Politics & the Nation
- Chirayu Amin is interim Chief of IPL
- Mr Amin, who has steered India’s oldest pharma company since 1983 to make it a Rs 1,100-crore giant, is not new to cricket. After the death of Fatesinh Rao Gaekwad in 1988, he took over the reins of the Baroda Cricket Association (BCA). In 2003, he edged out former BCCI secretary Jaywant Lele to continue at the helm.
- You can know more about him in this news story.
- NTRO gizmo was in J&K during that time
- This news story gives the government version of the phone tapping issue. Take a look.
- UID has Aadhaar for new name, logo
- The Unique ID number will now be known by its new brand name—Aadhaar.
- The government plans to issue 600 million Aadhar numbers over the next four years, through various registrar agencies. It plans to rollout the first set of Aadhar numbers by February next year.
- Along with the brandname, the logo of Aadhar in the form of a fingerprint was also released. Iris scan will be used along with fingerprints for collecting biometric data of citizens.
- About 10 fingerprints, a photo and iris scan will be collected as part of biometric data per person.
Technology
- India ranks third in malicious play, virtually
- The country has emerged as one of the Big Three spawning grounds for web-based attacks. India, at third slot, stood next to the US and Brazil in 2009, in terms of countries where such malicious attacks originated, according to Symantec’s Internet Security Threat report. The web security firm says India figured 13th in the list during the previous year.
- Additionally, we were the third-highest spam generating country in the world, contributing about 4% to worldwide spam volumes.
- Some techie lingo worth our attention:
- Spams are bogus mails targeted to extract sensitive information for wrongful financial gains.
- A zombie, in tech parlance is a computer wired to the net that has been compromised by a hacker. Zombies are used extensively to send email spams — referred to as spam zombies and most owners of such PCs are unaware that their systems are being used in such ways.
- Phishing, on the other hand, is an identity theft in which spammers use an authentic-looking email to trick recipients into providing personal information, such as credit card numbers or social security numbers.
- A worm is a self-replicating malware computer programme. It uses a computer network to send copies of itself to other computers on the network all by itself.
- Trojans and backdoors on the other hand are malware programmes which keep sending sensitive information to hackers from the infected computers.
- Bots are malwares that turn computers into zombies.
Finance & Economy
- What are the pros and cons of a food coupons based subsidy regime?
- A list of the major problem areas in the present PDS:
- Exclusion errors: families who deserve to be in the BPL list are excluded,
- Inclusion errors: families who are not eligible are included,
- Ghost cards: ration cards in the name of fictitious/non-existent families,
- Leakage at fair price shop: simply stated, the quantum of food grain leaked/stolen by transporters/shopkeepers, and
- Unacceptable quality: complaints of quality sometimes due to the replacement of procured stocks by lower quality at various levels.
- How to delink growth from emissions?
- Every unit of growth in the economy requires a corresponding input of energy and higher resulting emissions. How can we delink the two?
- One possible way is to increase the contribution of non-polluting energy to total energy consumption and use more energy efficient devices. In this strategy even if the energy intensity of the economy – primary unit of energy it takes to produce one unit of GDP – remains the same, its emission intensity would drop.
- A higher contribution to GDP growth from relatively clean sectors such as information technology and other services should also help reduce the correlation between GDP growth and emissions, other things remaining same.
- What are government bond auctions?
International
- World Bank voting reforms
- The World Bank member-countries reached an agreement on a 3.13 per cent shift in voting power to give the emerging and developing nations greater influence in the Bank last week.
- The voting pattern shift will increase the number of votes of the developing world to 47.19 per cent from 44.06 per cent. And China’s stake at the bank, in terms of voting power, rises from 2.78 to 4.42 per cent now, making it the third largest, next to the U.S. (15.85 per cent) Japan (6.84 percent).
- Post-reforms, India has moved to the seventh spot with 2.91 per cent voting right.
- Obama's far reaching proposals on financial reform
Language Lessons
- impel: Verb
- Urge or force (a person) to an action; constrain or motivate; Cause to move forward with force
- eg: The “buy it while it lasts” gambit should also impel believers in Monroe’s Doctrine to sprint to the nearest jewellery store to corner their soonto-be-priceless nugget of history.
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