10 April 2024, The Indian EXPRESS
Strategic military infra upgrade in the works for Andaman & Nicobar Islands
(Page no- 1)
(GS3- Security Challenges and their Management in Border Areas)
- The improved infrastructure is aimed to enable the deployment of more military forces and provide facilities for a greater number and size of warships, aircraft, missile batteries, and troops.
- China is extending its influence in the region, including building a military base on Myanmar's Coco Islands, located 55 km north of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
- There are 836 islands in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, of which 38 are inhabited. The Andaman and Nicobar Command (ANC) is the first and the only tri-service command in the islands and was established in 2001.
- Sources said plans are underway to significantly enhance the surveillance infrastructure at one of the northern islands and to construct a permanent habitat for Indian troops.
India has 3nd highest hepatitis cases, 11% of global burden: WHO
(Page no-1)
(GS2- Issues Relating to Development and Management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health)
- India is one of the countries with the highest burden of viral hepatitis — an infection that causes liver inflammation, damage and may lead to liver cancer — with 2.9 crore people living with Hepatitis B infection and 0.55 crore living with Hepatitis C infection, according to the Global Hepatitis Report 2024 released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday.
- There were over 50,000 new Hepatitis B cases and 1.4 lakh new Hepatitis C cases reported in 2022. And these infections killed 1.23 lakh people in India in 2022 as per the report.
- Both infections are transmitted from mother to child during delivery, during transfusion of blood that hasn’t been screened properly, during contact with the blood of an infected person or while sharing of needles by drug users.
- Since hepatitis B can be prevented through vaccination, the report highlights the need to ensure coverage. Hepatitis C is curable with medicines.
SC: Candidates don’t need to declare every movable asset
(Page no-10)
(GS2- Salient Features of the Representation of People’s Act)
- The voter’s right to know about candidates cannot be stretched so far as to require the latter to lay their life out threadbare for examination as they too are entitled to privacy, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday.
- The court said such non-disclosure of each and every asset owned by poll candidates would not amount to a defect of a substantial character so as to invalidate their election.
- A bench of Justices Aniruddha Bose and Sanjay Kumar reversed the July 7, 2023 decision of the High Court of Assam, Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh invalidating the April 2019 poll victory of independent candidate Karikho Kri from the 44 Tezu (ST) Assembly constituency in Arunachal Pradesh.
To be a doctor
(Page no-12)
(GS2- Issues Relating to Development and Management of Social Sector/Services relating to Health, Education)
- In February 2022, 18,000 Indian medical students studying in Ukraine were forced to return home after the country’s conflict with Russia escalated into a war.
- As a one-time exception, India’s medical education regulator, the National Medical Commission, allowed 4,000 of these students, who were in their final semesters, to complete their internship at home.
- With tensions between Russia and Ukraine showing little sign of abating, countries in Central Asia, Eastern and Southeastern Europe have become the preferred destination for a large number of the repatriated students.
- According to a report in this newspaper, 70 per cent of these MBBS aspirants are now pursuing their dreams in colleges in Serbia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Georgia.
- These countries are also attracting new batches of Indian students. These developments also point to the deficits in the Indian medical education system.
Why can’t states impose regulations on industrial alcohol to stop abuse: SC
(Page no- 15)
(GS2- Functions and Responsibilities of the Union and the States)
- The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought to know from the Centre why the states, as the custodians of the health of citizens, cannot impose regulations on industrial alcohol and levy fees to ensure that its abuse does not take place.
- A nine-judge constitution bench is examining the issue of overlapping powers of the Centre and states in the production, manufacturing, supply and regulation of industrial alcohol.
- "We all know about Hooch tragedies and the states are widely concerned about health of its citizens. Why should the states not have the power to regulate. If they can regulate to ensure that there is no misuse, then it can impose any fees," the bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre.
New 3-D map of the universe hints at nature of dark energy
(Page no-16)
(GS3- Awareness in the fields of Space)
- That the universe is expanding has been known for close to a century, thanks to the observations by the American astronomer Edwin Hubble in 1929.
- More recently, in the late 1990s, scientists found that this expansion was happening at an accelerated rate — that is, not only was the universe expanding, it was expanding at an increasingly faster pace.
- This discovery, honoured with the Nobel Prize in Physics (for Saul Perlmutter, Brian P Schmidt, and Adam G Riess) in 2011, forced scientists to hypothesise ‘dark’ energy.
- The reasoning was this: If the rate of expansion did not increase, it could be explained as a continuing after-effect of the expansion caused by the Big Bang.
Sensex @ 75000
Page no-17
GS3- Indian Economy and issues relating to Planning, Mobilization of Resources, Growth, Development
- It’s domestic institutional investors (DIIs), led by insurance companies and mutual funds, which led the bull rally that took the benchmark Sensex to the 75,000 level on Tuesday.
- DIIs have bought stocks worth Rs 1.12 lakh crore since January this year, aided by strong inflows into equity schemes of mutual funds.
- On the other hand, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) pulled out Rs 53,145 crore from the stock market (excluding the IPO market investment) since January this year.
- Whenever there was heavy selling by FPIs, which was expected in response to the spike in US bond yields, the market was not largely impacted since it was neutralised by DIIs and individual investor buying.
- “The FPI strategy of pushing the market down is not working since their selling is countered with buying by DIIs and individual investors,” said V K Vijayakumar, Chief Investment Strategist, Geojit Financial Services.
