• The government is pushing for Centrally-funded scheme to provide financial support to poor prisoners who are forced to remain in jail due to inability to pay the fine imposed on them or cannot secure bail due to financial constraints.
• The home ministry has asked all the state and UT prison departments to direct its concerned officers to activate the scheme on an urgent basis.
• States and union territories were earlier advised through the guidelines to constitute an ‘empowered committee’ in each district, which will assess the requirement of financial support in each case for securing bail or for payment of fine, etc.
• Based on the decision taken, the district collector or district magistrate will take necessary action to provide assistance to the prisoner.

• The Goa Foundation has filed a contempt petition before the Bombay HC at Goa seeking action against the Goa government for not complying with the directions of the High Court to notify a tiger reserve in Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary (WLS) and other contiguous areas of the state within three months.

ABOUT MHADEI WILDLIFE SANCTUARY (WLS)

• It is located in the Northern Part of Goa, near the village of Valpoi.
• The sanctuary covers a vast area of 208 sq. km.
• Its official declaration as a wildlife preserve came in 1999.
• The formation of this sanctuary made Goa the only state in the country that protects the entire area of the Western Ghats that falls within the state.
• Flora
  • Moist deciduous vegetation and some evergreen species too.
  • The sanctuary is particularly well-known for its sacred groves that protect rare and indigenous trees.
  • One of the most unusual trees found here is an evergreen variety of the Ashoka tree with peculiar saffron coloured flowers.
• Fauna- Indian gaur, Barking deer, Sambar deer, Asian palm civet, small Indian civet, Wild boar, Indian hare, Ruddy mongoose, Black-faced langur and Bonnet macaque.
  • Some seen more rarely include the Black Panther, Sloth bear, Leopard, Tiger, Dhole, Jungle cat, Mouse deer, Giant squirrel, Flying squirrel, Indian pangolin and the Slender loris.

• The 71^st Foundation Day of EPFO was held at Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi recently.

ABOUT EMPLOYEES’ PROVIDENT FUND ORGANISATION

• EPFO is one of the World’s largest Social Security Organisations in terms of clientele and the volume of financial transactions
  • At present it maintains 27.74 crore accounts (Annual Report 2021-22) pertaining to its members.
• The Employees’ Provident Fund came into existence with the promulgation of the Employees’ Provident Funds Ordinance on the 15th November, 1951.
  • It was replaced by the Employees’ Provident Funds Act, 1952.
• The Act is now referred as the Employees’ Provident Funds & Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 which extends to the whole of India.
• The Act and Schemes framed there under are administered by a tri-partite Board known as the Central Board of Trustees, Employees’ Provident Fund, consisting of representatives of Government (Both Central and State), Employers, and Employees.
  • The Central Board of Trustees administers a contributory provident fund, pension scheme and an insurance scheme for the workforce engaged in the organized sector in India.
• The EPFO is under the administrative control of Ministry of Labour and Employment.

• Prime Ministers of India and Bangladesh jointly inaugurated three Indian assisted development projects
• The three projects are –
  • The Akhaura-Agartala Cross-Border 12.24 km Rail Link project connects Bangladesh and Tripura.
    • It connects India’s northeast to Bangladesh by rail for the first time.
    • It will also facilitate better connectivity between Bangladesh’s Chattogram port and the northeast and boost trade and tourism.
  • The 7-km Khulna-Mongla port railway line connects Bangladesh’s second-largest port to the country’s rail network for the first time.
    • With this, Mongla, the second largest port of Bangladesh, gets connected with the broad-gauge railway network.
  • The Maitree super thermal power project, built under an Indian concessional financing scheme loan of $1.6 billion, is a 1,320 MW plant located in the Khulna division of Its Unit II was inaugurated recently.
    • It has been implemented by the Bangladesh-India Friendship Power Company (Private) Limited (BIFPCL), which is a 50:50 Joint Venture company between India’s NTPC Ltd and Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB).

• Twenty-eight countries and EU have agreed to work together under ‘Bletchley Declaration’ to prevent “catastrophic harm, either deliberate or unintentional” which may arise from artificially intelligent computer models and engines.
  • Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire near London was once the top-secret base of the codebreakers who cracked the German ‘Enigma Code’ that hastened the end of World War II.
• The declaration incorporates an acknowledgment of the substantial risks from potential intentional misuse or unintended issues of control of frontier AI — especially cybersecurity, biotechnology, and disinformation risks, according to the UK government, the summit host.
  • “Frontier AI” is defined as highly capable foundation generative AI models that could possess dangerous capabilities that can pose severe risks to public safety.
• The declaration set out a two-pronged agenda focused on identifying risks of shared concern and building scientific understanding of them, while also developing cross-country policies to mitigate them.
• Members include Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Saudi, Arabia, Netherlands, Nigeria, The Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Rwanda, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United States of America, and the European Union.

• A five-judge Constitution bench, headed by Chief Justice of India has stated that Electoral Bond scheme suffers from “selective anonymity” leading to an “information hole”.
• It has also directed the Election Commission of India (ECI) to submit within two weeks complete information on each and every donor and contributions received by political parties through EBs till September 30, 2023.

ABOUT ELECTORAL BOND SCHEME

• Electoral bonds are interest-free bearer bonds or money instruments that can be purchased by companies and individuals in India from authorised branches of the State Bank of India (SBI).
• Bonds are available for purchase in multiples of ₹1,000, ₹10,000, ₹1 lakh, ₹10 lakh and ₹1 crore.
• These can be bought through a KYC-compliant account.
• There is no limit on the number of electoral bonds that a person or company can purchase.
• Every party registered under section 29A of the Representation of the People Act and having secured at least 1% of the votes polled in the most recent Lok Sabha or state election has been allotted a verified account by ECI.
• The political party has to encash the amount within those 15 days, otherwise the amount received as a donation gets deposited into the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund.
• The government brought in amendments to four Acts-
  • Representation of the People Act, 1951, the Companies Act, 2013, the Income Tax Act, 1961, and the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act, 2010, through the Finance Acts of 2016 and 2017.
  • The government removed the limit of 7.5 per cent of the annual profit for companies to make donations to political parties and allowed Indian subsidiaries of foreign companies to make donations.
• EBs are available for a period of 10 days in a gap of four months (January, April, July and October).
  • They are also open for 30 days in Lok Sabha election years.

• A pair of elusive wild dogs, often referred to as Dholes, have made a rare appearance in Debrigarh Wildlife Sanctuary in Odisha’s Bargarh district.
• Wild dogs are rarely sighted in Odisha’s forests.

ABOUT DHOLES OR ASIAN WILD DOGS

• Scientific name –Cuon alpinus
• It is a wild carnivorous animal, member of the family Canidae and the class Mammalia.
• Distribution–
  • They are found throughout Eastern and Southeastern Asia and have been reported as far north as Siberia, as far south as some Malaysian islands.
  • In India, they are found in three clusters i.e the Western and Eastern Ghats, central Indian landscape and North East India.
• Dholes occupy a wide variety of climates and habitats, such as dense forests, scrub, steppes, and alpine regions.
• Depending on their habitat, these wild dogs vary in color from charcoal gray to rust red to sandy beige.
• Dholes are highly social animals and frequently hunt in packs.
• Dholes maintain a very large territory of up to 34 square miles, helping them to find enough food to eat. Their territory is often shared with larger predators like tigers and leopards.
• Dholes play an important role as apex predators in forest ecosystems.
• Protection status
  • IUCN red list – Endangered
  • CITES– Appendix II
  • Wildlife Protection Act 1972– Schedule II

ABOUT DEBRIGARH WILDLIFE SANCTUARY

• It is located in the Bargarh district in Odisha.
• It is situated near Hirakud Dam.
• Area- 347 Sq km
• The sanctuary finds a special mention because of noted freedom fighter Veer SurendraSai.
  • During his rebellion against the British Veer Surendra Saimade his base at ‘Barapathara” located within the sanctuary.
• Flora- The sanctuary comprises dry deciduous forests. It is also home to plant species which have ethno-botanical and medicinal value.
• Fauna– The sanctuary is home to more than 40 species of mammals, 234 species of birds, 41 species of reptiles, 12 species of amphibians, 42 species of fishes, 39 species of odonates, 85 species of butterflies and is important Internationally because of significant population of Leopard, Bison and Chousingha. Indian Bison’s, Wild Boars, Sambhar, Peacocks etc. are also found.

• India-born author Nandini Das has been named the winner of the 2023 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.
• It is a leading international non-fiction prize worth GBP 25,000
• She was awarded for her book ‘Courting India: England, Mughal India and the Origins of Empire’.
• The work, hailed as the “true origin story of Britain and India told through England’s first diplomatic mission to the Mughal courts,” secured the top spot this year at a ceremony held at the British Academy in London.

• The Indian Air Force has deployed its three S-400 air defense missile squadrons along borders with China and Pakistan.
• Indian and Russian officials are set to meet to discuss the final delivery schedule for the remaining two squadrons.
• India had signed an over ₹ 35,000 crore contract with the Russian side in 2018-19 for five squadrons of the S-400 missiles.

ABOUT S-400

• The S-400 Triumf (or SA-21 Growler) is a mobile, surface-to-air missile system.
• It is one of the world’s most advanced air defence systems that can simultaneously track numerous incoming objects.
• Developed by – Almaz Central Design Bureau of Russia.
• The first S-400 was deployed in combat in August 2007.
• It has command and control centre, automatic tracking and targeting systems, launchers and support vehicles.
• It is equipped with four different missiles that can engage enemy aircraft, ballistic missiles, and AWACS planes at 400 km, 250 km, the medium-range 120 km and the short-range 40 km.
• Radars fitted into this system can detect incoming objects from a distance of 400 kilometres and an altitude of 30 kilometres.
• The system can simultaneously engage 36 targets.

• Carbon nanoflorets made by IIT Bombay researchers can convert incident sunlight to heat with 87% efficiency.

ABOUT CARBON NANOFLORETS

• These are like tiny marigold flowers made only of carbon, which are called as the material carbon nanoflorets.
• Researchers heated a special form of silicon dust called DFNS (for dendritic fibrous nanosilica) in a furnace. Once heated, acetylene gas was introduced into the chamber.
• The white powder turned black – a sign that carbon had been deposited on the DFNS.
• The black powder was collected and treated it with a strong chemical that dissolved the DFNS away, leaving carbon particles behind.
• The structure of the silicon particles – 50-1,200 nanometers in size—resembled spikes arranged around a sphere.
• The carbon nanoflorets’ high efficiency comes from three properties
  • The nanoflorets absorb three frequencies in sunlight – infrared, visible light, and ultraviolet whereas other common materials like photovoltaic materials used in solar panels, absorb only visible and ultraviolet light.
    • More than half of the energy in sunlight arrives to the earth as infrared radiation.
    • So the nanoflorets can absorb much more energy from the sun.
  • The other two properties responsible for the material’s high light-heat conversion efficiency are a result of its shape.
    • As light falls on the material, the carbon cones ensure that very little is reflected back. Instead, most light is reflected internally.
    • The carbon nanoflorets don’t lose heat to its environment, however, thanks to long-range disorder- parts of the structure at some distance from each other possess different physical properties.
    • As a result, heat waves in the material aren’t carried over long distances, reducing the amount of heat dissipated away.