State-of-the-art Flood Warning System launched
in Mumbai.
State-of-the-art Flood Warning System launched in
Mumbai
The system will help make Mumbai become more
resilient as it provides early warning for flooding, especially during high
rainfall events and cyclones.
Vamsi Athreya
State-of-the-art Flood Warning System launched in
Mumbai
State-of-the-art Flood Warning System launched in
Mumbai
iFLOWS- Mumbai, a state-of-the-art Integrated Flood
Warning System for Mumbai was launched jointly by Chief Minister of
Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray, and Union Earth Sciences Minister Dr. Harsh
Vardhan on 12 June through video conference.
iFLOWS:
· The system will
help make Mumbai become more resilient as it provides early warning for
flooding, especially during high rainfall events and cyclones.
· Using this, the estimation of the flood
inundation can be done possibly 3 days in advance, along
with 3 hours - 6 hours
Nowcast (immediate weather updates).
The device will be very useful, especially if
people need to be evacuated from low-lying areas as we will be able to forecast
12 hours in advance that a particular spot may get flooded.
·
The system will also forecast the rainfall in
each pocket.
Benefits of
iFLOWS:
·
Using this
device, the floods can be estimated 3 days in advance, at ward-level
·
Decision Support System will enable smart
decision-making and field action based on risk assessment
·
iFLOWS flood warning system is developed by
the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES).
Centre
directs all 8 North Eastern States to set-up e-office.
Centre has directed all the 8 North Eastern States
to set up e-office in a stipulated timeframe. The announcement was made by
Union Minister of State for Personnel, PG and Pensions Dr. Jitendra Singh. The
e-office project will be a cardinal pillar of Digital India.
Highlights:
·
The e-office
project is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of “Minimum
Government, Maximum Governance”.
·
The e-office
will ensure ease of administration, transparency, and citizen-centric delivery
mechanism.
·
So far, 55 Ministries in the Government of
India have implemented the e-office.
·
GoI also assured that all technical and
financial support to achieve the e-office mission to be implemented right from
Civil Secretariat to the District level in all the States.
·
The implementation of e-Office will creation a
paperless State Secretariats in a time-bound manner where officers would be
empowered with virtual private networks, digital signature certificates, and
promote less contact governance.
NHRC
report says centre actively considering universal basic income.
In its report on human rights in India, the National
Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has informed the United Nations Human Rights
Council (UNHRC) that the recommended implementation of a universal basic income
was “under examination and active consideration” of the Centre.
As a part of the third round of the Universal
Periodic Review (UPR) process, which is done every four-and-a-half-years, the
NHRC submitted its mid-term report to the UN agency recently. The report, dated
“May 2020”, reviewed the implementation of 152 recommendations of the UPR
Working Group that the Indian government had accepted in September 2017.
The report stated that there had been a consensus on
the need for increasing budgetary allocation for health and nutrition by the
Centre and state governments.
With regards to child rights, the report said the
National Commission for Protection of Child Rights was working on a proposal
for a pilot project to eliminate child labour in five “aspirational districts
with high incidence of child labour”.
The NHRC noted that it had found “gaps in policies
as compared to obligations” under the United Nations Convention on the Rights
of the Child and had made recommendations to address the same. It added that it
was in the process of setting up a committee to monitor the implementation of
the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
The NHRC said it had expressed “concern over the inefficiencies in implementation
of the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities Act) 1989 and
the Rules of 1995” and warned States of coercive action when they failed to
submit reports on violation of human rights of SCs, STs and minorities.
NHAI
becomes first construction sector organisation to go Fully Digital.
National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) under the
Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has announced that it has gone Fully
Digital as it has launched a unique cloud-based and Artificial Intelligence
(AI) powered Big Data Analytics platform 'Data Lake and Project Management
Software'.
Highlight:
·
NHAI's entire
project management workflow is transformed from manual to the online portal
based.
·
Also, the complete project execution
operations including 'workflow with timelines' and 'alert mechanism' have been
configured.
·
Project documentation, contractual decisions,
and approvals are processed through the portal only.
·
The Data Lake software, with advanced
analytics, will forecast the delays, likely disputes, and will give advance
alerts.
·
The system will facilitate in taking correct
and timely decisions as the system is likely to predict the financial impacts
of different alternatives based on the historical data and will reduce a lot of
disputes.
·
Majority of the disputes can be minimized as
the Data Lake software has provisions to keep track and check on all these
constraints and will ensure work is carried out within the deadlines in a
transparent manner.
·
As all processes are going to be portal-based,
decision-making will be faster and will eventually diminish the chances of
litigation in the future.
India
reiterates cultural and civilizational ties with Nepal.
As Nepal prepared to vote on Saturday for a new map
amid the Kalapani territorial dispute, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA)
on Thursday reiterated India’s civilisational ties with Nepal.
The vote in Nepal’s Parliament for the Second Constitutional Amendment, which
will give legislative support to the new map, has seen extensive discussions.
On Thursday, sources in Kathmandu said the final round of discussions was
expected to be followed by voting in the Lower House on Saturday.
The official spokesperson said the report on
international religious freedom for 2019, published by the U.S. Department of
State, was a document produced for the domestic audience. He said other
countries did not have the right to criticise India on religious freedom.
The Indian official also hit out at Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s social
media posts, offering help to the poor Indian households facing economic
distress because of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to official spokesperson
“We all have known about their debt problem and how
much they have been pressed for debt restructuring. It would also be better for
them to remember that India has a stimulus package as large as Pakistan’s
annual GDP,”
Trump
orders sanctions against ICC probe officials.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday issued an
executive order authorising sanctions against individuals involved in an
International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into whether U.S. forces
committed war crimes in Afghanistan.
A senior White House official, without providing details, said the ICC probe is
“being pushed forward by an organisation of dubious integrity” and accused
Russia of having a role.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly assailed The Hague-based
ICC set-up to prosecute war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. It
has jurisdiction only if a member state is unable or unwilling to prosecute atrocities
itself.
Afghanistan is a member of the ICC, though Kabul has
argued that any war crimes should be prosecuted locally. The U.S. government
has never been a member of the court, established in 2002. The government
imposed travel restrictions and other sanctions against ICC employees a year
ago.
The ICC decided to investigate after prosecutors’
preliminary examination in 2017 found reasonable grounds to believe war crimes
were committed in Afghanistan and that the ICC has jurisdiction.
ICC prosecutor FatouBensouda wants to investigate possible crimes committed
between 2003 and 2014, including alleged mass killings of civilians by the
Taliban, as well as the alleged torture of prisoners by Afghan authorities and,
to a lesser extent, by U.S. forces and the CIA.
Pakistan
unveils 7.13 trillion budget for new fiscal year, defence gets around 1.3
trillion.
Pakistan government on Friday unveiled a Rs 7.13
trillion (Rs 7,13,700 crore) “corona budget” for the new fiscal year, including
a Rs 1.289 trillion (Rs 1,28,900 crore) defence budget which is almost 4.7 per
cent higher than last year’s.
Last year the defence budget was 1.227 trillion
(1,22,700 crore).
The government set a meagre 2.1 per cent GDP growth
target for the next year.
Minister for Industries and Production Hammad Azhar presented the budget for
the fiscal year 2020-21 in the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament
amidst a spike in the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Azhar said Rs 55 billion (5,500 crores) special grant would be given to the
Azad kashmir government and Rs 32 billion (3,200 crores) special grant to the
Gilgit-Baltistan government. He said that the government was trying to increase
taxes as the current tax to GDP ratio was 11 per cent which was very low as
compared to other nations. “We are trying to improve our ratio.” Among the
increase in taxes, he said the tax on tobacco and its products was increased
from 65 per cent to 100 per cent.
He said that the government as per policy did not
receive any loan from the State Bank of Pakistan. He said no supplementary
grants were given to any department and strict financial discipline was
followed and the policy would continue. It was the second budget of the
Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government which came to power in August 2018 and is
still struggling to stabilize the economy, which registered negative 0.38 per
cent growth in the outgoing fiscal year ending on June 30.
Gir lion population in Gujarat rises by almost 29%.
Gujarat prides itself on hosting Asiatic lions
exclusively, and their numbers have now risen to an estimated 674 in the Gir
forest region and other revenue areas of coastal Saurashtra.
Once seen as threatened by extinction, the lion population has grown by almost
29% from the last count in 2015. Today, Asiatic lions are present in Protected
Areas and agro-pastoral landscapes of Saurashtra covering nine districts, over
an expanse of about 30,000 sq. km.
Forest officials said there was a consistent increase in the population and
distribution. The department had implemented strategies and interventions like
community participation, use of technology, habitat management and increase in
prey base, human-lion conflict mitigation and healthcare including import of
vaccines after some lions were infected with Canine Distemper Virus (CDV).
This year, the department carried out a “population
estimation exercise” on the night of June 5-6 because the five-yearly regular
census in May could not be held due to COVID-19. In October 2018, Gir witnessed
an outbreak of CDV in which 36 lions died. The Prime Minister had then directed
the State authorities to import vaccines.
As per Forest Department data, there are 161 male, 260 female, 45 sub adult male,
49 sub adult female, 22 unidentified and 137 cubs. Experts said the male-female
ratio was healthy in the Gir region with 161 malesvs 260 females.
RBI
proposes stronger bank boards to improve governance.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has proposed a stronger
board for banks for improving governance and stringent norms for CEOs and
wholetime directors (WTDs). The norms are applicable to private, foreign and
public sector banks.
In a discussion paper on governance in commercial
banks in India, the banking regulator said board members should not be a member
of any other bank’s board or the RBI and should not be either a Member of
Parliament or State Legislature or Municipality or other local bodies. Board of
directors of a bank should not be less than six and not more than 15, with a
majority being independent directors.
A director on the board of an entity other than a bank may be considered for
appointment as director on a bank’s board, if the person is not an owner of an
NBFC or a full-time employee and that the NBFC does not enjoy a financial
accommodation from the bank.
The discussion paper suggested appointment,
re-appointment and termination of wholetime directors and chief executive
officers should be with the previous approval of RBI.
The new norms will come into effect within six months after being placed the
RBI’s website or April 1, 2021, whichever is later.
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