• UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) has published its first ever report on the Ethics of Climate Engineering.
• It proposes a comprehensive global ethical perspective on climate engineering technologies and lists specific recommendations for their possible use.

ABOUT CLIMATE ENGINEERING

• Climate Engineering, also known as “geoengineering,” is the intentional large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system to counter climate change.
• Climate engineering is classified into two groups of techniques-
  • Carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which removes and stores the emitted carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. CDR is expensive, involves five approaches. These include
    • direct air capture,
    • land-use management through afforestation / reforestation,
    • sequestering carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by biomass that may also be used as an energy source,
    • increasing the uptake of CO2 by the ocean and
    • enhancing natural weathering processes that remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
  • Solar radiation modification (SRM), which reflects sunlight back to space. This approach include
    • increasing the surface reflectivity of the planet by painting structures with reflective paints,
    • planting crops with high reflectivity, enhancing the reflectivity of marine clouds to reduce the amount of solar energy reaching the surface,
    • removing infrared-absorbing clouds from the atmosphere to reduce trapped heat,
    • Injecting aerosols into the lower stratosphere to mimic the cooling induced by volcanic eruptions and
    • lowering the solar radiation reaching the Earth by placing reflectors or shields in space .

ETHICAL CONCERNS

• Climate engineering could undermine existing climate policies and divert funding from vital emission reduction and adaptation efforts.
• The unknown and unintended consequences of these technologies need risks evaluation and management.
• The high cost of developing and deploying these tools could also exacerbating global inequalities between countries of different economic weight, especially in terms of the distribution of risks.
• Geoengineering tools could also have the potential for military or geo-political use.

RECOMMENDATIONS

• UNESCO recommended its Member States to introduce legislation that regulates climate action while also considering the transboundary impact of their decisions on all human beings and ecosystems.
• The report also urged countries belonging to a geographic area to make regional agreements to avoid risks of unequal spatial distribution of effects.
• It called for a ban on using climate engineering techniques as a weapon (weaponisation).
• Also, it added that political or economic interests should not interfere with scientific research on climate engineering.

• International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People is observed on November 29^th.
• In 1977, the UN General Assembly called for the annual observance of 29 November as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
  • On that day, in 1947, the Assembly adopted the resolution on the partition of Palestine.
• “The resolution on the observance of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People also encourages Member States to continue to give the widest support and publicity to the observance of the Day of Solidarity.” UN official statement reads.

• The Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs is making raw data from Indian cities available on a single platform for academics, researchers, and stakeholders to help data-driven policy making.
• The Amplifi 2.0(Assessment and Monitoring Platform for Liveable, Inclusive and Future-ready urban India) portal was launched in this context recently.
• Currently, 225 urban local bodies (ULB) have been on-boarded, and data for 150 cities is available on the portal.
  • It is hoped that data from the more than 4,000 Urban Local Bodies will eventually be made available on the portal.
• The website provides data on a range of information for several cities, including, for example, the total diesel consumption; the number of samples tested for water quality; the average annual expenditure on healthcare; the total number of people residing in slums; the fatalities recorded due to road accidents.

FASTER 2.0

• Keeping up with the technology adoption to streamline the justice delivery system, the Chief Justice of India (CJI) launched the ‘FASTER 2.0’ portal recently.
• The new portal is designed to promptly inform jail authorities, trial courts, and high courts about court orders for the release of prisoners.
• The new digital facility looks to plug the delay in the present system, which currently is much time taking as as this is based on physical orders copies that are to be officially received via formal government channels before the jail authorities.
• The ‘FASTER 2.0’ portal is now live and facilitates instant communication to the concerned authorities, enhancing the efficiency of the justice system.

e-SCR portal

• In addition to the ‘FASTER 2.0’ initiative, CJI also unveiled a Hindi version of the e-SCR portal.
• This portal allows access to Supreme Court judgments in Hindi, making legal information more accessible and inclusive.
• The Supreme Court’s eSCR website that contained Hindi translations of 21,388 judgments of a total 36,068 judgments delivered so far by the Supreme Court since January 26, 1950.
  • The rest of the judgments are in the process of being translated into Hindi and would be uploaded after vetting.
• All the judgments in English are already available free of cost to judges, lawyers, litigants and the general public on eSCR portal.

• India and Indonesia were the top two beneficiaries of the European Union’s Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) schemes for exports in 2022.
• Clothing, machinery, and footwear accounted for nearly half of all standard GSP imports, as per a joint report of the EU to the European Parliament and the Council.

About GSP scheme

• Under the GSP scheme, the EU allows identified products originating in certain developing countries preferential access to its markets in the form of reduced or zero rates of customs duties.
• As the items become more competitive and reach a particular threshold, the GSP is withdrawn.
  • The EU has already withdrawn the GSP benefit from about 1,800 items from India in 2023, and the present policy will now continue for another four years until 2027.
  • The items include electrical machinery, plastics, articles of stone and articles of leather and could affect exports worth $7.9 billion.
• GSP was instituted under the aegis of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

• Recently, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and UN Women released a study titled-Gender-related killings of women and girls (femicide/feminicide), revealing an increase in gender-related killings of women and girls in 2022.
• Femicide or feminicide refers to the deliberate killing of women or girls purely because they are female. It’s a gender-based crime rooted in deeply ingrained societal attitudes and discrimination against women.

MAJOR FINDINGS

• Globally, nearly 89,000 women and girls were killed intentionally in 2022, the highest yearly number recorded in the past two decades.
• Around 55% of total female homicide victims are killed by family.
• Africa reported the highest number of intimate partner/family-related homicides of women in 2022, surpassing Asia for the first time in 13 years.
• With respect to India
  • India experienced a slight decline in gender-based killings over the past decade.
  • Dowry-related reasons consistently topped the list as the leading cause of gender-related deaths in India.

ABOUT UNITED NATIONS OFFICE ON DRUGS AND CRIME (UNODC)

• It was established in 1997 by merging the United Nations Centre for International Crime Prevention and the United Nations International Drug Control Programme.
• It was named as UNODC in 2002.
• HQ- Vienna, Austria
• It has 20 field offices covering over 150 countries and works directly with Governments and non-governmental organizations.

• The Financial Stability Board (FSB) published the 2023 list of global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) using end-2022 data and applying the assessment methodology designed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS).
• One bank (Bank of Communications (BoCom)) has been added to the list of G-SIBs that were identified in 2022, and two banks (Credit Suisse and UniCredit) have been removed.
• The overall number of G-SIBs therefore decreases from 30 to 29.
  • None of the Indian Banks is on the list.

ABOUT G-SIBS

• A G-SIB is bank whose systemic risk profile is deemed to be of such importance that the bank’s failure would trigger a wider financial crisis and threaten the global economy.
• FSB member authorities apply the following requirements to G-SIBs–
  • Higher capital buffer: The G-SIBs are allocated to buckets corresponding to higher capital buffers that they are required to hold by national authorities in accordance with international standards.
  • Total Loss-Absorbing Capacity (TLAC): G-SIBs are required to meet the TLAC standard, alongside the regulatory capital requirements set out in the Basel III framework.
  • Resolvability: These requirements include group-wide resolution planning and regular resolvability assessments.
  • Higher supervisory expectations: These include supervisory expectations for risk management functions, risk data aggregation capabilities, risk governance and internal controls.

ABOUT FSB

• It was established in 2009 after the G20 Summit in London as the successor to the Financial Stability Forum.
• The FSB Secretariat is located in Basel, Switzerland, and hosted by the Bank for International Settlements.
• The FSB coordinates at the international level the work of national financial authorities and international standard-setting bodies and develops and promotes the implementation of effective regulatory, supervisory, and other financial sector policies in the interest of financial stability.
• It brings together national authorities responsible for financial stability in 24 countries and jurisdictions, international financial institutions, sector-specific international groupings of regulators and supervisors, and committees of central bank experts.

The FSB also conducts outreach with approximately 70 other jurisdictions through its six Regional Consultative Groups.

• In an astronomical feat, India’s first multi-wavelength space telescope, AstroSat, has successfully detected its 600th Gamma-ray Burst (GRB), an event named GRB 231122B.

ABOUT ASTROSAT

• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched AstroSat in September 2015.
• It is the first dedicated Indian astronomy mission aimed at studying celestial sources in X-ray, optical and UV spectral bands simultaneously.
• The payloads cover the energy bands of Ultraviolet (Near and Far), limited optical and X-ray regime (0.3 keV to 100keV).
• AstroSat with a lift-off mass of 1515 kg was launched into a 650 km near-equatorial orbit inclined at an angle of 6 deg to the equator by PSLV-C30 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota.
• The minimum useful life of the AstroSat mission is expected to be 5 years.
• After injection into Orbit, the two solar panels of AstroSat were automatically deployed in quick succession.
• The spacecraft control centre at Mission Operations Complex (MOX) of ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC), Bengaluru manages the satellite during its entire mission life.
• The science data gathered by five payloads of AstroSat are telemetered to the ground station at MOX.
• Five payloads-
  • Ultra Violet Imaging Telescope (UVIT) consists of two identical telescopes of aperture 380 mm.
  • Large Area X-ray Proportional Counter (LAXPC), developed by TIFR has three identical gas detectors. LAXPC has a total effective area of 8000 cm2.
  • Cadmium–Zinc–Telluride Imager (CZTI), developed by TIFR works in 20–100 keV.
  • Soft X-ray Telescope (SXT), developed by TIFR, uses X-ray reflecting mirrors and an X-ray CCD for imaging and spectral studies in 0.3–8 keV.
  • Scanning Sky Monitor (SSM) developed by ISRO is an all sky monitor for detecting and monitoring transient sources.

ABOUT GAMMA-RAY BURSTS

• Gamma-ray bursts are the universe’s most powerful explosions, often associated with the creation of black holes.
• These bursts emit immense amounts of energy in a short span, ranging from milliseconds to several minutes, and are considered among the brightest events in the cosmos.
• Understanding these bursts is crucial for astronomers as they provide insights into the most extreme environments and the fundamental physics that govern the universe.

• The local administration of Thunag has banned trekking expeditions towards hills of Shikari Devi temple, a famous tourist place in Mandi district in view of public safety because of the onset of winter.
• The place receives about 10 feet snow every year during winter, denying access to Shikari Devi hills.
• Shikari Devi temple is located about 18 km away from Janjehli and is connected by a motorable forest road.
• It is situated at an altitude of 3,359 metres.
• There are thick forests on the way to Shikari Devi peak.
• Being the highest peak of Mandi district, it is called the Crown of Mandi.
• On the Shikari peak, there is a roofless temple of Shikari Devi, the Goddess of hunters.
• This temple is said to be established (Sathapit) by Pandavas.
• It is said that sage Markanday also meditated at this place for number of years.

• In 2014, NDDB, IDA and 22 state-level milk federations decided to dedicate November 26 to Dr Verghese Kurien, the Father of India’s White Revolution.
• Hence, together they initiated the observance of National Milk Day on November 26^th.
• In the early 1970s, the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) launched Operation Flood, a transformative national project aimed at establishing a comprehensive milk grid across the country.
• At the helm of the NDDB was Dr. Verghese Kurien, whose leadership injected essential management skills into the cooperative sector.
• It catapulted milk production in India and now the country ranks first in milk production in the world contributing 24% of global milk production