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GS 2
Protests, arson rock Itanagar, two dead
Two protesters were killed in firing by security forces and three others injured in Itanagar as protests over granting permanent resident certificates (PRCs) to six communities escalated on Sunday.
India to push for UN ban on JeM chief
With the UN Security Council and the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force both issuing strong press statements on the Pulwama attacks and calling on Pakistan to act against the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), diplomats in Delhi and New York say they have begun negotiations on a new proposal to place JeM chief Masood Azhar on the ban list operated by the UNSC’s 1267 committee, the fourth such request in four consecutive years.
EVM is ‘information’ under RTI, says CIC
An Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) is “information” under the Right to Information Act, the Central Information Commission has ruled.
After Pulwama, a sorry response
The government and the Opposition must state their policy for security and reconciliation in Jammu and Kashmir
The World Bank estimates that more than a fifth of all communicable diseases in India (21%) are caused by contaminated water. It attributes one in ten deaths in India to diseases or infections directly or indirectly transmitted through water.
The statement of the Financial Action Task Force in Paris is another message to Islamabad from the international community of the mounting costs of its decades-old lax policy towards terror groups.
President Ram Nath Kovind on Thursday promulgated the Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Ordinance, which bars all deposit schemes in the country that are not officially registered with the government from either seeking or accepting deposits from customers.
SC eviction order only against encroachers
Three orders passed by the Supreme Court in 2016, 2018 and 2019 do not question the three-tiered verification process which forest rights claims undergo under the 2006 Forest Rights Act.
GS 3
GST on under-construction houses cut
Tax rates on under-construction housing properties slashed to 5% from 12%; affordable housing tax cut to 1% from 8%.
Action plan for free treatment of hepatitis patients launched
According to the action plan, one model hepatitis treatment centre will be established in each State in a government institution in the first year. While the number of model centres will be increased gradually, by the end of the second year, efforts will be made to establish one such centre at district level. Setting up a national reference laboratory and State-level reference laboratories is also under planning.
A women-owned dairy in Andhra Pradesh eyes the big league
The advantages in this ‘all women’ dairy are many. “First, it is a giant leap towards ensuring women’s empowerment in the countryside,” Shreeja’s CEO Jayatheertha Chary told The Hindu.
A shot in the arm for upgrade of An-32 aircraft
The Indian Air Force (IAF) has reason to cheer as all issues related to the upgrade of An-32 transport aircraft, its workhorse, have been resolved, according to the head of the Antonov State Corporation of Ukraine. At Aero India, Ukraine also offered its new An-132 aircraft to the IAF as a replacement for the An-32 fleet.
In a first, Air Force commissions aerial surveillance
Data/images will be captured through optical and infra-red sensors — to be most likely mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle — and processed through deep learning algorithms.
DNA forensics a vital tool in cracking wildlife crimes
Scientists at the ZSI, however, pointed out that in most cases the samples they receive from investigating agencies in cases of wildlife crime are disfigured and have lost characters of morphological identity, which poses a major challenge.
