Daily Current Affairs for UPSC IAS: 11th April 2023

New Rules For Online Gaming:

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has recently notified the final rules for online gaming.

• Every state in India, except Goa, Sikkim, and the Union Territory of Daman explicitly prohibits any sort of gambling, betting or wagering on games of chance.
• Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Nagaland, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Telangana have placed restrictions on games of skill as well.
• The government will appoint multiple self-regulatory organisations (SROs) comprising industry representatives, educationists and other experts including psychology experts.
• It prohibits any game that involves betting and wagering.
• KYC verification is mandatory of online gamers of games involving real money.
• MEITY can also notify agencies to fact check false and misleading information related to government business.
• Intermediaries cannot host, publish or share any online game that can cause the user harm, or that has not been verified as a permissible online game by SROs.
• The intermediary will have to ensure that no advertisement or surrogate advertisement or promotion of an online game that is not permitted, is hosted on its platform.
• The intermediary will have to display a mark of verification by the SROs on such games; inform its users of the policy for withdrawal or refund of deposit, manner of determination and distribution of winnings, fees and other charges.
• The intermediary cannot give credit or enable finances by third parties to the users.
• The SRO can declare online real money games as permissible if it is satisfied that the online real money game does not involve wagering on any outcome.
• Permissibility will be determined with the simple principle of whether wagering is involved or not.
• It can inquire and satisfy itself that the intermediary and the game comply with the rules, the requirements under law are being competent to enter into a contract (currently at 18 years), and the framework safeguards against user harm.
• It can ensure that online game complies with the measures to safeguard through parental controls, age-rating mechanism, and measures to safeguard users against the risk of gaming addiction.

Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO Project:

LIGO is an international network of laboratories.

• It aims to detect the ripples in spacetime produced by the movement of large celestial objects.
• LIGO-India is a collaborative project between a consortium of Indian research institutions and the LIGO Laboratory in the USA, along with its international partners.
• It will be located in the Hingoli district of Maharashtra.
• It was built by the Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Science and Technology with an MoU with the S. National Science Foundation
• Objective is to detect and study gravitational waves.
• LIGOs are designed to measure changes in distance that are several orders of magnitude smaller than the length of the proton.
• This project will see India join the global effort to detect and study gravitational waves, which were first theorized in Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.
• Gravitational waves are extremely weak and difficult to detect.
• They were first directly detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in 2015.
• LIGO-India is set to become the country’s largest scientific facility after the government gave the final green light for its construction.

World Health Day 2023:

Every Year on 7th April World Health Day is celebrated. The date of 7 April marks the anniversary of the founding of World Health Organisation in 1948.

• World Health Day was conceived at the First Health Assembly in 1948 and it came into effect in 1950.
• It is celebrated annually and each year it draws attention to a specific health topic of concern to people all over the world.
• Theme for 2023: Health for All
• To mark the occasion of World Health Day on April 7, a health camp and a flash mob was organized to create awareness on non-communicable diseases (NCD) among the public.
• World Health Day aims to raise awareness about global health issues, promote health equity by addressing disparities, encourage collaboration among stakeholders, and highlight progress in improving health outcomes worldwide.
• This includes educating people on the importance of good health, providing access to healthcare services, and reducing the burden of diseases in disadvantaged communities and low- and middle-income countries.

Great Nicobar Island Project:

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has issued a stay on the Great Nicobar Island project worth ₹72,000 crore and created a committee to review the environmental clearance granted by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

• Great Nicobar Island Project is a mega project to be implemented at the southern end of the Andaman and Nicobar islands.
• The project includes an international container transshipment terminal, a greenfield international airport, township development, and a 450 MVA gas and solar based power plant over an extent of 16,610 hectares in the island.
• As per the NITI Aayog report, the proposed port will allow Great Nicobar to participate in the regional and global maritime economy by becoming a major player in cargo transshipment.
• It is equidistant from Colombo to the southwest and Port Klang (Malaysia) and Singapore to the southeast, and positioned close to the East-West international shipping corridor, through which a very large part of the world’s shipping trade passes.
• The proposal to develop Great Nicobar was first floated in the 1970s, and its importance for national security and consolidation of the Indian Ocean Region has been repeatedly underlined.
• Increasing Chinese assertion in the Indian Ocean has added great urgency to this imperative in recent years.

Genome India Project:

Government aims to sequence 10,000 genomes by the end of the year 2023 under the Genome India Project (GIP).

• The Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology has sequenced close to 7,000 genomes and 3,000 of these are already available for public access
• Genome India Project is a scientific initiative inspired by the Human Genome Project (HGP), an international effort that successfully decoded the entire human genome between 1990 and 2003.
• The project was started in 2020, aiming to better understand the genetic variations and disease-causing mutations specific to the Indian population, which is one of the most genetically diverse in the world.
• By sequencing and analyzing these genomes, researchers hope to gain insights into the underlying genetic causes of diseases and develop more effective personalized therapies.
• The project involves the collaboration of 20 institutions across India and is being led by the Centre for Brain Research at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.
• GIP aims to develop personalized medicine based on patients’ genomes to anticipate and modulate diseases.
• By mapping disease propensities to genetic variations, interventions can be targeted more effectively, and diseases can be anticipated before they develop.
• Similar benefits will come to agriculture if there is a better understanding of the genetic basis of the susceptibility of plants to pests, insects and other issues hampering productivity.
• This can reduce dependence on chemicals.
• Global science will also benefit from a mapping project in one of the world’s most diverse gene pools.
• The project is said to be among the most significant of its kind in the world because of its scale and the diversity it would bring to genetic studies.

125th Anniversary Celebrations Of Sri Ramakrishna Math:

The Prime Minister of India participated in the 125th Anniversary celebrations of Sri Ramakrishna Math at Vivekananda House in Chennai, Tamil Nadu.

• Ramakrishna Movement was initiated by Swami Vivekananda to spread the universal message of Vedanta in the light of Sri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa. He was a teacher of swami Vivekanand
• The main motto of this initiative is to work for the alleviating of the poor and the downtrodden with the motto ‘for one’s liberation and the good of the world’.
• With this aim, Swami Vivekananda founded the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission.
• The Ramakrishna Mission was formed in May 1897 with aims purely spiritual and humanitarian.
• Vedanta is one of the world’s most ancient spiritual philosophies and one of its broadest, based on the Vedas, the sacred scriptures of India.

5th Cycle Of The All India Tiger Estimation : Report

Prime Minister recently released the summary report of the 5th cycle of the All India Tiger Estimation.

Highlights of the 5th cycle of the All India Tiger Estimation:

• India’s tiger population rose by 200 in the past four years to reach 3,167 in 2022.
• According to the data, the tiger population was 1,411 in 2006, 1,706 in 2010, 2,226 in 2014, 2,967 in 2018 and 3,167 in 2022
• The number of tigers has almost doubled in the last two decades in the country.
• As many as 1,161 of India’s tigers are now in Central India, 824 in the Western Ghats, 804 in the Shivalik Range, 194 in the North-eastern states and 100 in the Sunderbans.
• The Western Ghats, which are home to the largest tiger population in the world, have shown a significant fall in the occupancy of tigers.
• Tiger occupancy has also declined in the states of Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Telangana.
• The north-western states such as Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh now have more tigers outside reserves, requiring officials to step up habitat conservation.
• The period covered in the survey 2018 to 2022 also saw 551 tiger deaths, with 208 of them adults.

Meraj-532 : Iran

Iran recently tested a homemade long-range, high-precision kamikaze drone named Meraj-532, equipped with a 50-kg warhead.

• Meraj-532 is a kamikaze drone equipped with a piston engine.
• It has a range of 450 km.
• It is capable of flying at a maximum altitude of 12,000 feet for three straight hours.
• It has a 50-kg warhead and can be assembled and prepared for flight easily, making it suitable for rapid reaction operations.
• A kamikaze drone, also called a suicide drone or, more formally, a loitering munition, is an unmanned aerial vehicle that is designed to self-destruct after serving its purpose.
• They can hover around the target area for some time (much longer than a cruise missile) and attack only once a target is located.
• It may also feature a built-in warhead or payload, which is intended to detonate during the engagement.