Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 15 February 2022

::NATIONAL::

The 100-metre prohibited area for construction activity around Centrally-protected monuments could be replaced with site-specific limits to be decided by an expert committee, as the Union Culture Ministry was working on amendments to the relevant Act.

About:

The Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains (AMASR) Act, 1958, was amended in 2010 to declare the 100-metre radius of protected monuments as prohibited areas and the next 300-metre radius as regulated areas.
However, according to Ministry officials as well as a recent Parliamentary Standing Committee report, there was no specific reason behind the 100 metre and 300 metre limits.
The proposed amendment would change Section 20A of the Act, which refers to the prohibited area, to rationalise the prohibited and regulated areas. Expert monument committees would decide the prohibited area around a particular monument.
These areas which could be as wide as 500 metres for some sites like the Taj Mahal.
The amendment would also enable the ASI to act against encroachment by holding the relevant authorities liable in case of illegal buildings at a protected site, the official said. This would be similar to the enforcement powers under the Indian Forest Act.

Ministry of Education has joined hands with Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment for Scheme for Residential Education for Students in High Schools in Targeted Areas (SHRESTHA).

Objective of SHRESTHA:

Enhance reach of development Intervention of the Government and fill the gap in service deficient SCs dominant areas.
Earlier known as ‘Grant in-aid to voluntary and other organisations for Scheduled Castes’, SHRESTHA has two Modes with:
Mode 1:To provide high quality residential education to bright scheduled caste (SC) students.
Mode 2:It provides Grant-in-aid to Schools/Hostels run by voluntary and other organisations meeting the required criteria.
District administration is its prime implementing agency for Mode 1.

Pakistan signed a new agreement with China to begin the second phase of the USD 60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
CPEC’s early-harvest projects had transformed Pakistan’s economic landscape, thus laying a solid foundation for sustainable economic growth.

About:

CPEC is a 3,000-km long route of infrastructure projects connecting China’s northwest Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and the Gwadar Port in the western province of Balochistan in Pakistan.
India has protested to China over the CPEC as it is being laid through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

What is India’s Stand on CPEC?

India has been severely critical of the CPEC, as it passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, which is a disputed territory between India and Pakistan.
India has also protested to China over the CPEC as it is being laid through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).
India is a member of the Quad (India, the US, Australia and Japan) which can provide realistic alternatives for countries looking for infrastructure and be an alternative to China. The member countries of the Quad have come up with some alternatives.

Key highlights:

The agreement was signed in Dhaka between the project director of Bangladesh railways Mizanur Rahman and the Hindustan Engineering and Industries Limited.
The agreement worth Tk. 231 crore will be implemented within 27 months of the signing of the contract.
This project is being implemented with the joint funding of the Government of Bangladesh and Asian Development Bank (ADB) under the Rolling Stock Operation Improvement Project.
These are high speed bogies with automatic air brake systems so that the general and specialised products like various food grains, fertilisers, stones, wood etc. can reach the destination safely at low cost and in less time. The wagons are equipped with a stainless steel body.
The new wagons will help improve freight transportation by replacing old wagons of Bangladesh railway.

India will more than double the area that is under exploration and production of oil and gas to 0.5 million square kilometer by 2025 and to 1 million sq km by 2030 with a view to raising domestic output and cut reliance on imported fuel.

About:

The world’s third-largest energy consumer will continue to rely on hydrocarbons to meet its growing energy needs in the foreseeable future, he said at the World Energy Policy Summit 2022.
India currently relies on imports to meet 85 per cent of its oil needs and 50 per cent of the natural gas requirement. This is because domestic production is inadequate.
An ambitious target to increase the area under exploration and production to 0.5 million sq km by 2025 and achieve 1 mn sq km by 2030.
Seven rounds of an auction of acreage under the new Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) in the last five years have doubled the area under exploration for oil and gas to 207,692 (0.2 million) sq km.

Recently, ISRO’s Space Applications Centre and Physical Research Laboratory successfully used quantum entanglement to create a hack-proof communication system.
This satellite-based communication involves creation of a channel to share quantum-secure text, image transmission and quantum-assisted two-way video calling.
The experiment was conducted between two buildings separated by 300 m.

About Quantum Communication:

Quantum communication uses advantage of the laws of quantum physics to protect data.
Quantum physics studies nature and behaviour of energy and matter on the quantum level.
Quantum Communication, is based on two key principles of quantum physics:
Superposition means that each qubit (basic unit of quantum information) can represent both 1 and 0 at the same time.
Entanglement means that qubits in a superposition can be correlated with each other; i.e., state of one can depend on state of another.
Quantum entanglement is used in cryptography to create a shared secret key for sender and receiver, known only to them and used to encode their messages.
When someone intercepts the signal, the entanglement breaks, leaving a detectable trace of communication hack.