Gist of The Hindu: August 2021

Gist of The Hindu: August 2021

Enforcing Contracts Portal

  • Secretary (Justice) at the Department of Justice, launches Enforcing Contracts Portal.

About:

  • It aims to promote ease of doing business and improve ContractEnforcement Regime in country.
  • Portal is envisioned to be a comprehensive source of information pertaining to legislative and policy reforms being undertaken on “Enforcing Contracts” parameters (was ranked 163 in 2019 rankings).
  • It will provide easy access to latest information on commercial cases in Dedicated Commercial Courts ofDelhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Kolkata.
  • Portal to also provide access to repository of commercial laws for ready reference.

Religious freedom report

  • A recent report by the Pew Research Center, a Washington DC-based nonpartisan think tank, has found that a majority of Indians enjoy religious freedom, value religious tolerance and believe that respect for all religions is central to the idea of India.
  • The Pew study is based on a face-to-face survey of 29,999 Indian adults between late 2019 and early 2020, weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world.
  • The Pew Research Center study highlights the new demographic projections which took into account the current size and geographic distribution of the world’s major religions, age differences, fertility and mortality rates, international migration, and patterns in conversion.
  • The Pew study also took a closer look at religious identity, nationalism and tolerance in Indian society.
  •  According to the Pew survey, people of all six major religious groups - Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists-overwhelmingly believe they are very free to practice their faiths.

Heat dome

  • Huge tracts ofNorth America are sweltering under very high temperatures, which are close to 50ºC in some places. 
  • The phenomenon behind this weather is known as a heat dome and the one that's currently settled across parts of Canada and the US.

About:

  • Heat dome is an area of high pressure that parks over a region like a lid on a pot, trapping heat.
  • They are more likely to form during La Nina years like 2021, when waters are cool in the eastern Pacificand warm in the western Pacific.
  • That temperature difference creates winds that blow dense, tropical, western air eastward.
  • Warm air gets trapped in the jet stream— a current of air spinning counter-clockwise around the globe— and ends up on the U.S. West Coast.

Global Cybersecurity Index

  • According to a United Nations report released on Tuesday, India has jumped 37 places to 10th position in the Global Cyber ​​Security Index (GCI) 2020.
  • The GCI is a composite index created, analyzed and published by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a specialized agency of the United Nations.

About:

  • It aims to measure the commitment to cybersecurity of its 194 member countries to raise cybersecurity awareness. 
  • The latest report is the fourth GCI edition by the ITU, the first version of which was launched six years ago.
  • India ranked 10th in the fourth edition of the Global Cyber ​​Security Index 2020 (GCI), a significant jump of 37 places from its previous GCI rank in 2018. 
  • As cybersecurity has a wide area of ​​application, cutting across multiple industries and different sectors, each country’s development or engagement is assessed along five pillars – (i) Legal measures, (ii) Technical measures, (iii) Organizational measures, (iv) Capacity development, and (v) Cooperation- and then aggregated into a composite score

Micro ATMs

  • In Ladakh, Cooperative Banking Service with Micro ATMs where both deposition and withdrawal of cash can be availed by the users will be introduced in far-flung areas.

About:

  • Micro ATMs are card swipe machines through which banks can remotely connect to their core banking system. This machine comes with a fingerprint scanner attached to it.
  • In other words, micro-ATMs are handheld point of sale terminals used to disburse cash in remote locations where bank branches cannot reach.
  • Micro ATMs are similar to point of sale (PoS) terminals and are a doorstep mobile banking arrangement cum-mobile ATM device.

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Courtesy: The Hindu

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