metro car shed till the next date of court hearing.

No trees will be felled

• A Special Bench convened urgently and exclusively to hear the case after the apex court took suo motu cognisance of a letter written by law student to the Chief Justice of India about the cutting of over 2600 trees in the Aarey, ordered status quo.
• The felling of trees is being opposed by green activists and local residents.
• The Bombay High Court had refused to declare Aarey Colony a forest and declined to quash a Mumbai Municipal decision to permit the cutting of the trees for the metro car shed.
• Restrictions under Section 144 of Code of Criminal Procedure was imposed in the Aarey area on Saturday.
• Aarey forest is located adjacent to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park and has five lakh trees.

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