• Considering the exponential increase in online scams, the Himachal Pradesh Police have sought the setting up of cybercrime police stations in all districts, barring Kinnaur and Lahaul-Spiti.
• The HP Police have submitted a proposal to the state government for setting up cybercrime police stations in 10 districts. The proposal sent by the HP Police to the state government excludes the tribal districts of Kinnaur and Lahaul-Spiti
• At present, there are three cybercrime police stations in Shimla, Mandi and Dharamsala. These police stations have succeeded in getting Rs 75.36 lakh refunded to the victims and put on hold a transaction of Rs 1.53 crore in cybercrime cases this year.
• “A total of 2,129 complaints pertaining to financial frauds committed across the state have been received for far this year,” said Director General of Police (DGP) Sanjay Kundu.
• The state alone registers an average of 5,000 calls per month of the victims on the National Crime Recording Portal (NCRP) through toll-free number 1930, he added.
• The DGP further said the exponential increase in cybercrime being witnessed in the state had become a major challenge for the law enforcement agencies. Citizens are reporting complaints on the NCRP and the helpline. The state cybercrime control room established in Shimla is receiving -crime calls from 9 am to 6 am on a daily basis.
• Police officers said once the complaint was reported on the NCRP or in the financial module, an acknowledgement was sent to the complainant’s jurisdictional police station and to the respective banks, e-wallet and e-commerce websites. Based on the complaints reported in the cybercrime police station, the financial intermediary concerned follows the fraud money trail and takes action in terms of debit freezing or lien working of the suspect accounts and the same information was updated on the NCRP of the Ministry of Home Affairs, the police added.
• During this process, the suspect’s multiple bank accounts and other financial intermediaries are frozen in each case.

About:

• Shiveluch is one of the largest and most active volcanoes in Kamchatka, having erupted at least 60 times in the past 10,000 years.
• It has two main parts:
  • Old Shiveluch, which tops 3,283 metres (10,771 ft), and
  • Young Shiveluch– a smaller, 2,800-metre peak protruding from its side.
    • Young Shiveluch lies within an ancient caldera – a large crater-like basin that likely formed when the older part underwent a catastrophic eruption at least 10,000 years ago.
  • The volcano has been continuously erupting since August 1999, but occasionally undergoes powerful explosive events, including in 2007.

Kamchatka:

• Kamchatka is home to 29 active volcanoes, part of a vast belt of Earth known as the “Ring of Fire” which circles the Pacific Ocean and is prone to eruptions and frequent earthquakes.
• Most of the peninsula’s volcanoes are surrounded by sparsely populated forest and tundra.
• Six volcanoes in Russia’s northeast are currently showing signs of increased activity, including Eurasia’s highest active volcano Klyuchevskaya Sopka.

• Representatives of more than 160 governments, parties to the Convention on International trade in Endangered Species of Wild fauna and flora (CITES) have reaffirmed their commitment to address the biodiversity crisis by adopting proposals to regulate international trade in more than 500 new species.
• CITES CoP-19 closed in Panama on Friday after two weeks of negotiations on the most important issues facing the trade in endangered species of animals and plants.
• The Conference of the Parties (CoP) adopted 46 proposals of the 52 put forward. This will bring species of, among others, sharks, lizards, turtles, fish, birds, frogs and more than a hundred tree species under CITES regulations, designed to ensure the sustainability of these species in the wild, while allowing their international trade and also contributing to the conservation of ecosystems and global biodiversity.
• The CoP also reached a record number of 365 decisions as they worked to safeguard threatened wildlife species, while at the same time allowing the international trade that underpins human well-being and contributes to conservation efforts. The decisions will shape CITES’ work for the years to come.
• The meeting — also known as the World Wildlife Conference — opened on November 14 and on four days ran until 10 p.m. as the details of these decisions and resolutions were worked through and agreed.
• More than 2,500 people have attended the event; the ultimate decision-making body of CITES, which takes place every three years. This year the meeting was held in Panama, the first time for 20 years that a CITES CoP has returned to Latin America.
• A first for the meeting was the adoption of a resolution on gender, to try to address inequality as it relates to the trade in wildlife. The meeting heard that women are more likely to lose out on the benefits of wildlife trade and work will now be done to suggest ways to tackle this issue.
• The meeting also decided to work towards becoming a more inclusive forum by increasing the number of languages it works in for key meetings. Future CoPs are likely to be run in Arabic, Chinese and Russian, in addition to the current working languages of Spanish, French and English.
• The contribution that CITES can make to reducing zoonotic diseases is also to be investigated. Seventy per cent of emerging diseases are estimated to be transferred from wild animals to humans. CITES is to look at the role it could play in reducing the likelihood of this transfer.
• The new species that will be listed on CITES and their international trade consequently regulated, include nearly 100 species of sharks and rays, more than 150 tree species, 160 amphibian species, including tropical frogs, 50 turtle and tortoise species and several species of songbirds. All these species have seen decline in their population over recent years.
• The parties to CITES also agreed a joint approach to support Mexico as it fights to save a species of porpoise from extinction.
• Numbers of vaquita in the Gulf of Mexico are believed to have dropped to fewer than 20. It is endangered through fishing for a different species, the totoaba. Parties have agreed to a coordinated approach, designed to limit fishing in totoaba and consequently reduce the threat to the vaquita.
• CITES regulates the world’s trade in threatened species of animals and plants, 183 countries and the European Union are parties to the convention and every three years, they take part in a meeting of the CoP. This is the 19th time they have met in the past 50 years, since the convention was adopted in 1973.
• CoP-19 has taken place at a crucial moment. This year has seen a number of significant scientific reports which have highlighted the need to halt, and reverse, biodiversity loss, if our planet and human well-being is to be sustained.
• The three main threats to wild plants and animals are habitat loss, climate change and overexploitation.
• It is hoped that the decisions taken in Panama will contribute to addressing these crises and pave the way for CoP-15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which is taking place in Montreal in December.
• That meeting is expected to agree a framework to address the loss in biodiversity, to which a number of multilateral environmental agreements, CITES included, will contribute.

• The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced the launch of the first pilot for retail digital Rupee on 1 December. The digital rupee would be in the form of a digital token that represents legal tender.
• The project would cover select locations in a closed user group (CUG) comprising participating customers and merchants.
• The e-Rupee would be in the form of a digital token that represents legal tender. It would be issued in the same denominations that paper currency and coins are currently issued.
• It would be distributed through intermediaries, i.e., banks. Users will be able to transact with e-Rupee through a digital wallet offered by the participating banks and stored on mobile phones/devices.
• Transactions can be both Person to Person (P2P) and Person to Merchant (P2M). Payments to merchants can be made using QR codes displayed at merchant locations. The e-Rupee would offer features of physical cash like trust, safety and settlement finality.
• As in the case of cash, it will not earn any interest and can be converted to other forms of money, like deposits with banks.
• The pilot project will test the robustness of the entire process of digital rupee creation, distribution and retail usage in real-time. Different features and applications of the e-Rupee token and architecture will be tested in future pilots, based on the learnings from this pilot.
• Eight banks have been identified for phase-wise participation in this pilot. The first phase will begin with four banks, viz., State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank and IDFC First Bank in four cities across the country. Four more banks, viz., Bank of Baroda, Union Bank of India, HDFC Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank will join this pilot subsequently.
• The pilot would initially cover four cities, viz., Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru and Bhubaneswar and later extend to Ahmedabad, Gangtok, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Indore, Kochi, Lucknow, Patna and Shimla.
• According to the RBI, the scope of the pilot may be expanded gradually to include more banks, users and locations as needed.

About:

• The proposal to include the gecko in Appendix II was made by India at the recently-concluded 19th Conference of Parties (COP19) to CITES in Panama City. The proposal was adopted by the members of the Working Group.

CITES Appendix II:

• The animals listed under Appendix II may not necessarily be threatened with extinction, but trade in such species should be controlled to ensure it does not threaten their existence.

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN):

• In 2019, the Jeypore Ground Gecko was assessed for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s Red List of Threatened Species and was listed as ‘endangered’.

Distribution:

• This reptile is endemic to India.
• The wild reptile species is found in the Eastern Ghats and is known to be present in four locations including southern Odisha and northern Andhra Pradesh.
• Its occurrence is estimated in less than 5,000 square kilometres of fragmented geographical area.
• The species resides below rock boulders in high forested hills at an altitude of 1,100-1,400 metres.
• Habitat loss and degradation, forest fires, tourism, quarrying and mining activity among the reasons for the species’ decline.

• KVIC Chairman Shri Manoj Kumar inaugurated the ambitious Re-Hab Project (Reducing Human Attacks using Honey Bees) by Khadi and Village Industries Commission (Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, Government of India) at village Chausla, in Forest Range Fatehpur, Haldwani, District Nainital , where he also distributed 330 Bee-boxes, bee-colonies and toolkits along with the honey extractors to the rural beneficiaries in Chausla village, free of cost.
• On this occasion chairman of KVIC informed the gathering that Khadi & Village Industries Commission (KVIC), under the valuable guidance of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, is running this project called Re-Hab in 7 states of the country, namely in Karnataka, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Assam and Orissa, where attacks of the elephants is more common, and under this project fencing of bee boxes is installed in such areas from where elephants move towards the human settlements and farmers’ agriculture.
• Fencing of Bee-boxes on the routes of movement of elephants blocks the path of wild elephants. In this way, through honey-bees, elephants can be prevented from attacking humans and destroying farmers’ crops.
• As a new initiative, the Re-Hab project will be run by KVIC at selected locations for a period of one year.
• Chairman also informed that in order to realize the call of “Sweet Revolution” by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and to provide self-employment opportunities to the unemployed youth of the country, and to increase the income of the farmers, the Honey Mission program is implemented under the Khadi and Gramodyog Vikas Yojana, in the entire country from the year 2018-19.
• The beneficiaries of this scheme are provided with 10 bee-boxes, bee-colonies and toolkits after completion of the beekeeping training provided by KVIC.
• Under the Honey Mission program in the state of Uttarakhand, from the year 2018-19 to 2021-22 a total of 7120 Bee-boxes, Bee-colonies and toolkits, and other equipments have been distributed to a total of 712 unemployed and farmers, out of which 3910 Bee-boxes have been distributed to 391 Scheduled Caste beneficiaries, 790 Bee-boxes to 79 Scheduled Tribe beneficiaries, and 2420 Bee-boxes to 242 general category beneficiaries.

• Niti Aayog has launched the carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) policy framework and its Deployment Mechanism in India.
• The report was launched by Vice Chairman Niti Aayog Suman Bery, in the presence of Power secretary Alok Kumar, Dr V Saraswat, member Niti Aayog and other officials in New Delhi. The report was prepared on the valuable inputs provided by the various stakeholders from the  Energy and Power Sector (E&P).
• Earlier the government had put the draft policy titled ‘2030 Roadmap for CCUS for Upstream E&P companies in the public domain for suggestions from all the stakeholder’s holders in the country.
• The purpose of CCUS policy framework is to develop and implement a practicable framework to accelerate research and development on carbon capture, utilisation and storage in India.
• As India is the third largest emitter of CO2 in the world after China and the US about 2.6 gigatonne per annum, carbon capture utilisation and storage is an essential imperative for India to reach its Decarbonisation Goals.
• At COP 26 late year in Glasgow, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced panchamrit to mitigate climate change including achieving net zero by 2070.
• The government of India has also committed to reducing CO2 emissions by 50 percent by 2050.
• According to Vice Chairman of Niti Aayog Suman K. Bery that CCUS has an important and critical role to play for India to achieve net zero by 2070.

• India has recorded an impressive decline in maternal mortality ratio (MMR) which has fallen from 130 maternal deaths per one lakh live births to 97 deaths per one lakh live births over six years.
• “It is heartening that the Maternal Mortality Ratio in India has declined over the years to 97 in 2018-20 from 103 in 2017-19 and 130 in 2014-2016,” Registrar General of India’s latest Special Bulletin on MMR in India released on 29 November 2022 said.
• Maternal death is defined as death of a woman while pregnant or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, from any cause related to or aggravated by the pregnancy or its management but not from accidental or incidental causes.
• Among the states mapped by the bulletin, MMR is the lowest in Kerala at 19 deaths and the highest in Assam at 195.
• MMR in Punjab and Haryana continues to be higher than the national average of 97.
• In Punjab, it is 105 deaths per one lakh live births and in Haryana it is 110 deaths.
• The highest number of maternal deaths nationally — 32 pc—happened in the 20 to 24 year age group followed by 30 pc in 25-29 years and 20 pc in 30 to 34 years.
• Even at the adolescent level 15 to 10 years, the bulletin has revealed 6 pc of all maternal deaths, indicating child marriages remain rampant.

• “The idea is to bring the issue of gender-based violence in focus and make women aware of their rights and mechanism available to help redress their grievances,” said the Union Minister Giriraj Singh.
• The Minister was addressing the launch of the month-long campaign “Nai Chetna”, launched on the Internation Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25th November 2022.
• It’s a campaign to raise awareness about the institutional mechanisms available for women to fight gender-based violence.

Aware, Reach and Redress: 

• ’Nai Chetna’, the month-long campaign is envisioned as a ‘Jan Andolan’ (people’s movement). The campaign is launched by the Ministry of Rural Development and involves sensitizing women, especially in rural areas.
• It seeks to enable women to acknowledge, prepare and take support in situations of compromise. The Union Minister described that the campaign’s focus is women in rural areas. Often, women in rural areas are unaware of the various mechanisms available to raise their concerns.
• In his address, the Union Minister highlighted the sensitivity of the issue. He said, “It is sad that a large number of men and women still consider gender-based violence normal. Such a perspective needs to be changed.”

Denormalizing discrimination with community support:

• Women are often unable to identify various forms of violence occurring around them. Violence and discrimination are normalized and there are thin boundaries between what can be compromised and what should be flagged.
• The Ministry has established around 1,200 Gender Resource Centres across the country. As a part of the campaign, 160 more such centres were launched. Even if they want to seek support, they are unaware of redressal mechanisms and service providers and lack legal awareness. Hence, they rarely seek support and continue to suffer in silence.
• The month-long campaign seeks to enable women to acknowledge situations of violence and guide them to take support from various institutional mechanisms available to them.

• The 128-year-old Bantony Castle complex, the summer palace of the erstwhile Maharaja of Sirmaur, is all set to be a major attraction for tourists as the restoration of the heritage property has been completed under the Rs 26-crore funded Asian Development Bank (ADB) project.
• The sprawling lawns of Bantony Castle now house two open air theatres, besides a provision for a light, sound and music show behind the main structure.
• The light and sound facility has been created to help visitors trace the history of Shimla and its strong British link.
• The main structure has been restored, which has gallery halls that can be used for setting up a museum. Walking trails will also be developed on the expansive property.
• The provision has been made to set up a cafeteria, where Himachali cuisine will be served. Public facilities like toilets and drinking water have been created for the convenience of visitors.
• As Bantony Castle likely to be inaugurated after the formation of the new government, the entire stretch right from The Ridge, Gaiety Theatre and Town Hall will become a heritage zone, which will be of immense interest of tourists.
• It was on January 4, 2016, that the government finally decided to acquire Bantony Castle, following several failed attempts over the last two decades.
• The government, with the consent of its owners, decided to acquire Bantony Castle for Rs 27.84 crore.
• The Himachal Institute of Public Administration (HIPA) prepared a social impact assessment report of the prime property before the decision on its acquisition was taken.
• The entire property spread over 19,436.83 sqm, including the main wooden structure, expansive lawns and thick deodar forests, has now been converted into a vibrant heritage zone, which will showcase Himachal’s rich culture and traditions.
• The restoration work to convert Bantony Castle into a vibrant place and promote the concept of night tourism has been executed by Kavita Jain, a conservation architect from Jaipur.
• She has the experience of similar conservation projects in Uttarakhand, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, though in different architectural styles.

Was Sirmaur Maharaja’s summer palace

• The 128-year-old Bantony Castle was the summer palace of the Maharaja of Sirmaur. The main building is a double-storey structure constructed in the mock Tudor style, part chalet and crowned with a sloping roof with mini-towers.
• The building is said to have been designed by TEG Cooper. Before its construction began in 1880, the site had a cottage belonging to Cap A. Gordon which housed army officers.
• It had the office of the Himachal Police since 1957. It was after the owners won the legal battle that the police vacated the building.