Daily Current Affairs : 29th, 30th and 31st

Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE

Topics Covered

1. Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
2. India – Saudi Strategic Council
3. Smart Cities
4. Global Post
5. Role of mountain stream in the carbon cycle
6. Kudankulam Cyber Attack / DTrack Rat
7. 36mn Indians face annual floods by 2050 due to sea level rise
8. Tracking employment in India
9. Edge computing
10. Whatsapp Hacking
11. Kerala’s Maoist
12. Facts for Prelims : Air Independent propulsion system, Cyclone Maha, Assamese Bhaona, Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index, Aye-Aye

1 . Islamic State in Iraq and Syria

Context : ISIS chief al-Baghdadi dead in US raid in northwest Syria: President Trump

About ISIS and Al – Baghdadi

• ISIS aims to create an Islamic state called a caliphate across Iraq, Syria and beyond.
• The group implements Sharia Law, rooted in eighth-century Islam, to establish a society that mirrors the region’s ancient past.
• ISIS’s revenue comes from oil production and smuggling, taxes, ransoms from kidnappings, selling stolen artifacts, extortion and controlling crops.
• The leader of the Islamic State Al -Baghdadi was often described as the most wanted individual in the world. The United States designated him a terrorist some eight years ago, and declared a bounty of $10 million (more than Rs 70 crore) on his head.
• Baghdadi, who was believed to have been born in Iraq perhaps in 1971, proclaimed himself Caliph of the Islamic State in 2013.

Rise and fall of ISIS

• In early 2014, al-Baghdadi’s fighters had taken control over western Iraq, and over the next year and a half, the Islamic State ran a sweeping campaign of terror and brutality across a vast swathe of Iraq and Syria, terrifying the world with grisly videos of beheadings and shaking up governments everywhere.
• By the end of 2015, it had control over an estimated 8-12 million people over which it imposed an unforgiving version of Sharia law, attracting jihadists from across the world, including a few from India.
• The terrorist organisation and empire that Baghdadi headed was estimated at the time to have been the size of Great Britain, with an annual budget of over a billion dollars and an army of more than 30,000 jihadists.
• The ISIS started to weaken from 2016 onward as the international coalition, backed by regional allies including, most importantly, Syrian Kurdish peshmerga fighters, gained ground in Syria and Iraq.
• As the formal structure of ISIS crumbled, thousands of its fighters went underground, even though local groups continued to carry out isolated terrorist incidents across the world in the name of ISIS and al-Baghdadi. Among the biggest of these attacks were carried out in Paris in November 2015, and in Sri Lanka in 2019.

IS influence in India

• Islamic State came on the radar of Indian intelligence agencies way back in 2013 when reports from Syria suggested that some Indians were fighting alongside the IS there. It was still considered a problem of the Middle East by the agencies until in 2014, IS kidnapped 39 Indians in Iraq and executed them.
• A closer look at the outfits plans revealed that they have had India in their crosshairs since the beginning. An IS map of the Khorasan Caliphate showed some of India’s states as its part.
• Since then multiple Indians have travelled to Iraq and Syria to fight alongside IS and as many as 100 have been arrested by the agencies either on return from Syria or while preparing to join them. Many have also been arrested for preparing to carry out an attack in India after being inspired by the IS.
• Even though it is North India which regularly sees communal clashes, it is southern states which have sent maximum recruits to IS.
• According to agencies, almost 90% of all recruits who have gone to Syria are from the southern States. A majority of those arrested by agencies while preparing to launch an attack are also from States such as Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Telangana, Karnataka and Maharashtra.
• IS has largely focused on inspiring the youth to either migrate to Syria and Iraq or carry out attacks in India with their own resources.
• The Indian security establishment has approached the issue of IS influence with caution. Scores of IS recruits, who have been detected while surfing IS’s online material or apprehended while trying to migrate to Syria have been counselled, made to go through a deradicalisation programme and let off with a warning.
• Only such people have been arrested who agencies believed were in the process of carrying out an attack or had made multiple attempts to go to Syria despite counselling. 

2 . India – Saudi Strategic Partnership Council Pact

Context : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced the formation of the India-Saudi  Strategic Partnership Council that will be led by the leaderships of both countries

About India-Saudi Strategic Partnership Council Pact

• The council will be led by Mr. Modi and King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.
• The council will include multiple sections involving the External Affairs Ministry and NITI Aayog and counterpart organisations from Saudi Arabia.
•  Saudi Arabia is now only the fourth country with whom India has an inter-governmental mechanism headed by the prime minister. Germany, Russia and Japan are the other three.
• Under Vision-2030, Saudi Arabia has selected eight countries for entering into strategic partnerships. These are: India, China, the UK, the US, France, Germany, South Korea and Japan.

India- Saudi Relations

• There has been a steady progress in the bilateral relationship since 2006, when King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud visited India.
• The two sides signed the landmark Delhi Declaration during that visit, which laid the framework for upgrading ties to the level of “strategic partnership” in 2010, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Saudi Arabia.
• The kingdom is India’s fourth largest trading partner, and India is the fourth largest market for Saudi exports.
• Saudi Arabia is India’s second biggest supplier of oil after Iraq. It is also now India’s fourth largest trading partner with bilateral trade at $27.48 billion in 2017-18 and Saudi investment of around $100 billion is in the pipeline in areas ranging from energy, refining, petrochemicals and infrastructure to agriculture, minerals and mining.
• The two countries have defence, security and counter-terror cooperation.

3 . Smart Cities & AMRUT

Context : The second round of the Centre’s flagship urban development schemes — the Smart Cities Mission and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) — were being considered and could be rolled out in 2020.

About Smart Cities Mission

• In the approach of the Smart Cities Mission, the objective is to promote cities that provide core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to its citizens, a clean and sustainable environment and application of ‘Smart’ Solutions. The focus is on sustainable and inclusive development and the idea is to look at compact areas, create a replicable model which will act like a light house to other aspiring cities.
• The purpose of the Smart Cities Mission is to drive economic growth and improve the quality of life of people by enabling local area development and harnessing technology, especially technology that leads to Smart outcomes. Area based development will transform existing areas (retrofit and redevelop), including slums, into better planned ones, thereby improving liveability of the whole City. New areas (greenfield) will be developed around cities in order to accommodate the expanding population in urban areas. Application of Smart Solutions will enable cities to use technology, information and data to improve infrastructure and services.

The core infrastructure elements in a smart city would include:

• Adequate water supply, Assured electricity supply, sanitation, including solid waste management, efficient urban mobility and public transport, affordable housing, especially for the poor, robust IT connectivity and digitalization, good governance, especially e-Governance and citizen participation, Sustainable environment, safety and security of citizens, particularly women, children and the elderly, and health and education.

About AMRUT

• The scheme was launched by Prime Minister of India in June 2015 with the focus to establish infrastructure that could ensure adequate robust sewage networks and water supply for urban transformation by implementing urban revival projects. 

The purpose of Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) is to

• Ensure that every household has access to a tap with the assured supply of water and a sewerage connection.
• Increase the amenity value of cities by developing greenery and well maintained open spaces (e.g. parks) and
• Reduce pollution by switching to public transport or constructing facilities for non-motorized transport (e.g. walking and cycling). All these outcomes are valued by citizens, particularly women, and indicators and standards have been prescribed by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA ) in the form of Service Level Benchmarks (SLBs).
• The Priority zone of the Mission is water supply followed by sewerage.

The Mission will focus on the following Thrust Areas:

• Water Supply
• Sewerage and septage management
• Storm Water Drainage to reduce flooding
• Non-motorized Urban Transport
• Green space/parks

4 . Global Post

Context : In a unilateral decision, Pakistan has stopped exchange of postal mails with India

Regulation of Postal Exchange between two countries – United Nations Universal Postal Union (UPU)

• The United Nations’ Universal Postal Union (UPU) frames rules for international mail exchange, and fixes rates for international postal services.
• The UPU has 192 member-countries and is headquartered in Bern.
• Constituted in 1874, the UPU has four units: the Congress, the Council of Administration, the International Bureau, and the Postal Operations Council.
• It regulates 6.40 lakh postal outlets worldwide.
• India joined the UPU on July 1, 1876 and Pakistan on November 10, 1947.
• Other than the UPU, three agreements cover postal exchange between India and Pakistan — Exchange of Value Payable Article, 1948; Exchange of Postal Article, 1974; and International Speed Post Agreement, 1987.

Rules regarding stopping of postal exchanges between Countries

• Under UPU rules, when a country decides to suspend exchange with a country, it must notify the operator of the other country (in India’s case, India Post) and, if possible, the duration for which services are being stopped. The UPU’s International Bureau too has to be notified.
• The International Bureau issued a Convention Manual in 2018, in which Article 17-143 details ‘Steps to be Taken in Event of Temporary Suspension and Resumption of Services’.
• If services are temporarily suspended, the designated operator or designated operators concerned must be notified of the fact by telecommunications, indicating, if possible, the probable duration of the suspension of services.
• The same procedure shall be applied when the suspended services are resumed,” the Manual reads.
• It adds, “The International Bureau must be notified of the suspension or resumption of services if a general announcement is considered necessary.
• If necessary, the International Bureau shall notify designated operators by telecommunications.
• The designated operator of origin shall have the option of refunding the postage charges, special charges and air surcharges to the sender if, owing to the suspension of services, the benefit accruing from conveyance of the item in question was obtained only in part or not at all.”
• According to the three bilateral agreements between India and Pakistan, too, a prior notice has to be served before suspending services

5 . Role of mountain streams in carbon cycle

Context : Scientists have reported the findings of the first large-scale study of the carbon dioxide emissions of mountain streams, and their role in global carbon fluxes.

Background

• Mountains cover 25 per cent of the Earth’s surface, and the streams draining these mountains account for more than a third of the global runoff.
• What had not yet been evaluated, however, was the role mountain streams play in global carbon fluxes (the carbon exchanged between various carbon pools on Earth).
• So far, scientists had focused mainly on streams and rivers in low-altitude tropical and boreal regions.

Key Findings

• Mountain streams have a higher average carbon dioxide emission rate per square metre than streams at lower altitudes, due in part to the additional turbulence caused as water flows down slopes.
• 5% — The proportion that mountain streams account for in the global surface area of fluvial networks.
• 10%-30% — The likely share of mountain streams in carbon dioxide emissions from all fluvial networks.
• The findings appear to indicate that the carbon dioxide comes from geological sources,
• Results shows how important it is to include mountain streams in assessments of the global carbon cycle.

6 . DTrack RAT

Context : Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd. (NPCIL) confirmed that a malware had indeed infected its system at the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant (KKNPP). According to cyber security experts powerplant was the target of a variant of a virus known as DTrack RAT

About DTrack RAT

• According to the Russian anti-virus and cybersecurity company Kaspersky, DTrack is a “spy tool” that was discovered by the firm’s researchers “in Indian financial institutions and research centers”.
• Kaspersky suggested that DTrack was a variant of a malware known as AMDTrack that was created to “infiltrate Indian ATMs and steal customer card data”.
• According to Kaspersky, DTrack is able to download files to infected systems, record key strokes and conduct other actions similar to remote control of the infected systems. The cybersecurity firm said its list of functions define it as a “spy tool”.

7 . 36mn Indians face annual floods by 2050 due to sea level rise

Context : The number of people in India threatened by rising sea-levels is at least seven times more than previously estimated, a new research has revealed

Key Findings of the Study

• As per the study 36 million people along the Indian coastlines currently live on land that will fall below the annual flood level by 2050, exposing them to risks of flooding, damage to infrastructure, loss of livelihood, or permanent displacement. The previous estimate was of five million people in these areas being exposed to these risks.

How the study was done

• Researchers Scott Kulp and Benjamin Strauss of Climate Central, an independent organisation of climate scientists, have reported that they have developed a new tool that measures elevation of land from mean sea levels with much greater accuracy than earlier models.
• Previous methods to measure land elevation suffered from large errors in most of the world apart from the US, Australia and parts of Europe. Land elevation data in most of these other areas came from satellite measurements done by a NASA project called Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, or SRTM.
• Error in the measurements came from the fact that often the tops of trees or buildings were taken to be the protrusions of earth. Thus, SRTM measurements even in the coastal cities of the US often overestimated land elevations by as much as 15.5 feet on an average.
• New tool, called CoastalDEM (or Coastal Digital Elevation Model), which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning on 51 million data samples, brought down this error to less than 2.5 inches on an average, it says.

The threat projection

• New method finds that much larger areas of land were threatened by rising sea levels because of climate change. Consequently, a significantly higher population group was at risk.
• The study found that 300 million people, and not 80 million as estimated earlier, across the globe were currently living in areas that were below the annual coastal flood line. By the turn of this century, land that is now home to 200 million of these people would be permanently below the high tide line.
• Almost 80 per cent of these 300 million people live in China, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand. China alone accounted for 43 million.

Vulnerable areas in India

• The new tool has found that in particular, the western coastline near Bhuj, Jamnagar, Porbandar, Surat, Bharuch and Mumbai are much more susceptible to rising sea levels than earlier assessments.
• On the eastern side, almost the entire coastline of West Bengal and Odisha have been found under threat.
• Except for some areas near Kakinada, the threats to the coastlines of the southern states have not been affected by the new measurements.
• The study has serious prediction for India for 2050. “By that year, projected sea level rise could push average annual floods above land currently home to some 36 million people. West Bengal and coastal Odisha are projected to be particularly vulnerable, as is the eastern city of Kolkata

8 . Tracking employment in India

Context : Results of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2017-18 showed that unemployment in India was at a 45-year high

About the new study

• A new study, commissioned by the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), and undertaken by Laveesh Bhandari of Indicus Foundation and Amaresh Dubey of Jawaharlal Nehru University, has highlighted the broad trends for employment in India between 2004 and 2018.
• A key feature of this study is that instead of focusing on unemployment, it focuses only on the “employment” data. It does so by looking at three comparable surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) — the Employment-Unemployment Surveys (EUS) of 2004-05 and 2011-12, and the PLFS of 2017-18.

Categories

The NSSO surveys divide the entire population into three categories.

• Category 1 consists of people who were involved in economic activity (or work) during the reference period of the survey. These individuals are labelled as “Employed” — and Category 1 can be subdivided into categories such as self-employed, salaried employees, and casual labourers.
• Category 2 consists of people who were not engaged in any economic activity during the reference period of the survey, but were looking for work if work was available. These individuals are labelled as “Unemployed”. Taken together, categories 1 and 2 form the country’s “labour force”.
• Category 3 constitutes people who are neither engaged in work nor available for it. This category — labelled as “Not in the labour force” — would have a large number of people, including those who have retired, those studying, those unable to work due to disability, and those attending “only” to domestic duties.

Key Findings of the study

• On the whole, the study found that the total employment in the country grew by 4.5 crore in the 13 years between EUS 2004-05 and PLFS 2017-18. What puts this absolute number in perspective is that this represents a growth of just 0.8 per cent — less than half the rate at which the overall population grew, which was 1.7 per cent.

• Urban-rural spread of employment – Of the 4.5 crore increase in employment, 4.2 crore happened in the urban areas while rural employment either contracted (by 0.01 per cent between 2004 and 2011) or was stagnant (grew by 0.18 per cent between 2011 and 2017).
• Male-female spread of employment – Over the 13 years, male employment grew by 6 crore but female employment fell by 1.5 crore. In other words, while there were 11.15 crore women with jobs in 2004, only 9.67 crore were employed 13 years later. Women’s share in employment has fallen from an already low level of 27.08% in 2004 to 21.17 per cent in 2017.
• Youth employment – India is one of the world’s youngest nations, but employment data according to age groups shows that youth employment (those between the ages of 15 and 24) has fallen from 8.14 crore in 2004 to 5.34 crore in 2017. However, employment in the 25-59 age group and the 60 years and above group has gone up. The sustained schooling reforms seem to have shown their impact in the employment of children below 14 years of age reducing from 61 lakh in 2004 to 27 lakh in 2011, and just 11 lakh in 2017.
• Employment by education level – The emerging economy appears to be leaving behind the illiterates and those with incomplete primary education. Employment in this category has gone down from 20.08 crore in 2004 to 14.2 crore in 2017, and their share in those employed has gone down from 48.77 per cent in 2004 to 31.09 per cent in 2017. Employment has risen for all other categories of education from primary, secondary, to postgraduate and above.
• Organised sector – :
  • The organised sector represents firms that are registered with regulatory authorities and are bound by a variety of labour laws
  • Here the rate of employment growth has been the fastest, and its share in the total employed has risen from 8.9 per cent in 2004 to 14 per cent in 2017.The sector, too, has grown.
  • In fact, while its rate of growth has been slower, its overall share in the economy has gone up from 37.1 per cent in 2004 to 47.7 per cent in 2017.
  • However, the pace of growth of the unorganised sector has moderated since 2011.
  • Both these sectors have grown at the expense of the agri-cropping sector, where employment has fallen from 21.9 per cent in 2004 to 17.4 per cent in 2017.
  • In essence, the results show that those who are poor, illiterate, and unskilled are increasingly losing out on jobs.
• Contractual Employment : NSSO data show a sustained trend of even the organised sector in India preferring to employ workers without a contract. Indeed, between 2011 and 2017, this resulted in the organised sector coming to employ more people without a contract.

9 . Edge Computing

About Edge Computing

• Edge computing enables data to be analysed, processed, and transferred at the edge of a network.
• The idea is to analyse data locally, closer to where it is stored, in real-time without latency, rather than send it far away to a centralised data centre.
• So whether you are streaming a video on Netflix or accessing a library of video games in the cloud, edge computing allows for quicker data processing and content delivery.

How is edge computing different from cloud computing?

• The basic difference between edge computing and cloud computing lies in where the data processing takes place.
• At the moment, the existing Internet of Things (IoT) systems perform all of their computations in the cloud using data centres.
• Edge computing, on the other hand, essentially manages the massive amounts of data generated by IoT devices by storing and processing data locally. That data doesn’t need to be sent over a network as soon as it processed; only important data is sent — therefore, an edge computing network reduces the amount of data that travels over the network.
• Experts believe the true potential of edge computing will become apparent when 5G networks go mainstream

10 . Whatsapp Hacking

Context : Popular messaging platform WhatsApp was used to spy on journalists and human rights activists in India earlier this year. The surveillance was carried out using a spyware tool called Pegasus, which has been developed by an Israeli firm, the NSO Group. The surveillance was carried out “between in and around April 2019 and May 2019” on users in 20 countries across four continents.

About Pegasus

• All spyware do what the name suggests — they spy on people through their phones. Pegasus works by sending an exploit link, and if the target user clicks on the link, the malware or the code that allows the surveillance is installed on the user’s phone.
• Once Pegasus is installed, the attacker has complete access to the target user’s phone. Pegasus does so by exploiting vulnerabilities in the phone’s operating system. Smartphones have operating systems (OS) much like the desktops and laptops we use.
• Pegasus delivers “a chain of zero-day exploits to penetrate security features on the phone and installs Pegasus without the user’s knowledge or permission”. A “zero-day exploit” is a completely unknown vulnerability, about which even the software manufacturer is not aware, and there is, thus, no patch or fix available for it.
• In the specific cases of Apple and WhatsApp, therefore, neither company was aware of the security vulnerability, which was used to exploit the software and take over the device
• Zero-day exploits could exist for virtually every software and app in the world — and that they might be exploited at some point in the future by individuals or agencies determined to do so.

Android Version

• The Android version of Pegasus spyware is called Chrysaor Malware and was found on about three dozen devices in 2017 according to a blog by Google.
• The Android version of Pegasus installs as an application on your phone, and uses a known root technique called framaroot.
• Rooting an Android phone enables one to get privileged user (root) access, and thus allowing the spyware to monitor various activities.

What all Pegasus can do when installed

• Once the phone is exploited and Pegasus installed, it begins contacting the operator’s command and control servers to receive and execute operator commands, and send back the target’s private data, including passwords, contact lists, calendar events, text messages, and live voice calls from popular mobile messaging apps.
• The operator can even turn on the phone’s camera and microphone to capture activity in the phone’s vicinity. 

How Pegasus exploited Whatsapp

• A missed call on the app was all that was needed to install the software on the device — no clicking on a misleading link was required.
• Pegasus had exploited the video/voice call function on the app, which had a zero-day security flaw. It did not matter if the target did not take the call — the flaw allowed for the malware to be installed anyway.

11. Kerala’s Maoist

Context : Thunderbolt commandos of the Kerala Police killed four alleged Maoists in back-to-back encounters over Monday and Tuesday in the Attappadi forests of the state’s Palakkad district.

Background of Naxalism

• The ripples of the Naxalbari uprising in North Bengal in the late 1960s reached Kerala as well.
• North Kerala, including Wayanad, was a hotbed of the ultra-Left movement, and A Varghese, a CPM leader who turned to Naxalism, and K Ajitha, who is now a prominent feminist activist, inspired a series of revolts against landlords.
• The so-called ‘Spring Thunder’, however, suffered a blow when Varghese, who had won the hearts of tribals, was killed in an encounter — which was subsequently revealed to have been fake — in 1970.

Nature of Maoists operations in Kerala

• The nature of Maoist operations in Kerala is different from that in other LWE-affected states.
• They have never targeted civilians or caused human casualties, and use the trijunction of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka — where a seamless forest cover and difficult terrain hamper policing — as a safe organisational and transit hub. Forest patches in Palakkad, Malappuram, and Wayanad are part of this trijunction.
• Over the past several years, the Maoists set up three squads (dalams) in this area — the Kabani, Nadukani, and Bhavani dalams — and added a fourth, the Varahini dalam, in 2017. They typically enter villages or tribal hamlets bordering forests, address the local people, and distribute leaflets in an attempt to drive home the argument for an armed struggle against the state.
• They have not, however, had any significant success in winning over youths in the tribal hamlets, for which several factors are responsible: the socio-economic profile and standard of living of tribals in Kerala is far better than elsewhere, and improved policing and greater socialisation of tribal youths make recruitment difficult.
• The Maoists mostly return to the jungles after collecting provisions from the villages.
• According intelligence sources, most of the Maoists operating in Kerala belong to other states. There may be some three dozen of them in number, along with a handful from Kerala. Several top Maoists from other states, such as Vikram Gowda, have been spotted in the state. Six of the seven Maoists killed in the last three years (including in this week’s encounters) were from other states. The presence of these Maoists is usually attributed to the intensified police action in other LWE states, which drives them to seek refuge in Kerala.

12 . Facts for Prelims

Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) System

• Submarines are essentially of two types: conventional and nuclear. Conventional submarines use a diesel-electric engine, and must surface daily for oxygen for fuel combustion. If fitted with an Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) system, the sub needs to take in oxygen only once a week.
• While many naval powers, including India, have acquired nuclear-powered submarines for deep-sea operations, conventional diesel-electric variants are considered useful for coastal defence. The latter are optimised for stealth, and their weapons and sensors provide for effective operations close to the shore.
• Because diesel-electric submarines require to come to the surface frequently to charge their batteries, their underwater endurance time is less. ‘Air-independent’ propulsion technology helps to make the diesel generator less dependent on surface air.
• In a fuel cell AIP, an electrolytic fuel cell releases energy by combining hydrogen and oxygen, with only water as the waste product. The cells are highly efficient, and do not have moving parts, thus ensuring that the submarine has a low acoustic signature. Older submarines can be adapted to the AIP system by retrofitting
• A fuel cell-based AIP, like the one developed by DRDO, is known to deliver better performance compared to other technologies. According to the Defence Ministry press release, the AIP system enhances the submerged endurance of diesel-electric submarines several times, thus having a multiplier effect on its lethality.

Cyclone Maha

• The depression over Arabian Sea has intensified into a cyclonic storm. It is named Maha. The name is given by Oman.
• This year, Maha will be the fourth Cyclone in Arabian Sea to form after Vayu, Hikaa, Kyaar.

Assamese Bhaona

• Recently, the Bhaona performers made a foreign debut in Abu Dhabi. The initiative is supported by the Assam’s Department of Culture to popularize Bhaona across the world in English language.
• Bhaona is a traditional form of entertainment, always with religious messages, prevalent is Assam, India.
• The history of Assamese drama begins with the plays of Mahapurusha Srimanta Sankardeva (1449-1568) written in the early sixteenth century.
• These plays are popularly known as Ankiya Nats and their staging is known as bhaona. Bhaona is a performing art form.
• It is a simple drama which shows the victory of truth at the climax, generally using fictitious or mythological kings, queens, demons, Gods, soldiers etc.
• The story generally depicts some initial superficial triumph of evils over good, but it shows the ultimate victory of good with intercession by the Gods.

Aye -Aye

• The aye-aye is a long-fingered lemur, a strepsirrhine primate native to Madagascar with rodent-like teeth that perpetually grow and a special thin middle finger.
• It is a primate that is unlike most other primates. A type of omnivorous and nocturnal lemur
• The aye-aye has a tail longer than its body, incisors that are constantly growing, a third eyelid that moistens the eye and protects it from debris when the aye-aye gnaws on wood, females that produce ova throughout their lifetime — and strange hands.
• The aye-aye has highly specialised fingers, including elongated middle fingers, with which they locate and fish out insect larvae.
• Their fingers have evolved to be extremely specialised — so specialised, in fact, that they aren’t much help when it comes to moving through trees
• In these already strange hands, researchers have now discovered a sixth digit — a “pseudo-thumb”. Among other mammals, the giant panda has a similar sixth digit.

Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index

• The Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index is published by the Australian Centre for Financial Studies (ACFS), in collaboration with Mercer and the State Government of Victoria who provides most of the funding. Financial support has also been provided by The Finnish Centre for Pensions. 
• The primary objective of this research is to benchmark each country’s retirement income system.
• It covers 37 countries, is based on how they fare on providing pension and retirement benefits to citizens across different income groups.
• Measuring 34 pension systems, the Index shows that the Netherlands and Denmark (with scores of 80.3 and 80.2 respectively) both offer A-Grade world class retirement income systems with good benefits – clearly demonstrating their preparedness for tomorrow’s ageing world. 
• India’s score in the Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index (MMGPI) 2019 rose to 45.8 from 44.6 last year.
• The MMGPI, which covers 37 countries, is based on how they fare on providing pension and retirement benefits to citizens across different income groups. India stood at 32nd position in 2019 out of 37 countries, while it was ranked at 33rd place in 2018 out of 34 countries in the list.
• India’s index value increased largely due to the improvement in all three sub-indices of adequacy, sustainability and integrity. As per the index, the improvement was due to slight increase in scores across various dimensions, including net household savings, greater flexibility in managing retirement and part time work, steady progress in governance and reporting around private pension plans.
• India is at 32d in Melbourne Mercer Global Pension index