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National Hydrology Project:-
Background :-The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister has given its approval to Implementation of the National Hydrology Project.The National Hydrology Project (NHP) is intended for setting up of a system for timely and reliable water resources data acquisition, storage, collation and management. It will also provide tools/systems for informed decision making through Decision Support Systems (DSS) for water resources assessment, flood management, reservoir operations, drought management, etc. NHP also seeks to build capacity of the State and Central sector organisations in water resources management through the use of Information Systems and adoption of State-of-the-art technologies like Remote Sensing.
Details:-
The NHP will help in gathering Hydro-meteorological data which will be stored and analysed on a real time basis and can be seamlessly accessed by any user at the State/District/village level. The project envisages to cover the entire country as the earlier hydrology projects covered only 13 States.
The components of the proposal are:
- In Situ Hydromet Monitoring System and Hydromet Data Acquisition System.
- Setting up of National Water Informatics Centre (NWIC).
- Water Resources Operation and Management System
- Water Resources Institutions and Capacity Building
The NHP will result in the improvement of:
- Data storage, exchange, analysis and dissemination through National Water Informatics Centre.
- Lead time in flood forecast from 1 day to at least 3 days
- Mapping of flood inundation areas for use by the disaster management authorities
- Assessment of surface and ground water resources in a river basin for better planning & allocation for PMKSY and other schemes of Govt. of India
- Reservoir operations through seasonal yield forecast, drought management, SCADA systems, etc.
- Design of SW & GW structures, hydropower units, interlinking of rivers, Smart Cities.
- Fulfilling the objectives of Digital India.
- People Centric approach: The programme envisages ultimate aim for water management through scientific data collection, dissemination of information on water availability in all blocks of the country and establishing of National Water Information Centre. The automated systems for Flood Forecasting is aimed to reduce water disaster ultimately helping vulnerable population. It is people and farmer centric programme as information on water can help in predicting water availability and help farmers to plan their crops and other farm related activities. Through this programme India would make a place among nations known for scientific endeavors.
Different names of New year :-
Background :- Presidents of India’s greeting.
- Ugadi – Celebrated in Andhra Pradesh, telengana, Karnataka
- Gudi Padva:- Celebrated in Maharastra
- Chaitra Sukladi – North India
- Cheti Chand – Sindh region of India and Pakistan
- Navreh – Kashmir
- Sajibu Cheiraoba – Manipur
- Thapna – Rajasthan
Terrorism is on the rise – but there’s a bigger threat we’re not talking about
Note :- Data are given for understanding purpose only and except few not much of the data can be helpful from exam point of view.Hence, read with due care.
High-profile attacks on major cities in Belgium, France and the United States have set the world on edge. Commentators are talking of a new kind of protracted guerrilla war stretching from the Americas and Europe across Africa, Asia and the Arab world. This one is irregular, hybrid and networked, involving a constellation of terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Al Qaeda. Rather than hitting specific groups of people or symbolic sites, cities themselves are coming under siege. Complicating matters, violent extremists are recruiting directly from poorer and marginal neighbourhoods across the West.
The extent of local recruitment and so-called “extremist travelling” from Western countries is certainly cause for concern. One study estimates that as many as 31,000 people from 86 countries have made the trip to Iraq or Syria to join ISIS or other extremist groups since June 2014. It is not just Western Europe or North America that is proving to be fertile ground for so-called remote radicalization, but also Russia and Central Asia. Many foreign fighters are killed while fighting abroad, but as many as 30% of them eventually make the trip back home. Politicians are scrambling to respond and hate crimes against minority groups are on the rise.
It is statistically undeniable that terrorist violence is on the rise. But is today’s terrorist violence really more intense and widespread than in, say, the 1960s and 1970s? Are Western European and North American cities really the new front line of a global jihad? The answer partly depends on how terrorism is defined. There is currently no international legal or even academic agreement on what constitutes terrorism. Some experts say that it consists of violence perpetrated by non-state actors against civilians to achieve political religious or ideological change, but that sounds a lot like armed conflict. Complicating matters, governments routinely conflate terrorism and insurgency.
One way to better map out the extent of the terrorist threat is to follow the data. Notwithstanding serious challenges related to the quality and coverage of statistics on terrorism, warfare and homicide, it is possible to detect trends and patterns by honing in on the prevalence of lethal violence.
A not-so global jihad
It turns out that extremist violence is much less pervasive than you might think. As other analysts have noted, it is significantly more prolific outside Western countries than in them. A recent assessment of terrorist risks in 1,300 cities ranked urban centres in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan and Somalia as significantly more vulnerable than those in Belgium, France, the UK or the US. At least 65 cities were described as facing extreme risk, with Iraq – especially Baghdad, Mosul, Al Ramadi, Ba´qubah, Kirkuk and Al Hillah – fielding six of the top 10. Consider that between 2000 and 2014, there were around 3,659 terrorist-related deaths in all Western countries combined. In Baghdad there were 1,141 deaths and 3,654 wounded in 2014 alone.
It is true that there have been dozens of terrorist attacks in recent years, but how are they spread around the world? The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) tracks terrorist-related fatalities between 2005 and 2014 in 160 countries. In a handful of cases where there is ongoing warfare – including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen – the GTD sometimes conflates terrorist and conflict-related deaths. The authors of the database go to great lengths to avoid this from happening, but it is unavoidable. There are alternative datasets that apply much more restrictive inclusion criteria, but they are not as broad in their coverage and also suffer flaws. Rather than focusing on absolute numbers of violent deaths, it may be more useful to consider prevalence rates.
On the one hand, most countries at the top of the list of most terrorism-prone are clustered in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. They include war-torn countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Israel, Yemen, Pakistan and Syria. Other countries in the top 15 are more unexpected, not least the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia, Central African Republic, and Kenya. Belgium comes in at 86th place while France and the United States come in at 98th and 105th respectively. These latter rankings will obviously shift upwards given recent attacks in 2015 and 2016, but not by as much as you might expect.
Note: Fatalities are classified as terrorist-related if the action occurs outside the context of legitimate warfare activities, insofar as it targets non‐combatants as expressed by international humanitarian law.
Victims of war
Innocent civilians are much more likely to be killed during the course of armed conflicts. The difference between the two is that terrorism is intended specifically to indiscriminately kill civilians, while in wars the killing of innocent civilians and prisoners is expressly prohibited, even if it does occur. War-related killings may be labelled criminal or even terrorist when they are determined to be disproportionate. So how does the risk rating of violent deaths occurring in war zones compare to those due to terrorism? The Uppsala Conflict Database Program records conflict deaths occurring in more than 60 wars between 2005 and 2014. After adjusting the absolute numbers of violent deaths relative to the total population per country, it is possible to determine an approximate conflict death rate per 100,000 people.
It turns out that the risk of dying violently from war is considerable higher than the probability of being killed in the course of extremist violence. Although in some countries this risk is an order of magnitude higher, the overall conflict death rate in conflict zones is still far lower than many might have predicted. For example, the average conflict death rate is sky-high in Syria – site of some of the most horrific warfare over the past decade. But it is comparatively lower in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, South Sudan, Chad and Yemen, countries that have been exposed to industrial-scale violence. The conflict death rate of course varies according to the ebb and flow of warfare, but the average prevalence is surprisingly low.
Note: Conflict deaths are defined as “battle deaths” caused by warring parties that can be directly attributed to combat. This includes traditional battlefield fighting, guerrilla activity, bombardment of bases and other actions where the target are military forces or representatives of the parties. Collateral damage, including civilian deaths, are counted.
The greatest threat of all: homicide
And now for the most surprising finding of all. A review of the data reveals that civilians around the world are much more at risk of being killed as result of homicide than either terrorist violence or warfare. Drawing on the Homicide Monitor, it is possible to track murder rates for more than 225 countries and territories from 2005 to 2014.
Although homicidal violence is steadily declining in most parts of the world, it still presents one of the greatest threats of what public health experts call external causes of mortality – especially among young adult and adolescent males.
As in the case of terrorist and conflict-related violence, there are also hot spots where murder tends to concentrate. People living in Central and South America, the Caribbean and Southern Africa are more at risk of dying of homicide than in most other places. The most murderous countries in the world include El Salvador, Honduras, Jamaica, Venezuela, the US Virgin Islands, Guatemala, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Belize, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Brazil. About 46 of the 50 most violent cities are concentrated in the Americas. Also included in the top 15 most murderous countries, though located outside the Americas, are South Africa, Swaziland and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
And beyond these pockets of extreme homicidal violence, the risk of murder is also more widely distributed than violent deaths associated with terrorism or war. There are roughly 85 countries that are consistently above the global average of around seven homicides per 100,000 people. In fact, about nine in every 10 violent deaths occurring around the world over the past decade were due to murder; just a fraction can be attributed to either war or terrorism. This is not to minimize the real dangers and destruction associated with these latter phenomena, but rather to ensure that we keep our eye firmly on the ball.
Note: Homicides are defined as the deliberate and unlawful killing of one person by another and are registered by police and health departments.
Drawing lessons from the data
So what does this morbid retreat into the data of violent death tell us? First, it is a reminder that a relatively small number of countries are dramatically more at risk of terrorist and conflict-related violence than others – especially Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. While they must protect their homeland from terrorist events, diplomats, development experts and defence specialists would do well to double down on preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention in the most badly affected countries. Doing so could have a dramatic effect on reducing the global burden of terrorist and conflict violence and related humanitarian consequences such as refugee flows and internal population displacement.
Second, there are also a handful of countries – most of them in Latin America and the Caribbean – where homicidal violence is off-the charts. Most of the murders in these states are concentrated in fast-growing large- and medium-sized cities. If homicides are to be reduced there, it is essential that federal and municipal planners focus on risk factors that are driving urban violence – not least social and economic inequality, high rates of youth unemployment, poor and uneven governance, and the limited purchase of the rule of law. There is mounting evidence of data-driven strategies that work – including focused-deterrence, cognitive therapy and targeted prevention, but they need sustained leadership to have lasting effect.
Finally, we need to get better at nurturing resilience – the ability to cope, adapt and rebound in the face of adversity – in high-risk communities. While obviously distinct in their causes and consequences, there are still many commonalities connecting terrorist, conflict and homicidal violence. When communities are disorganized and suffer from neglect, there is a higher likelihood of politically, criminally and ideologically motivated organized violence erupting. Governments, businesses and civil society groups need to make sure that political settlements are inclusive, that marginalized groups and broken families are taken care of, and that resilience is designed in to communities from the get-go
ISBN Portal
The centre has launched a portal for registration and allotment of International Standard Book Number (ISBN).The ISBN portal is a part of central government’s e-governance initiative for streamlining the process of registration for publishers and authors which will make the process user friendly.This initiative is aimed at ensuring ease of registration, enhanced accessibility, wider transparency, trust and credibility and greater efficiency for the book writing fraternity in the country.
- The portal has been created to facilitate publishers and authors to register for ISBN number. ISBN gives an identity to a book without which the bookshops will not sell it.
- The ISBN portal seeks to completely automate the process of seeking application, their examination and allotment of ISBNs. The developed software has several modules including users’ registration and online application submission.
- The automation process also seeks to maintain inventory as well as process the data that will be provided by the users. There will be doing away with receipt of hard copy of any document unless considered appropriate for establishing the identity of the applicant and for confirming the book publishing activity.
ISBN :-
ISBN is a unique number used to identify monographic publications. Displayed in barcode format, ISBN is a 13-character identification allotted by the International ISBN Agency based in Britain through the National ISBN Agency. It provides access to bibliographic data bases used by the book industry and libraries to provide information.
Cabinet approves recommendations of 14th Finance Commissio:-
The Cabinet has approved the 14th Finance Commission’s recommendations on fiscal deficit targets and additional targets for states during 2015-20.
Key details:-
- Fiscal deficit target of 3% for states.
- Besides, the Commission has also provided for year-to-year flexibility for additional deficit. It has provided additional headroom to a maximum of 0.5% over and above the normal limit of 3% in any given year to states that have had a favourable debt-GSDP ratio and interest payments-revenue receipts ratio in the previous two years.
- However, the flexibility in availing the additional fiscal deficit will be available to a state if there is no revenue deficit in the year in which borrowing limits are to be fixed and immediately preceding year.
- Since the year 2015-16 is already over, the States will not get any benefit of additional borrowings for 2015-16. However, the implications for the remaining period of FFC award of 2016-17 to 2019-20, would depend upon respective States’ eligibility based on the criteria prescribed by FFC.
- If a State is not able to fully utilise its sanctioned fiscal deficit of 3% of GSDP in any particular year during the 2016-17 to 2018-19 of FFC award period, it will have the option of availing this un-utilised fiscal deficit amount (calculated in rupees) only in the following year but within FFC award period.
Decoupling Growth from Carbon Emission :-
Throughout the 20th century, the global economy was fuelled by burning coal to run factories and power plants, and burning oil to move planes, trains and automobiles. The more coal and oil countries burned — and the more planet-warming carbon dioxide they emitted — the higher the economic growth.
And so it seemed logical that any policy to reduce emissions would also push countries into economic decline.
Now there are signs that GDP growth and carbon emissions need not rise in tandem, and that the era of decoupling could be starting.
In 2014, for the first time in the 40 years since both metrics have been recorded, global GDP grew but global carbon emissions leveled off. Economists got excited, but they also acknowledged that it could have been an anomalous blip. But a study released by the International Energy Agency last month found that the trend continued in 2015.
Of course, even if 21 countries have achieved decoupling, more than 170 countries have not. They continue to follow the traditional economic path of growth directly tied to carbon pollution. Among those are some of the world’s biggest polluters: China, India, Brazil and Indonesia.
And decoupling by just 21 countries is not enough to save the planet as we know it. The decoupled countries lowered emissions about 1 billion tonnes — but overall global emissions grew about 10 billion tonnes.
The question is whether what happened in the 21 countries can be a model for the rest of the world. Almost all of them are European, but not all are advanced Group of 20 economies. Bulgaria, Romania and Uzbekistan are among them.
The Paris Agreement, the landmark climate change accord reached in December, commits nearly every country to actions to tackle climate change — and to continuously increase the intensity of those actions in the coming decades. But absent major breakthroughs in decoupling, governments are likely to be hesitant to take aggressive steps to curb emissions if they mean economic loss.
In the United States, the decoupling of emissions and economic growth was driven chiefly by the boom in domestic natural gas, which when burned produces about half the carbon pollution of coal. The glut of cheap natural gas drove electric utilities away from coal, while still lighting and powering ever more homes and factories. The decoupling was also driven by improvements in energy-efficiency technology.
But decoupling can hurt. Even as the industrial sector grew overall in those years, a push by U.S. factories to use more energy-efficient technology contributed to a 21 percent loss of industrial jobs.
In smaller economies, decoupling hurts less. Sweden experienced economic growth of 31 percent as its emissions fell 8 percent, continuing a long-standing trend driven by its tax on carbon emissions, instituted in 1991. Today Sweden gets nearly half of its electricity from nuclear power, which produces no emissions, and 35 percent from renewable sources, particularly hydroelectric.
But in large, industrial economies that are trying to decouple, the change raises thorny questions. For example, will the pollution just move elsewhere? In Britain, emissions fell 20 percent between 2000 and 2014, while GDP grew 27 percent. That was largely the result of a push to de-industrialize in the country that gave birth to the Industrial Revolution. As Britain’s financial and service sectors grew and its coal mines, mills and steel factories closed, some of those industries went to China, which became the world’s largest polluter.
China’s GDP has increased 270 per cent since 2000 and its carbon emissions 178 per cent. But there are very tentative signs that even China may be decoupling.
China’s emissions may have peaked in 2014 and have now begun a modest decline. It is hard to know for sure because China’s self-reported emissions data can be faulty. But if it is true, and China’s economy continues on even a modest growth path, it could have profound implications for the future of climate change.
Decoupling presents another problem. “The countries that have achieved decoupling have de-industrialized — and that has increased income inequality,One of the things that has not been analyzed is the job prospects for those families. There’s going to be unintended consequences of their livelihoods being curtailed.
Few Facts :-
- ANM Online application-ANMOL .ANMOL is a tablet-based application that allows ANMs (Auxiliary Nurse Midwife) to enter and updated data for beneficiaries of their jurisdiction.
- E-RaktKosh is an integrated Blood Bank Management Information System that has been conceptualized and developed after multiple consultations with all stakeholders. This web-based mechanism interconnects all the Blood Banks of the State into a single network.
- United Nations Industrial Development Organization in its report has placed India at 6th among the world’s top 10 largest manufacturing countries. China tops the list of 10-top industrial producers followed by the US, Japan, Germany and Korea. Indonesia was at the bottom of the list.